by more than 200 percent, to $251 bil- lion, between 1982 and 2002, reflecting a continuing trend in their expanding engagement with their publics. Mean- while, Cleantech Group research shows that investment in clean-tech ventures nearly trebled, to $5.2 billion, between 2004 and 2008. At the same time, fair trade goods sales doubled between 2004 and 2007, to around $4 billion, according to the Fair Trade Federation. Gar Alperovitz, author of America


Beyond Capitalism, says that more than 11,000 worker cooperatives have emerged in the last 30 years. Many embrace pro-social missions and are managed, governed and owned by the people who work at them.


The Nonprofit Sector Nonprofits are an increasingly important way for people to share their wealth and labor. Independent Sector reports that, in the U.S. alone, charitable donations to nonprofits more than doubled between 1987 and 2007, to $303 billion; about 75 percent came from private individu- als. The National Center for Charitable Statistics further reports that the number of nonprofits increased 31.5 percent between 1999 and 2009, to 1.58 mil- lion. Data from Volunteering in America shows that in 2010, 63.4 million vol- unteers dedicated more than 8.1 billion hours of service.


Microfinance This form of capitalization is a powerful innovation that extends small loans and financial services to help the world’s poorest people rise out of poverty, serving customers that traditional banks largely ignore. Kiva, a U.S. nonprofit peer-to-peer microfinance sensation, fa- cilitates around $5 million in no-inter- est loans per month to entrepreneurs in developing nations through its website. Microfinancing is yet another way the world is learning to share its wealth.


The Internet It’s easy to take it for granted, but the Internet’s potential as a sharing platform has just begun to unfold. The Internet it- self would not be possible if people did not share labor, software and infrastruc- ture. No one owns it or runs it. It’s built


and it operates on free and open source software and open standards. Data trav- els over networks and is routed through servers owned by private individuals and corporations that share transport and routing duties. This global commons enables the creation of tremendous value. Harvard Business School Professor John Quelch estimates that the economic impact of the Internet is $1.4 trillion annually in the United States alone. Last year, the Computer & Communications Industry Association calculated that companies and nonprofits relying on “fair use” (such as search engines, web hosting and social media) employ 17 million people and generate $4.7 trillion a year, one-sixth of the country’s gross domes- tic product.


Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)


FOSS and the Internet have a symbi- otic relationship. The Internet would not have been possible without FOSS, and the growth of FOSS relies on the Internet to power its peer production and distribution model. For example, more than 270 million people use the Firefox browser, a shared, freely available tool. Half the world’s web- sites, about 112 million, are hosted on Apache’s open source server software. A quarter million websites run on Drupal, a leading open source content management system. That’s just scratching the surface.


Today, the more than 200,000 open source projects operate on nearly 5 billion lines of code that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to repro- duce. Visit the Infoworld Open Source Hall of Fame website for more on desk- top favorites. Today, millions of individuals and organizations rely on FOSS in perform- ing their daily work, as do a growing number of governments. It’s a pervasive part of life in the developed world; be- cause of its low cost, open source soft- ware may become even more important to developing countries.


The Open Way Inspired by the success of free and open source software, the values and


natural awakenings July 2011 27


Need help


balancing your hormones?


Dr. Diana Hoppe can help!


Diana E. Hoppe M.D., F.A.C.O.G.,


Author of “Healthy


Sex Drive, Healthy You”


Lost Your Libido? Going through perimenopausal or


menopausal changes? Come in today for your personalized wellness plan.


Diana Hoppe, M.D., Inc. 317 N. El Camino Real, Suite 310 Encinitas, Ca. 92024


DrDianaHoppe.com 760-635-5600


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48