Open Food Network

Open Food Network began in Melbourne in 2012 as a nonprofit answer to a structural problem: the software that connects farms to eaters was owned by intermediaries whose margins were the point. OFN's AGPL-3.0 marketplace lets farmers, food hubs, and buying clubs run their own storefronts and distribution — 2,500+ enterprises now trade through a federation of national instances across Australia, the UK, France, Canada, the US, and beyond.

The governance is as instructive as the code: a foundation stewards the commons codebase while affiliated national organizations run their own instances — a working model of federated stewardship that neighborhood infrastructure keeps needing and rarely gets.

Neighborhood remix: a single-block buying club — one OFN storefront where fifteen households pool a weekly order from the farm twenty minutes out and split the drop-off on one porch. Food is the oldest reason neighbors organize; this is that reason with an order form.

Details

• maker: Open Food Foundation (Melbourne-born, global federation)
• license: AGPL-3.0
• repo url: https://github.com/openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork
• remix idea: Fifteen households, one storefront, one porch drop-off.
• practice kind: tool