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The Comunes Collective aims to move the ideals and methodologies of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) to other fields. Thus, it aims to build free web tools usable by collectives, social movements, and communities not related to FLOSS for the collective production of Commons.

Comunes is solely driven by volunteers. Nowadays we are a few, and we need your help to keep going. If you like what we do, please consider spending a few minutes having a look at the following tasks that you might enjoy contributing with. Tasks are grouped in “profiles”, both technical and non-technical. Anyone is free to get into one or several profiles within any of Comunes projects.

For a more systematic collaboration, you can also check out our trainings. Another possibility is to consider donating to this non-profit.

Technical Profiles:

  • Development of Free Open Source Software
    • Join development teams using leading technologies in projects within the context of Web 2.0:
      • Kune: platform for encouraging collaboration, content sharing & free culture. Main needs: developers in Java-based GWT/AJAX (dealing with XMPP, Wave) and/or Ruby on Rails + HTML/CSS
      • Move Commons: web tool for initiatives, collectives and NGOs to declare and visualize the core principles they are committed to. Main need: Java-based GWT/AJAX
      • Ourproject.org: web-based collaborative free content repository. Main need: sysadmins.
      • Ideas: brainstorming system for social movements. Main need: PHP developers.
      • Alerta: community-driven alert system. Main need: PHP developers and maintainers.
      • Wave Extensions: small applications that provide certainly useful features (Karma, Massmob, Troco). Main need: Java developers.
      • Android mobile apps: apps that would aid social movements. Main need: Android developers.
      • More info and other projects check our summary and the call for developers.
    • Possibility of developing independent sub-projects (such as final year project or MSc dissertation) inside any of our projects.
  • Administration & Security
    • Administration of several servers based on Debian Linux, currently offering multiple services: monitoring (Nagios); DNS; hosting, wiki, mailing lists & other web-services of ourproject.org; firewall; anti-spam…
    • Security and bastioning against DDOS attacks to the projects; peaks of spam; loops of user processes (users are allowed direct access through SSH)
  • Management of an ecosystem of free culture projects
    • “The other side” of a forge, but with social/cultural/artistic projects, not just software
    • Technical assistance to projects
    • Licensing assistance to projects
  • Artificial Intelligence Research & Analysis
    • Theoretical and applied research in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Social Networks
    • Study of online communities: stats and metrics of free culture projects
    • Research of algorithms in trust&reputation system (Karma); recommenders (Kune); cryptography (Kune, Troco); semantic web and semantic search (Move Commons); social network analysis (Kune, MC); visualization of aggregated information (Alerta, MC); data mining (Ourproject)
    • Possible publication of results
  • Web Design (+ basic web programming & graphic design)
    • Building new project webpages
    • Improvement of current websites
    • Use of leading technologies for building attractive designs

Non-techie Profiles:

  • Online Community Manager
    • Tasks of Online Community Manager for supporting a community of 850 projects in ourproject.org
    • Development of cooperative dynamics; project interconnection; collaborator identification; cooperation ways; promotion of engagement
  • Social Media
  • Graphic Design, Multimedia
    • Graphic visualization of networks and concepts
    • Video-making for communicating the projects
  • Support to the fundraising
    • Crowdfunding (currently inside Goteo)
    • Grantmaking (Awesome, CC, Mozilla, TED, NLnet…)
    • Donations (organization of campaigns, search of interested donors)
  • Social Research
    • Theoretical and applied research from a Social Sciences approach of topics related to social networks, social network analysis, new social movements, digital Commons, social implications of technology
    • Data Gathering and Data Analysis of the impact of Comunes web-tools, to provide assessment and recommendations
    • Possible publication of results
  • Translation & Documentation
    • Encouraging multi-lingual websites & applications, translations are a priority
    • Documentation, creation and improvement of texts for communicating the projects to a non-technical audience
    • Technical documentation of projects

Maybe, only maybe, you read something and said “I could do that!!” Then please, tell us and we’ll see how to arrange it. 🙂

Take care, take part.