Individual proprietary solution VS open collective solution

We got a new member! Today we talked to Ed and again, the project took a refreshing turn. Ed's suggestions are roughly described below, to which I added some notes... Where's the "edit" button.

We can make the choice to survive on our own and design an individual system, but what's the point of it? We don't want to be forever on our own, and we have observed that many people are excited about the perspective we are forming.
We technically can survive on the oceans, but we can only do it together, so we want to design collectively the system the community will use and modify over time, we need to build the community.
But we cannot wait for everybody to agree on our model, so we need to propose some ideas, designs (compatible standards), constitution, an architectural API.

Ed says :

A modular society can only function efficiently if there is an API (application Programming Interface) standard that all entities joining the society adheres to.

Flows:
Solids
Stability
Continuity

Liquid:
Water pipes ø
Fuel pipes ø
Waste ø
Data ø
see http://lifecable.org/
economy, see http://liquideconomy.org/

Data:
Human languages
Academixml : http://www.academixml.org/
EEML, Extended Environments Markup Language (http://www.eeml.org/)
Pachube, http://www.pachube.com/

Rules:
share knowledge
security
Property (intellectual, see creative commons)

Philosophy:
Ethics
All people equal...

Cesar made a presentation on the theme of APIs and there application in the context of the "Open Sailing platform" at Future Karaoke, a lot about the same topic...