François Rey

My main activity revolves around the art of building software. However I recently decided to take a break in my career in order to

• spend some time finishing a house in Provence (Riviera, South of France)
• contribute to the development of complementary currencies

I have been in the field of software for over 10 years now, and in the last 5 years my skills were applied to the financial industry as part of Capco. In the course of my professional life I have developed, designed, and architected various information systems and also developed special expertise regarding the process of modeling and building software.

In 2003 I looked into the Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) phenomenon and realized why it was giving so much trouble to lawyers and economists: because it defines a way forward very much at odd with the premises of our present structures of ownership and economic exchange. This also meant that in order to fully unleash its potential new economics and new rules must be developed.

I then started to focus more on understanding gift economies. In particular one striking feature for me was the absence of money in the exchange. Despite the absence of such key element in our society, tremendous achievements can still be observed in the case of F/OSS. Therefore I started to look more into the role of money, what it is and what it can be.

For that purpose Bernard Lietaer's book (The Future of Money) was an eye opener. Since the time read it in the summer of 2003 there has not been a single day in which I have not thought about money, how it was failing in our present life, how it relates to our human nature, and how else it can be. With my new understanding it became difficult to stand still in the face of the absurdity of our economics. Deep within I knew there were better ways and I felt compelled to do something. Money may not be the cure for all ills, but it sure is something that has a lot of influence. As a tool, we can do much better.

After having contemplated the ideas around complementary currencies and open money I felt we were missing something in our vision. Therefore I flipped the coin and looked at the other side: exchanges. Then a whole new space opened up in which the vision of open exchange grew without hitting the wall of mystery and emotions surrounding money. However the vision kept growing to encompass many other aspects, such as social networks and the architecture and technology that could support them. Lately I came closer to the work of Michel Bauwens from the P2P Foundation and of Dr. Christopher Houghton Budd, whose work have influenced my present vision.

My investigation came to a stopping point when I realized that not only the vision started to get larger and larger, growing from a development project to a whole multi-disciplinary research program, but also that current internet technology are too limited and centralized to offer a proper substrate for any platform that would appropriately support new forms of society.

Further insights into my vision through various discussions:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/on-the-need-to-create-a-new-social-layer-on-top-of-the-internet/2007/04/27
http://copsewood.net/pipermail/mrsdev/2007/000264.html
http://copsewood.net/pipermail/mrsdev/2007/000251.html
http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/11/18/id-1#comment-120
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/francois-rey-focusing-on-the-attributes-of-knowledge-rather-than-people/2007/01/05
http://blogfr.p2pfoundation.net/2007/04/12/premiere-reunion-p2p-a-avignon-vers-un-monde-participatif/