About Koumbit

Our mission

Established in Montreal in 2004, Koumbit is a non-profit registered company which promotes the use of free & open source software by community groups in Quebec, Canada and abroad, and creates a skills and resource pool for progressive-minded autonomous IT workers and design professionals. Koumbit provides Web hosting, website creation, graphic design and training services.

Koumbit is an inclusive organization, comprised of about sixty individual and organizational members (as to May 2008). Click here to know more about our founding principles. You too can participate in Koumbit's work and activities by becoming a member!

About our name

Koumbit is a derivation of the Haitian Creole word konbit, which translates roughly to "association of people towards the realization of a common goal". Haiti intellectuals and political activists rehabilitated that word in the 1940s, as a means to promote self-help and traditional economic development structures among the local peasant communities.

Founding Principles

Collective management

We believe in a greater autonomy for people and collectives. We believe that it is essential for groups and individuals to manage by themselves their direction, life and authority.

Educational space

We believe that our organisation must not be a simple service company but must also integrate continuing education of workers and members to new technologies, but also along the principles of participative organisation like ParEcon (see below) and other horizontal organisational techniques.

Transparency

We believe that organisations should be transparant towards their members but also towards society at large. No organisation evolves in a void and all our actions have consequences. Therefore, it is essential that the public can follow on the actions and decisions of the different organisations that make society. We believe that the flow of information coming out of organisations must not be blocked, but be broadcasted so that citizens can take enlightened decisions on the issues that affect them.

Copyleft (free software)

We believe in developping Free/Libre and Open Source software. Free software is a matter of freedom (as in freedom of speech): everyone should be free to use software for any socially useful purposes. Software is not a tangible material object, like a chair, sandwich or oil, so it can be copied and changed easily. Those possibilities render software useful as such; we believe that software users must be able to appropriate those possibilities.

Self-sufficiency

We believe that our organisation must be self-sufficient and not depend exclusively on one big customer or state to finance itself. We are always looking for ways to diversify our sources of income and believe in partnership to develop durable and functional links with other organisations. Similarly, we offer technological solutions that empower people with their own tools within their organisations.

Solidarity

We believe that our organisation must support citizen initiative and the left behind of our society. We also believe that an organisation must build itself in support and respect of each other, their integrity and their dignity. We also believe that some sacrifices must be made so that the organisation doesn't harm mankind and nature as a whole. "Above all, do no harm".

Equity and equality

We believe that everyone must have the same chances not only at the start, but also during the race. We are trying to eliminate inequities between individuals and compensate those which are impossible to eliminate.

Participatory Economics

We believe in balanced job complexes, variable modes of decision, in participation of workers in the definition of their workplace, in participation of parties affected by the services of the organisation in its orientation. In short, we are strongly inspired by the participatory economics model enounced by Michael Albert.

Terms of Use

Licence Creative Commons

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If you want to publish contents in this website, or reproduce contents obtained from this website, you must agree to the terms of this licence.

Fair dealing

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Contents protected by copyright © can be reproduced within this web site, or obtained from this website, either in totality or in part, for purposes of research and private study, criticism or review, and news reporting in compliance with the Canada Copyright Act (articles 29 to 32.2).

The fair dealing exception is a user’s right, according to the Supreme Court of Canada. See CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada (March 2004) at par. 48, 52 and 53.

Koumbit's commitment

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