Komun.org is a cooperative team [...] at the service of the common good. Who are we?

Nice!. But anyone can say that, be it true or not. Maintaining the moral and effective validity of this assertion requires much more than writing, publishing and manifesting it. It requires, at least, some principles.

These are our principles. If you do not like them, we have others. Groucho Marx

Good principles must be immovable but always ready to improve over time, but not in a dark and imperceptible way. In any case, they must be easily verifiable and incorruptible, capable of withstanding any audit.

• Komun uses and promotes free software. In an irrevocable way, we advocate the technological sovereignty of people in the face of commercial empires. We believe in the power of people working together on common and open goals.

• Komun upholds the right to personal privacy and the security of communications and technology. Among our objectives is to educate, promote and provide free tools that facilitate maximum privacy and security.

• Komun works for the right of the human being to achieve an authentic financial freedom. That is why we support decentralized, cooperative and mutualist projects and economic systems. We argue that the use of means of exchange not controlled by a central authority is the axis of an economy that favors the freedom and well-being of people rather than the benefit of corporations or private entities. For this reason we believe that decentralized digital currencies are a very important tool to break the slavery to which the centralized currencies subject us.

We have supported the use of FairCoin as long as the global community that uses it also maintains principles of horizontality, ecology and transparency. Thus, we develop tools that facilitate the use of this currency and its integration in economies and free projects.

These tools that we create are not fixed and are subject to the evolution and changes that local communities and circumstances require. Circumstances change rapidly these days. And they can do it, even abruptly, because we are challenging a powerful economic system that, until now, had not been answered in such a practical and plausible way.

• Komun offers and asks for trust based on transparency. It is not possible to generate trust without transparency. For this reason we must publish [transparency reports] (https://komun.org/en/blog/transparency-report-2018) as often as necessary. Transparency reports should leave no doubt about the use of resources. And this must also be fulfilled by the groups or organizations with which we establish relationships. Without transparency, relationships of trust can not be woven.

• Komun believes in sincerity and the most absolute freedom of speech. There can be no transparency or trust in relationships without sincerity. Nor can anything lasting be built without serious analysis. The analysis requires critical capacity and this can only occur in a sincere and free environment.

Our relationship with Faircoin and Faircoop

FairCoin is currently experiencing a crisis related to FairCoop's commitment to facilitate the exchange of such currency to Euros or other state currencies. In Komun, in general, we do not believe that this proposition is sustainable in the current terms. And, even so, we recognize that FairCoin still has the strength and the opportunity to be the universal auxiliary currency that would be so useful to establish free economic relations among local communities connected to each other.

Right now, for example, MAPO shows many places where FairCoin is accepted. If we are realistic, it is not possible to ensure at all times that all these sites continue accepting FairCoin. There is no real circular economy in most places in the world where there is a producer or merchant accepting FairCoin. It is not, therefore, an irremovable Map and is subject to many fluctuations; even more in these moments of uncertainty where anyone asks if they can use all the FairCon they receive or if they can exchange them to Euros at the price agreed by the community. But, at the same time, communities are being created that establish healthy economic relationships based on FairCoin and other digital or social currencies. They are communities that create circular routes and are periodically related by exchanging products and services. In other parts of the world there are also communities that grow creating areas of FairCoin use.

It is, in our opinion, essential to stop thinking about Euros or the state currencies from which we want to free ourselves. It does not seem easy but this struggle is not new: it is the old struggle, that of the human being trying to free himself from the economic slavery imposed by an elite.

So, we are still in this fight. The novelty is the incorporation of technological means that allow us to communicate economically and socially in a broader way and, above all, novelty is the possibility of using free, reliable and very useful currencies in the current historical circumstances.

Always, human beings, we have tried to free ourselves from the circuits of economic control either through mutual aid, barter and other natural and simple means. The current social circumstances require, we agree, decrease and re-value such natural economic means that include the restitution to the peoples of their food, ecological and economic sovereignty. Decentralized free currencies provide the real possibility of breaking the chain of monetary oppression if we can learn to use these tools for the common good. And we must do it as soon as possible, since the prevailing economic power will soon develop methods to absorb them and try to control them.

We must rethink again and again how to do it. FairCoin has been a great opportunity and it still is, but the basic work must not be neglected, adding the maximum logic, analysis and coherence because revolutions are not lasting when their impulse is merely emotional.

In Komun we are now focusing on two fundamental tools

1) KOLABORA, as a means for ethical projects to obtain financing. In Kolabora we have placed FairCoin, for the moment, as a backbone. Each project can accept FairCoin as a donation and also use those FairCoin as thanks for the contributions in other currencies. In Kolabora we are putting a lot of what we are to support ethical and transparent productive projects.

2) Another tool for disobedience and the economic empowerment of people, which we have called FAKTURO and, for the moment, we maintain in a discreet exposure. Those who follow us through the different means of communication we use will know what we mean. We have managed to establish important synergies with other cooperatives, collectives and even ethical companies that collaborate in this tool thanks to links of trust and transparency.

Our other tools such as Mapo or Bazar are simple dynamic extensions to support this free and open economy. These tools, as has been said, are subject to an evolution or to the changes that are necessary. Bazar is showing itself as an excellent aid for local consumer groups and economic relations between more or less nearby communities before a global online market. But we continue working to find the way to extract maximum utility and it is possible that new transformations of it will contribute to improve the experience. In this way, experimentation is important, as well as not wasting time on useless developments or lacking a dynamic maneuvering capacity to quickly adapt the means to the circumstances.

Without a doubt, we are building the germ of something very important that, if history does not change, at least the lives of many people do. We build with very clear principles because there is no other way to build seriously.