Following on from original thread:
See Thread of Twitter with following interactions:RT @msurman: Just posted (draft) 2015 @mozilla Participation Plan.http://t.co/HYaMtquWTg… Would love thoughts / comments / involvement.— Sean Bohan (@seanbohan) January 28, 2015
- @seanbohan @msurman @mozilla unlike peeps putting code into browser,other efforts need to reverse flow..put Mozilla into indie relationships
1Man/ManyMachines 
Mark Surman
Only so many folks can work ‘in’ Mozilla. The browser as a vehicle of community empowerment is obviously very motivating/important. Putting the energy of many people ‘into’ the Mozilla entity for this purpose is very motivating/important.
I stated that it may now be time to put Mozilla into ‘indie relationships’, to ‘reverse the flow’ of empowerment.
In regards to your question on what that means…
The integrity of entities is an internal-external consideration. For many people, one of the primary motivations for participating in collaborative community empowerment endeavors is the independence that is made possible by such effort. Volunteering is the root of self-empowerment.
An asset development strategy requires that this dichotomy of internal-external structure be explicit. A non-profit corporation with a public benefit mission does not change this internal-external structure… add for-profit holdings and the additional complexity that arrives, and all that we see is more of the same internal-external control issues…even if “public benefit” is a primary driver of strategy.
Conversely, indie relationships imply a different structure of empowerment. The integrity of one, the opportunity of each to empower self and neighbor, the strategic diversity that exists at the edge of a network loosely coupled by a commitment to the self-possession and social empowerment of… [enter public benefit mission].
To date, most all of Mozilla’s efforts ask people to put energy ‘into’ an entity, so that value can be drawn out by the community in various useful ways.
At the same time… an indie movement that seeks to empower the edge participants directly, as Individual people, is most definitely of interest to many. When I look at the relationships that happen at this nexus, I generally see people seeking greater opportunity, and often I see entities trying to service that by creating ‘FREE’ transactions.
FREE is not always a good thing for opportunity development. There is some nuance involved. But, the complexity of interacting with that nuance is not something that entities do a good job of. The separation caused by centralization of resources, control of procedures, branding, etc is directly confrontational to the independence of the people at the edges.
If instead of asking people to “Join the Mozilla cause”… “donate to the Mozilla entity”… Mozilla were to empower the people and entities circling it independently by reversing the flow of support… what would be possible?
Sean is involved in ‘VRM’ development efforts at Mozilla… this reversal of flow is a core principle of those efforts. To date, no one has figured out how that happens. I can not think of a single organization that can make a larger impact by figuring it out than Mozilla.
In the spirit of the Webmaker project… or more broadly the ‘Maker Movement’… the goal is not to create better customers of opportunity. The goal is to create a new type of opportunity structure… one that is capable of being engaged with independently, as makers… as people… as self-possessed engines of opportunity.
Whether we are going into schools, into our neighborhood homes, into small businesses, into enterprises of all sizes… it is the way that this happens that matters… not the places… not the vendors that get credit.. not the entities with control. If an organization is truly creating public benefit, then this will come back from the edge in exponential quantities. But in order for that to happen…control must be released, opportunity must be distributed externally in fungible ways.
Otherwise it just starts to look like competition… no matter that we are friends in the cause. A competitive model only has limited ‘winners’.
Mozilla Participation Plan (draft)