Yup, my Püppi discovered this and that's for sure the best thing since ice moulds for the refrigerator.

It was also a good occassion to test the Blogroll-module. Uploaded my new OPML and kabang, there it is! :)
Sure it is supposed to work like that and sure it works - hey, I coded it! ;) But still it's nice to see it live! :)

After I blogged about the DemExp, I thought, it would be fair to let them know and posted to their mailing list. Again, I think it's fair to publish the answer here:

Re: Thumbs Up
Von: 
David MENTRE <dmentre@linux-france.org>  (none)
  An: 
Alexander Mette <mail@alexandermette.de>
  Kopie: 
demexp.contact@ras.eu.org
  Datum: 
Gestern 22:24:52
   
[ You can make this answer public if you want. ]

Hello Alexander,

Alexander Mette <mail@alexandermette.de> writes:

> I just discovered your site and want to say, that you have a great project 
> there! :)

Thank you. I would like to underline that the delegation system is, as
far as I know, not implemented in any other system and is probably one
of the most interesting part of demexp.

The links you provide on other systems are useful, I did not know them.

> But some criticism popped to my mind immediately. It's computer-centrical, but 
> I want to let you know never the less. I blogged it here:
>
> http://alexander-mette.de/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=1&postId=240

And also thank you for the criticisms. No system is perfect and it is
nice to have potential user with a fresh look on it.

Regarding your criticisms:

 * We have no project wide RSS-feed but we have a demexp-announce
   mailing list[1]. All[2] our mailing lists are archived on Gmane[3]
   that provides RSS feeds. And the two wikis (en/ and fr/) have RSS
   feeds. And my own blog[4] also has an RSS feed. Maybe be we should
   start a demexp Planet with all those feeds ;-)

 * Our first *prototype* is centralized because, well, it is much easier
   to design and implement. It does not mean that the underlying
   concepts could not be applied to a distributed system. We would
   welcome any distributed implementation;

 * Regarding Glasnost, it was a Free Software (GNU GPL IIRC) implemented
   by the Easter Eggs company. Easter Eggs has discontinued support of
   Glasnost and is apparently continuing development of a "Glasnost II"
   but, as far as I know, it is not Free Software (or at least not
   available to the wide public). I don't have much more news than that.

And, as a general note, we are currently lacking any security
feature. This is a deliberate choice: we want to have a well defined
system before finding threat models and means to solve those threats.

Best wishes,
d.

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://demexp.org/en/doku.php?id=mailing_lists

[2]  Except demexp-announce@, we should fix that.

[3]  http://dir.gmane.org/search.php?match=demexp

[4]  http://www.linux-france.org/~dmentre/blog/

-- 
pub  1024D/A3AD7A2A 2004-10-03 David MENTRE <dmentre@linux-france.org>
 5996 CC46 4612 9CA4 3562  D7AC 6C67 9E96 A3AD 7A2A

I want to thank David for the answer and let this mail be uncommented here.

Somthing like that and some more important freedoms are considered by the "Democratic Experience" (DemExp).

It's another site dedicated to direct democracy systems, just like nornia or dotmocracy. The DemExp uses Condorcet’s voting method, in which everyone not only has one vote for one topic, but has to order the possible answers in order of preference (The Debian project uses Condorcet, too). Also everybody may call votes and propose answers.

DemExp shares many common building blocks with other direct democracy systems, like giving away one's vote on a special topic to a trusted person, etc.

