Introduction

Many activist groups and collectives are, in many different ways, working to bring about a society whose goals will not be domination and exploitation, but cooperation, equality and solidarity. But how are these organizations structured? How do they make decisions? It is all too easy for a corporate or parliamentary structure to emerge, tacitly or explicitly, thus reproducing the inequalities of power that the group is meant to oppose. This has happened in many trade unions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It is no use railing against opaque, unaccountable governments and corporations if we ourselves are opaque and unaccountable. If we want a different sort of world, we need different sorts of organizations.

The Open Organizations project describes political processes based on open participation, self-management, transparency, accountability, best practices, public ownership of knowledge, respect for skill and diversity. (Please see the Introduction to Open Organizations for an explanation of these principles.) In order to implement these processes, the people in an organization need to be able to make information about their ideas and plans available quickly and regularly, so that it is easily accesible to them and to people outside the organization. This allows them to have discussions and take decisions without necessarily being in the same place at the same time -- a crucial advantage in volunteer groups, where time is scarce. It enables them to be transparent to the people that their work affects -- a first step towards being accountable. And it provides a permanent record of decisions taken and knowledge gained -- a foundation that new members can build on, and that other groups can benefit from.

This can be done using information technology, but only certain types of computer software are helpful. This software is not widely known to the general public, but it is easy to use, and can be downloaded, free of charge, from the Internet. Most of the software that most people are familiar with (e.g. the software that is commonly used in offices and on home computers) is actually a hindrance to using these sorts of processes. Moreover, software by itself will not promote good organizational processes; everything depends on way the software is used.

Developers of Free Software, who often collaborate on long-term projects without ever meeting in person, have created certain kinds of groupware in order to share information, and they depend on this groupware for their own projects. They have developed a culture of online collaboration, which involves certain 'best practices' for using this software. (Some of these practices originated in the earliest days of the Internet.) Together, this software and these practices constitute a liberating technology, which has enabled collaborative projects, created for the common good, to flourish.

Groupware requires servers. A server is a computer connected to the Internet; other people on the Internet can use software that runs on the server. Some companies offer groupware services, using their own servers, but these services have many disadvantages. They tend to be expensive, or to require you to look at advertising while using the service. The groupware offered is often of inferior quality. In any case, these services remain outside the control of the groups that use them; if there is a technical problem, the group may find itself at the mercy of the company providing the service. And of course, these companies do not operate according to the principles outlined above; they are part of an economic model based on the private ownership of knowledge.

Inexpensive PC hardware and low-cost broadband Internet connections have made it feasible for small activist groups and collectives to own and operate their own servers. Such a server can host the same groupware that Free Software projects rely on. This allows liberating technology to be owned and managed collectively, for the common good, rather than for financial gain, as described in our statement of principles.

Anyone who is responsible for technology gains knowledge in the process, and knowledge is power: the power to make better use of technology. Running your own server means that it is your organization that gains this power, rather than a company that you simply pay for a service. When a number of organizations work together to share knowledge and skills, the burden on each organization is reduced. The result is a self-sustaining network of mutual aid. SocialTools aims to be such a network.

The SocialTools volunteers are developing a recipe for building inexpensive, reliable servers that are relatively easy to set up and easy to administer, using Free Software. This recipe will be improved over time as a result of the experiences of members.