[P2P-F] FLOK (the concept) and P2P: what's next?

Mon Jul 21 18:27:53 CEST 2014

I´d like to suggest to come to agreement on using a term for FLOK the
concept which goes beyond (or better said encompasses) FLOK the project.
This is unfortunate but may become inevitable as the P2P Foundation in this
list announced it would refrain to further use this "brand". However, I
believe the concept expressed through this acronym and the meaning it
conveys is compelling, clear, and it has also become widely known in the
last months.

One of the most important achievements of FLOK the project in my eyes is
that it contributed to quite an evolution of the P2P concept. It denotes a
new level of thinking: from looking at P2P projects, communities, commons,
to also include a "macro-level" of societal organization, being the state
its current most-known form (which of course had been addressed before, as
you can see in [1], but maybe from less pragmatic points of view?). In no
way I mean to lower the pioneering and outstanding work of the P2P
Foundation so far, rather the opposite.

I don't think it's in the heads of the FLOK project, nor would I see it as
in their values and interest, to hold on to the acronym FLOK to be only
used for the project. However, continuing to use the acronym might make
things less clear in conversations to understand if we are talking about
the project or the concept.

Thus, either we find a new identifier, or we come to peace with FLOK and
continue to use the acronym for weaving a Free and Libre Open Knowledge
society (I am assuming here that this could be a common banner for P2P
efforts to actually form viable societal models. I am happy to learn about
divergence on this one).

The main motivation for this is to hope for further conversation about FLOK
the concept and  possible forks and evolutions of FLOK the project, without
having to fear entrenched reactions due to the situation about FLOK the
project (which, in my humble opinion, can be soothed by professing a "Mea
Culpa" from ALL sides).

Comments?

P.S. This will be posted as a separate thread on the Spanish-language list
as well.

[1] http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_State_Approaches
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/attachments/20140721/f4a5f3ea/attachment.htm 