History of the P2P Foundation

The following text was posted to the mailing list by Michel Bauwens on 25 May 2009, in a response to a transparency request by Matt Cooperrider. It is posted here, lightly edited, to serve as stub for a more complete history page.

Some background, as requ3sted, in reverse chronological order

The list was created by Ned Rossiter after Andreas Wittel's Peer Production workshop meeting in Nottingham in November 2007 .. About 2 months ago, he quit as listmaster, and the settings he choose went to Kevin Carson and Ryan Lanaham for review. I have no details about what they changed.

Ning was set up by Josef Davies-Coates, but is administratively maintained by me.

Tne blog was set up by James Burke, who is admin and gives out pw/id's usually on my request. I produce 90% of the content, 3-4 items per day. He pays for the server space.

The wiki was set up by Brice Leblevennec and about 18 months ago, admin was transferred to James Burke. Since short, it seems a web of trust is technically operating, i.e. existing members give access to new ones, before, it was james and I. I produce about 85%, perhaps more, of the content, from 5 to 25 items per day, depending on my time.

I can easily spent 8 hours a day on this, which was what I did before I started this job, now I'm down to 4 ... which requires 2 extra hours outside of the office and 2 times 4 hours on both weekend days.

But to be clear, my work is content oriented and I always forward technical issues to James, list issues to kevin and ryan, technical ning issues to joseph ..

There is no formal governance, but I would argue, neither a tyranny of structurelessness. In fact, inside our resources, the case with Marc (a list etiquette dispute) was the first conflict.

The P2P-F has a legal structure in the netherlands, with a board and all, but no real existence so far.