Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

[Very initial first rough start of a beginning of a draft.]

PWGD rules for being a PWGD service:
1. People rule. People who use your service can communicate with everyone else should they make a collective decision to do so. (This is why the democratically moderated communication is the base functionality.)
2. Free software (ideally, Affero GPL).
3. Transparency in the service's decisionmaking. Even though the code is viewable by all, there is a further need to 1) make processes clear to non-technical (and simply time-bound) people and 2) strive for transparency in decisions about the tool.

Note: You do *not* have to make decisions about the tool's feature sets or other things democratically. Aside for the necessity of most any open source free software project to be a do-ocracy, innovation and effectiveness have roles for individual and small group vision, creativity, and creating.

For an organization, rather than a service provider, it is the same three rules become guiding principles. Only the first can be a definite condition of being part of the PWGD network:

1. People can communicate with others in the organization without mediation by the organization and become part of the broader communications network of people who give a damn. (In both cases overload is prevented a random sample of people in the relevant grouping deciding on the importance of messages.)
2. Technology developed will be available under a free software license.
3. Decisions will be made with the greatest possible transparency.

The web development firm Agaric Design Collective offers 50% off projects for people who give a damn about what we're trying to do and agree to follow these principles.

[Note: This does not mean they can do your project, as all web consultancies can only do a fraction of projects that come their way– from people paying full price or not.]

Update: I put this more succinctly in an e-mail to some true movement builders, the people at May First People Link, describing the new distillation of purpose: "it's really one point: give up some of your organization's control over communicating with the people you serve or who work for you, so that we can all build a more powerful movement together."