LinuxPlanet: Trust Unlimited

“LinuxPlanet: Where did the idea for Affero
come from?

“Poole: When I was at MandrakeSoft, I started
trying to figure out where the real value was being exchanged and
where we could add value and make profits. We started looking at
the motivations for the communities that were developing the
Mandrake platform–what motivated people to check in their patches
and participate in the community. We looked at what these
individuals needed. A lot of them needed money–many people that
are doing this work, they’re doing it as a hobby but they’d like to
do it full time.

“So we started looking at that. Reputations were a big aspect of
why people were doing things. It was fun, and people who
contributed would get Whuffie from their friends. So we just
started to look at the value that was being exchanged there–either
monetary or non-monetary–and we started working on e-services not
only enhancing the exchange of value, but also creating mechanisms
for monetizing that…”

Complete
Story