Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Intention-and-Vision

1. Intention and fundamental vision of the research program

• • WikiDeal is an applied research and development program aimed at answering fundamental societal questions about commerce and global marketplaces. Through Open Calls and public debates, it seeks to de-privatize economic flows and ensure they operate at real costs, rather than exclusively benefiting a small minority.**

1. 1. The Lesson of Free Software vs. Open Source

To understand the core approach of WikiDeal, we can look at a highly concrete historical example: the philosophical and academic foundation of the Free Software and Open Source movements.

In the 1980s, the concept of Free Software and "copyleft" was established to guarantee users four essential freedoms. Later, in the 1990s, a parallel movement emerged promoting "Open Source," championed by figures like Eric S. Raymond, who contrasted the traditional, hierarchical "Cathedral" model of software development with the fluid, collaborative "Bazaar" model.

However, behind these collaborative models lay a fundamental contract, and one crucial detail—a single "comma"—made a massive difference: the strict obligation to redistribute any additions made to the code back to the entire community.

In the 2000s, many companies (like Google and Facebook/Meta) heavily adopted Open Source, but they freely mixed open code with closed, proprietary code. This sparked the great "Free Software vs. Open Source" war of the 1990s and 2000s. The two movements seemed similar, but that "comma"—the strict obligation to redistribute and keep the code entirely free—was the dividing line.

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement, used a very fitting metaphor to describe this practice. He explained that mixing free software with non-free software (or open with non-open, like a platform hiding the algorithms that actually run it) is like offering both water and whiskey to children at school. While diversity of choice isn't inherently bad, these two options have profoundly incompatible intentions. Providing whiskey to children alters their health and their ability to learn. Similarly, introducing proprietary, data-harvesting software into public goods (like schools) fundamentally alters user freedom.

Eventually, the debate reached a turning point. On February 17, 1999, Bruce Perens—one of the original founders of the Open Source Initiative—realized that the core values were being diluted. He published a famous open letter stating: **["It's Time to Talk about Free Software Again"](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/02/msg01641.html)**. He urged the community to return to the fundamental, radically non-discriminatory principles of Free Software.

This concept of "radical non-discrimination"—refusing to accept even minor compromises on fundamental freedoms—is a form of social justice. This is the exact same lens through which WikiDeal conducts its research.

1. 1. Applying Radical Non-Discrimination to Global Commerce

Just as the Free Software movement resolved the complex issue of digital freedom through rigorous debate and clear theoretical boundaries, WikiDeal uses **Open Calls** to address fundamental societal questions.

We aim to answer questions such as:

• How can we de-privatize commerce so that economic flows operate at their real costs, rather than enriching an oligarchic minority?
• How can suffering farmers across the world unite to buy out transnational corporations and make them serve the courageous workers of the land?
• How can we establish a fair distribution of benefits, allocating a portion to future reserves and redistributing a portion directly to users so they truly feel like partners?
• What are the just and honest mechanisms to motivate people—especially those with more time than money, like unemployed youth or retirees—to become active actors on the platform and receive fair, balanced incentives?

We do not claim to be building a flawless utopia. To paraphrase Winston Churchill's famous quote about democracy: **WikiDeal is the worst way to build a global marketplace, except for all the others.**

In the realm of Free Software, the theory became crystal clear, even if practice showed that many actors still try to dilute good intentions. For WikiDeal, the goal is to bring that same level of theoretical clarity and practical resilience to the economy, creating a marketplace framework that is radically fair and fundamentally open.