Commons-Oriented Open Cooperative Governance Model

Summary

This document describes a governance/economic model for self-sustaining, mission-oriented, distributed organizations.

It values pro-bono, care, and paid work with complementary metrics and dispenses rewards accordingly. The purpose is to extract people from the capitalist marketplace so they can use their unique talents to do fulfilling, socially and environmentally meaningful work. The document prototypes a governance model fit for digital labor as applied to an existing organization: the P2P translation collective Guerrilla Translation which is, in turn, embedded into a larger umbrella organization called the Guerrilla Media Collective. Guerrilla Translation serves as the practical example to illustrate the model. The Guerrilla Media Collective is a pilot project for Distributed Cooperative Organizations or DisCOs.