echo - Living Democracy
-----------------------

echo is a joint Open Source project for active citizen participation - worldwide and for all people.
It unites all players of society for a sustainable change through systemic redesign of our civilisation.

The social software facilitates constructive mass dialogs crossing the borders of websites, communities and
languages. It connects people sharing the same purposes and supports them in creating joint actions for
social and political impact. Wherever you are in the virtual or real world, echo aims to give you the proof:
You are no longer alone with your opinion and convictions - the echo of your voice can change the world.


The Software
------------

This Git repository contains the source code of echo's first functional prototype written in Ruby on Rails.
The current technology stack contains:

- Ruby on Rails: still 2.3.5 due to some used libraries, that have not yet been migrated to Rails 3
- jQuery:        currently still 1.3.2; subject to be upgraded to 1.5+
- MySQL:         currently 5.1 - subject to be extended with MongoDB for storing certain parts of the data model
- DelayedJob:    later on subject to be replaced by a real messaging/queuing solution.

This current technology stack is subject to major changes as soon as echo starts its journey towards a
decentral, peer-to-peer architecture for tomorrows people powered democracy.


License information
-------------------

echo is an open source software and will later on be licensed under the "echo Public License" (ePL). This license
will probably be derived from the AGPL v3 in order to support echo's decentral, distributed approach and to prevent
islandisation and fragmentation of any publicly relevant data generated by the software.
The goal of ePL is to combine Open Source software with the philosophy of Open Data for all publicly relevant content
generated by the software in one single license.

Until the exact terms of echo Public License are published, copying, modifying, distributing, installing or using ANY
components or parts of this software without explicit written permission of the echo team is strictly forbidden.
If you would like to contribute to the development of echo, please contact us at [email protected].

Please note, that the prohibitive terms of the current license are subject to change in the very near future to pave
the way for an open source development strategy with active participation of engaged developers from our community.