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

💡 In simple words: WikiDeal is a big experiment. This page explains the core idea behind it: applying the same rules that keep Wikipedia free and fair, to create a marketplace where everyone gets a fair deal without being tricked.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): This article outlines the fundamental vision of the research and development part of WikiDeal. It demonstrates how the historical citizen debate between Free Software and Open Source—specifically the distinction between true non-discriminatory freedom and corporate co-optation—can be applied to other domains, such as the rules governing a Global Online Marketplace. By using this historical lens, WikiDeal seeks to establish fair distribution keys, curb the abuse of dominant positions, and define economic flows as commons (like air and sea) that must be preserved rather than privatized.

The research and development part of WikiDeal is an applied 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.

This article is specifically addressed to donors, contributors, and candidates looking to participate in our research activities. Its goal is to clarify the philosophical vision of the program: we are connecting social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs—individuals who have dedicated their lives and careers to the commons. If you want to support social and commons-oriented entrepreneurship, the cooperative spirit, and the participatory co-ownership of goods managed fairly, you are in the right place.

Fundamentally, the questions we tackle here rely on mechanisms already proven in the Wikipedia environment, reinforced by a very specific hybrid governance model (a mix of Wikipedia's open rule-making, the cooperative movement's user-ownership, and the Swiss political structure of collegial executives).

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 by Richard Stallman—a key founder of the movement—to guarantee users four essential freedoms. This was built on a very clear citizen concern: freedom must be protected, and we must prevent it from being corrupted, misused, or circumvented by proprietary models.

Later, in the late 1990s, a parallel movement emerged promoting "Open Source," championed by figures like Eric S. Raymond (author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar) and John Perry Barlow (who promoted the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Open Source movement). However, within the Free Software community, there was an immediate, prescient fear that the Open Source movement—being more libertarian and business-oriented—did not sufficiently protect user freedom. Richard Stallman summarized this divide in his essay "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software," warning that Open Source focused merely on practical development models while ignoring the ethical imperative of defending citizens against discriminatory algorithms and locked-down ecosystems.

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.

This sparked a major theoretical debate in the 1990s. Eventually, the debate reached a turning point. On February 17, 1999, Bruce Perens—who had helped found the Open Source Initiative—detached himself from the Open Source rhetoric and published a famous open letter stating: "It's Time to Talk about Free Software Again" (Original source: Debian mailing list archive). He urged the community to return to the fundamental, radically non-discriminatory principles of Free Software. The theoretical debate was closed: true freedom required strict, non-discriminatory terms.

Then came the 2000s, where the practice proved the 1990s theory right. While the citizen community had adopted Free Software, major multinational corporations clearly oriented themselves toward Open Source. They freely mixed open code with closed, proprietary code, using the "open" label to create a false climate of trust while employing abusive, discriminatory, or biased closed algorithms where it suited them. They only used openness when it served their commercial interests.

Richard Stallman used a very fitting metaphor to describe this practice. He explained that mixing free software with non-free software 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, exactly as major commercial platforms (like Amazon, Meta, Uber, or Airbnb)—owned by shareholders, not users—mix open and closed ecosystems to their sole advantage.

If these corporations were forced to use strictly free, copyleft licenses like the AGPLv3 (which closed the "SaaS loophole" by requiring server-side software to remain free), they would be required to redistribute everything. This would place the dominant position back in the hands of citizens rather than a minority of investors. WikiDeal applies this exact solution in practice today: using strictly 100% Free Software (AGPLv3) and free content (CC BY-SA), as documented in our Systematic Libre Licensing policy.

This concept of "radical non-discrimination"—refusing to accept even minor compromises on fundamental freedoms—is exactly what allowed Wikimania, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the movement behind Wikipedia to deploy and maintain their projects durably. They applied this strict recipe: exclusive use of free software and free content, governed by citizen agreements like the Debian Social Contract and the Universal Code of Conduct. This is the exact same lens through which WikiDeal conducts its research.

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 apply this fundamental source to a Global Online Marketplace.

We apply these principles to fundamental economic questions, such as:

Distribution keys: What is the fair split between a service provider, the user group providing the service around them, and the platform? For instance, in the specific marketplace of NGO street fundraising, the key to success or failure was the distribution key between the organizing body and the beneficiary NGOs—a crucial issue that requires deep citizen debate.
De-privatization and Commons: Just as the commons (like air and sea) that allow the economy to function and should not be privatized, how can economic flows operate at their real costs, rather than enriching an oligarchic minority?
Freedom vs. Dominant Positions: How do we establish the right to freedom (e.g., the freedom to refuse advertising) while setting limits on the accumulation of profits and mechanisms that bias commercial relations?
Fair Incentives: What are the just and honest mechanisms to motivate people to become active actors on the platform, and how can suffering workers globally unite to create transnational entities that serve them?

We will bring these questions progressively, using cycles and priorities, building on practices that already exist in the free culture and free software worlds.

We do not claim to be building a flawless utopia. To paraphrase Winston Churchill's famous 1947 quote about democracy ("Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"): 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.

The Lesson of Free Software vs. Open Source

Applying Radical Non-Discrimination to Global Commerce

See also