What is this? These pages started as a detailed straw-man proposal to flesh-out what it would take to realize our vision of a free and open cloud. They now serve as examples of the technology needed to implement the different facets of open cloud services. Here's how we are going to get there.

Be realistic — demand the impossible

OneCommons’ design and development is 100% dependent on volunteer participation. Despite the early stage of development, OneCommons will happen if enough of us strive to make it happen. And through CommonCents, the earliest participants have the biggest growth opportunities for their contributions.

To build OneCommons we need you – cloud service providers, developers, infrastructure operators and users – to help run this open source platform. See below for more on how you will get paid for this.

How to participate

  1. Create an account. The easiest way to help make OneCommons a reality is to register here.
  2. Participate in a project to help design and build OneCommons. Both technical and non-technical design happens in the open through our RFC process. And every contribution can receive CommonCents.
  3. Vote! In a few months time we will be ready to choose the initial governance structure and board. Everyone registered can vote on it.

Funding and investment opportunities

We plan to bootstrap the CommonCents funding mechanism with an initial auction of CommonCents tokens. This will give developers who are making a substantial commitment of time and effort an opportunity to receive income before subscription fees are available.

The steps for this bootstrapping phase are:

  1. An initial reserve of tokens and cash is funded with seed capital, setting an initial reserve price (the price could be derived from an expected future value of subscriptions).
  2. The tokens are allocated to projects’ capital budgets and contributor allocation begins.
  3. After a few months, auction off new tokens to set price expectations and refresh the token reserve.
  4. Open registration period to give contributors an opportunity to redeem the tokens that were allocated to them (using the initial reserve price).

Steps 2-4 can be repeated until the launch of the platform, depending on capital needs.