@h She's moved on. Frankly, I kind of wish there was more competition in getting out the news about recovered businesses.

That said, I'm trying to get a sense of whether there could be an ongoing conversation between the commons and cooperatives.

@Steve I'm exploring a not too dissimilar avenue, approaching it from the free software side of things. There's some overlaps to be sure, but I'm more about finding ways to interconnect and optimise coop systems and processes.

I'm at early stages of thinking this through, so I thought that hanging out with others who have taken the lead (like @mattcropp and @mayel at #socialcoop) is a good kickstarter for cross-pollination in the meantime, in advance to whenever I'm ready to present my stuff.

@h @mayel @mattcropp Interesting. Can you give some examples of what you'd like to see co-ops doing?

I'm a long-time FLOSS user (Linux-exclusive since '07, after dabbling since '99). Look back in my personal feed for my discussion with @dajbelshaw about #gitit.

@Steve @dajbelshaw @mattcropp @mayel

Example:

- Coop A maintains inventory with widgets it produces
- Coop B maintains inventory and sells a product C produced with components (or ingredients, or chemicals, etc) produced by Coop A
- A produces an invoice for items sold to B. Typically B would get a paper invoice, and would update its records locally, and update its own inventory once the items bought are recorded.

If these systems were capable of being easily linked friction would be removed.

@mayel @mattcropp @dajbelshaw @Steve Additionally, A would have finely tuned controls to allow some of its customers to watch its inventories, and variations in price. All of A's customers could monitor the best time to buy and compare with other coops who produce substitutes. Not for competition, but for optimal cooperative allocation, which could be a semi-autonomous system.

And all the coops would have to do would be to connect the outputs of one coop with the inputs of another.