Towards an "Open Solidarity Economy"

In the last few decades we have seen three major systemic responses to the crisis of capitalism; one is the re-emergence of the solidarity economy model and cooperativism; the second are the efforts towards ecologically sustainable production; in the last fifteen years we have seen the re-emergence of commons-oriented forms of peer production, based on mutualized and common pools of knowledge. The paradox however, is that many cooperative production mechanisms do not share their knowledge, and that many who share their knowledge pools, are choosing venture-based start-up solutions. In this session,we would like to look into the possible convergence of open vs. cooperative/solidarity-based models, and some of the potential tools that could facilitate such convergence, such as the copyfair-based reciprocity licenses.