CNT Bot is democracy software for digital activists building flat, horizontal networks.
CNT Bot is open source and runs as an IRC Bot on Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It's written in Tcl and its code is fully documented. There is also a video you can watch to better understand how it works.
CNT Bot's key features include:
- Unlicensed and open source software
- Channel voting on operator commands
- Configurable voting thresholds (i.e. second, majority, unanimous)
- Creation of polls on arbitrary issues
- Viewable history of current and completed polls
- Yes/No or multiple choice-based options for polls and votes
- Election of instantly recallable delegates to send to other channels
- Mechanism to formally invite delegates from other channels
- Ability to hold 'plenaries' (a.k.a. conferences) consisting of all members of all invited channels or only delegates of each invited channel
- Voting and passwords to control admission of new users into the channel
- Concept of 'vote timeout' and 'default vote' to move decisions forward when some users are missing or away
- Optional channel privacy settings to hide channel settings, poll history, and delegates from view of other channels
- Easy to install and configure
- Automatically connects to other CNT Bots on the network to enable inter-channel features
CNT Bot can be used to replicate political processes found in 1930's Spanish anarchism, the IWW's bottom-up union organization, Argentinian horizontalidad, and Kurdish democratic confederalism. It could also be useful in interconnecting geographically-dispersed Occupy-style encampments. In general, it's helpful whenever groups need to link together to create larger decision-making bodies but don't wish to sacrifice their own independence or autonomy.
CNT Bot is named in honor of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), which pioneered many of these libertarian political concepts in Spain in the 1930's. However, CNT Bot is not currently affiliated with or endorsed by the CNT as it exists today.