Table of Contents
Prototyping
There are many living examples, tools and methodologies available today that align with an open access economy, either directly and indirectly.
Physical Communities
There are many thousands of 'intentional communities' in existence around the world - all with varying degrees of adherence to post-market economic values. The success of these communities also varies wildly depending on the community size, the personnel and the challenges they face.
Notable well-established communities include Auroville in India, Tinkers Bubble in the United Kingdom, and Freetown Christiania in Denmark, but there are many others. Also, check the Fellowship for Intentional Community and the Freedom Cell directory to find intentional communities active in your area.
Websites / Apps
While not all adhere to a strictly freecycling or free stuff only philosophy, there are many online communities that offer free goods and services sharing across their network:
| Goods and services sharing networks | Networks with a mix of free and paid listings |
| Sharebay | Gumtree |
| Streetbank | Freedom Cell |
| Freegle | Minnesota Materials Exchange |
| Freecycle | Shpock |
| Kindista | Nextdoor |
| Buy Nothing Project … and neighborhood “Buy Nothing” groups on platforms like Facebook | Peerby |
| FoodSharing | Craigslist |
| Freelender | Simbi |
| ShareMrkt | |
| OuiShare! | |
| OLIO | |
| Let's Collaborate (NYC) | |
| Food Is Free Inc | |
| Mountain Bothies Association | |
| Food is Free Project | |
| ConsumoColaborativo (Spanish) | |
| Karrot | |
| FreelyWheely | |
| Little Free Library | |
| Trash Nothing | |
| Gratix (Spanish) | |
| Freebay | |
| Free For All |
What these communities offer and what their network's rules of use, listing, and membership engagement are, varies.
Some require registration either to their own app or website, or to a third party service before you can search, view, and enquire about their listings and members. Some only offer their services to members of certain places or countries, and not all accept paid deliveries of items. And others offer places to stay only temporarily, or longer at no additional cost only if permission for this is granted from the property owner.
You will also find more information about various websites such as these in Free collaboration networks, and learn aboutalternative trade systems presenting other methods of exchange and providing community support in Transition proposals.
The Open Source Community
With time, more and more people are becoming aware of the wealth of free and open source software (FOSS) available online.
For example, Linux and Ubuntu operating systems, TROM-Jaro, a trade-free operating system based on Manjaro, distributions based on FreeBSD such as NomadBSD, LibreOffice and OpenOffice productivity software, Apache web server, Firefox web browser, Brave web browser based on the Chromium web browser, CloudReady based on Chromium OS, Blender 3D graphics suite, GIMP photo editor, Kdenlive video editor, etc.
While creators of these software may not always ascribe to the values of a post-market world, using and contributing to this software is a healthy advance in this direction and inspires others to do the same.
Free Collaboration Networks
In our present society, for the most part, we get access to resources and services thanks to businesses. In a shared world that is based on the contribution motive instead of the profit motive, instead of businesses, the organizations that will provide us access to things will be fully volunteers and all provided will be 100% trade-free.
That is what we call Free collaboration networks.
These can take many different forms, sizes, structures and functions. They can range from a simple table on which to place objects that are free for the taking, to elaborate global organizations coordinating with apps.