CommonsCloud is a cooperative and ethical-tech cloud service, made with free software. It integrates different digital tools to work in an agile and efficient way. It respects privacy and is produced by proximity cooperatives. Its users – individuals and organisations- are partners who pool tools to solve, collectively, their technological needs.

It is an alternative to the oligopoly of corporate clouds, such as Google Drive, Amazon Drive, Mircosoft One, Apple iCloud and Dropbox, which dis-empower users and generate dependencies. It is based on the principles of community self-management, ecological, economic and human sustainability, knowledge sharing and replicability.

Individual users and user organisations become consumer members of the integral cooperative, non-profit and social initiative femProcomuns SCCL, which has intercooperation agreements with other organisations to produce the service.

The core of the project is standardised and scalable solutions to serve an adequate number of people and entities; making the project sustainable from service fees. The service of pooled tools is complemented with training, accompaniment and support services, to help organisations and individuals in the migration to free and technoetic tools.

For individuals we offer communication tools, cloud storage and teleworking tools, such as an office and mail service.

For organisations we offer tools for communication, collaboration, agile teleworking in teams, finance and project management, such as office, mail, videoconferencing, agora or ERP manager.

 

Why do we do this?

 

With CommonsCloud we want to transform how we produce and consume technological tools. We do this by raising people’s awareness around the importance of using more ethical and democratic digital tools that enable collective self-management.
This is why we promote a cooperative digital cloud with different services and free software digital tools, decentralised, privacy-conscious and equipped with a data policy. We understand that only through open and commons cooperativism we can contribute to greater technological autonomy with and for the people.

We want to strengthen and consolidate the free software community, making its work visible, contributing to technological autonomy and interdependence based on solidarity and transparency, but also making a fairer world possible, which guarantees the right of people to a more ethical and accessible technology, serving their needs and not the interests of corporations. With CommonsCloud we regain control over our data and some collective freedom!

 

A three-layered project: social, technological and discursive

Social layer (people and the ways they organise themselves socially)

We are aware that we are trapped in the prisons of centralised and extractivist networks. We are committed to working and living in community and permeable organisations, making hierarchies more flexible. We recognise that this process requires complex organisational and communicative models. We explore various methodologies to facilitate this cultural change, of ways of working and living. Giving importance to caring and always leaving a trace, in stigmergy, so that we can repeat what works well for us and so that other partners can join in and make the shared mission grow.

 

Technological layer (digital platform, equipment and connection supports)

We make visible the physical infrastructure, servers and networks, which are made invisible by the “cloud” discourse, and we do so in order to recuperate their cooperative and community management.

While the internet was born with the promise of decentralisation, as a distributed network, little by little it has been recentralised, and the claws of the GAFAM are now also appropriating of this layer. We build on the best free software we know and contribute to improve it and offer it as a service to users, so that it is easy for them to use. Users can login with a single accoun. The project can be replicated by other collectives in other territories, with whom we can interconnect and create a decentralised network.

 

Discursive layer (the content of the communication)

We build knowledge and content in open and interoperable formats – that can be read by different devices and software – under non-exclusive ownership models – with free licences, so that they can be reused and evolve. They empower us to learn together and decide how we want to live.