The Open Forest Consortium exists to promote and extend the open development model in Portland, the Northwest, and the world. The open and cooperative nature of open source development makes it a uniquely viable organizing principle to reach beyond technology.

Human systems tend to traverse similar stages: birth, growth, stasis, decay and collapse. In an age of "free-market globalization," folks all over the planet are discovering that many of these systems--whether political, economic, social, religious, or otherwise--are no longer working for them. Wealth and effective political power concentrates into the hands of a tiny few, the middle-classes continue to shrink, and the most vulnerable in our communities often cling desperately to survival.

Worse still, the rich and politically connected appear to have gone mad. The economic "haves" apparently just can't get enough, and grab even more. And many of our most prominent political representatives have seemingly gone utterly berserk. Like macro-scale suicide bombers, they plunge whole societies into war, chaos and annihilation.

In this bleak environment we the people are required to come up with new ways of managing our communities. Our task is to fashion updated political, social, economic and spiritual structures that work for us. The good news is we now have plenty of tools to assist us with this task.

The power of collaboration, enabled by the Internet and open source software, is changing the world in ways we're just beginning to imagine. The way software, news, music, art and much else in our "knowledge economy" is produced, distributed and used is evolving rapidly and radically. A rising tide of creative collaborators are leading the way. The best part is their creative output isn't set in stone, or hampered by onerous patents, licenses, copyrights or other limits to accessibility, but is free to evolve into entirely new directions.

In her essay A Democracy of Groups Beth Simone Noveck (Democracy Design Workshop) talks about bigger and better things to come:

In groups people can accomplish what they cannot do alone. Now new visual and social technologies are making it possible for people to make decisions and solve complex problems collectively. These technologies are enabling groups not only to create community but also to wield power and create rules to govern their own affairs.

Open Forest seeks to apply the open and cooperative strengths inherent in the open source development model toward new political, economic, legislative and social innovations. Our mission is to leverage the power of the open source to help bring about a more meritorious, egalitarian, open and democratic society.