View source for Commons as Shared Infrastructures for Businesses

=Context=

Marco Berlinguer distinguishes 3 hybrid forms of commons-market cooperation and co-existence:

# the [[Semi-Commons]]
# [[Commons as Shared Infrastructures for Businesses]]
# Digital Commons as Core Ecosystem Strategy

=Discussion=

Marco Berlinguer:

"The second idea commonly used to explain companies’
adoption of FOSS is that of shared infrastructure (Perens
2005; Eghbal 2016; Fogel 2017). This concept likewise proposes a two-tiered structure. The difference is that here the
companies are primarily conceived as the users and buyers
of software, rather than the producers and sellers of it. This
is true of most companies: they are either not interested
in software commercialization or most of the software that
they do use does not constitute a specific “differentiating
component” for their business model. For these companies, then, FOSS provides a way to share and economize
costs and risks in the access and provision (development,
maintenance, adaptation, and upgrading) of the necessary
components of production. This is made easier by leveraging certain characteristics of digital commons, such as the
fact that they are non-rival (Frischmann 2009) and that they
can be shared at no additional cost (Rifkin 2014). This idea
explains why companies that are mostly users of software
have been critical in supporting FOSS since the beginning.

Linux is a powerful example from which to draw insights
about these mechanisms. Its adoption in the market illustrates both sides of the double logics just described: FOSS as
a semi-commons and FOSS as shared infrastructure. While a
plethora of markets have been built upon its exploitation, as
a common technological base and evolving infrastructure, Linux is also remarkable for its longevity, for its capacity to adapt
and evolve, for its use as a base for many diverse applications,
and for its unexpected innovative uses and developments."

((Berlinguer, M. (2020). [[Commons, Markets and Public Policy]], Transform! ePaper, January 2020.)

[[Category:Commons]]
[[Category:P2P Market Approaches]]
[[Category:Business]]
[[Category:Commons Economics]]
[[Category:Commons Infrastructure]]
[[Category:P2P Infrastructure]]