The people with DemExp start to build a software for this kind of democracy and want to build up a live experiment. If they get enough people to participate, then this should become very exciting! :)

Some criticism:

1. They have no RSS-Feed
   • How the HECK am I supposed to know, when they start rocking? When they need help? When they have something workable? Why do they assume, that I will check back to their site every month/week/day?? This reminds me of lots of the OpenMoney guys. Sorry for not linking to them, I like that project, but I really don't know where to link to.. They use at least three different web sites, proprietary communication tools, have no communication to the outside and I never know, which damned proprietary channel they use or on what webpage I find current information - see what I mean??
2. They specifically talk about a system, that 'concentrates' the votes!
   • While this is much easier to build than a system that is decentralized - it scares me a bit, that they use concepts like 'decentralization of decision' and 'centralization of data' in one paragraph. Ok, just a minor glitch, I admit. And that the first prototype will be centralized, is also understandable. But always keep in mind, that this is 'A Bad Thing'TM

BTW: They mention a free software that allows for direct democracy voting and even a company that uses it for stuff, that concerns every employer:

• Glasnost voting system
• http://www.easter-eggs.org/ - is this the company?!?

They mention on their page, that a company named "Easter Eggs" uses it - but they don't link to that company anywhere.... only the company, that creates the Glasnost-software... see what I mean??

I am (was?) a big fan of O'Reilly - my computer book publisher of choice.
They always support Open Source, understand the issues of freedom in the digital age. And of course make the greatest computer books available.

Or should I speak in the past tense?

O'Reilly copyrighted the term "Web2.0" and put lawyers after some people who want to make a conference with "Web2.0" in it's name! O'Reilly wants to stop a collaborative meeting of people interested in the same area as they themselves are!! What?!???!

Have a look at Performancing.com: Handling Mistakes in Public.
There's a good posting with the most important links to blog posts, which explain, what's going on. This posting (and the references) is also a good kick-start for all the people, who don't really know, how corporate communication nowadays should be handled. Apparantly not even O'Reilly knows! And they coined the term "Web2.0" and what everything belongs to it...

... Tim O'Reilly is on holidays.. yeah, sure - like he would still be on holidays when his company screws up like this and he wouldn't approve it!

I reilly don't know, what to think of this whole shit....

UPDATE: It's apparantly not O'Reilly directly, but a company called CMP.

I have been dreaming of decentralized Version Control Systems since I heard of them. GnuBrain switched to darcs recently and today I decided to check it out more thoroughly. Although I got the basic idea before, I today realized how damn cool that is! Let's have a look at how I tried to sell it to my bro:

[23:09:27] <amette> let's have a look at darcs from a practical perspective...
[23:09:51] <amette> ... I create a cpaint AJAX implementation in Tiki - and I do so only on my system...
[23:10:20] <amette> ... batawata checks it out from dev.alexander-mette.de - and decides that xajax is much cooler and goes rebuilding it...
[23:11:01] <amette> ... I say "Damn, cool!" and check it out from his system - by virtually doing a "cvs up" from his system - so I get his modifications into my system...
[23:11:24] <amette> ... I see it breaks everything - I fix it - and commit it back to batawatas repository....
[23:11:35] <amette> ... now he and I both have a Tiki that works....
[23:12:29] <luciash> cool, but it sounds like a fairytale  :D
[23:12:43] <amette> ... then batawata decides to again "refactor" - I check it out from him, but this time I'm more careful - I make a 1:1 copy of my localhost-repository before (I don't trust him any more and I don't want to have any fixing/rollback(which is actually easy) to do)....
[23:13:06] <amette> hehe, yeah - fairytale - I wanna see it in action, too - but I'm almost there to belive it  ;)
[23:13:09] <luciash> i need real case example
[23:13:14] <luciash>  :D
[23:13:26] <amette> ... I see at the copy, that it doesn't work, so I just delete it and work on my stuff....
[23:13:47] <amette> ... meanwhile others check out from me (or him) because they believe more in his or my implementation....
[23:14:04] <amette> ... so we create clumps in the social code-network....
[23:14:10] <luciash> nice. you should write it down somewhere, veli
[23:14:53] <amette> ... and meanwhile xavi just checks out the 'central' darcs.tikiwiki.org repository, where only patches go, that are considered to be working - so xavi never has any trouble with a non-working wiki-edit or anything...

Damn, that distribution factor isn't to be underestimated!
It would kill the 3Rules as we know them! Tiki development could again be thriving and kicking!