Van Amstel, Frederick; Gonzatto, Rodrigo Freese; Jatobá, Pedro Henrique. (2020) Design livre at Corais Platform: an experience in cultivating a design commons with free software. Workshop Designing commons – Commons for design (position paper), DRS 2014 conference, Umeä, Sweden.
Corais (Portuguese word for “coral reefs” and “choirs”) is an online platform for organizing projects with collaborative tools such as blog, text processing, task management, social credits, spreadsheets, polls, wiki and videoconference. These tools were developed using Drupal, a free software content management system, tailored to enable the appropriation of open design practices in Brazil. Currently, the platform hosts 162 public projects, ranging from grassroots living labs to public standards definition. These projects are run by communities such as social movements, cultural producers, governmental agencies, and educational institutions. They seek in Corais the infrastructure necessary to organize work in geographically distributed settings, a common challenge in Brazil, a country of continental proportions, intense migration, and poor transport infrastructure.
Position paper for the workshop Designing commons – Commons for design, DRS 2014 conference.
