This will function as a mini-guide to Peer Production proper, in the more narrow sense, so that this key material is no longer only available through our almost unwieldy section on P2P Business trends in general.

The P2P Foundation supports the research initiative: Critical Studies in Peer Production [1]

(status update: Ported: selections from the first three columns of P2P Business only. Thanks to Dante Monson for assistance with the further porting for this section.)

Introduction

1. Karim Lakhani on the Open Source Software communities Open Development process [2]
2. A Bibliography on Peer Production. Recommendations by James Boyle.

Characteristics of Peer Production

• Peer Production Patterns, summarized by Stefan Meretz:

1. Beyond Classes‎
2. Beyond Commodity‎
3. Beyond Exchange‎
4. Beyond Exclusion
5. Beyond Labor‎
6. Beyond Money
7. Beyond Politics
8. Beyond Scarcity
9. Beyond Socialism

Citations

On the connection between Modularity and Sharing

"If the stuff to hand isn't modular, you can't really share, because your stuff isn't compatible with other people's stuff. If it isn't modular, you can't share out tasks and scale. If you can't share out tasks, you can't have people working independently, at their own pace and in their own way, which means the project isn't really open. If it isn't modular, you can't swap in some new elements while leaving everything else untouched, which means no "release early, release often", no experimentation, no rapid evolution. Modularity is indispensable."

- Glyn Moody: [3]

Key Resources

Key Articles

1. Paul Hartzog on the Advantages of Scale of Openness and Peer Production
2. Dmytri Kleiner's Critique of Peer Production Ideology
3. Michel Bauwens: Is Peer Production a Real Mode of Production?
4. The 'Circulation of the Common': Analytical concept proposed by Nick Dyer-Witheford in a landmark essay of the same title.. It refers to the social reproduction mechanism of Peer Production, in a process analogous with the Circulation of Capital described by Marx. [4]
5. P2P Is Not a Mode of ProductionToni Prug. Journal of Peer Production, Issue 1, 2012. [5]

See also:

• Ten Peer_Production_Patterns. Stefan Meretz. Comment by Michel Bauwens: A word of caution. The text by Stefan Meretz is useful to understand the post-capitalist patterns that are inherent in peer production, however, it also abstracts from its embeddedness in present society and the way these aspects are instrumentalized by the present society and economic system, and create hybrid mechanisms of mutual adaptation. It also skirts around the central question of the self-reproduction of the means of production (however, see pattern 10 on the Germ Theory of change.

Key Reports

From the Industrial Cooperation Project:

1. Peer Production and Industrial Cooperation in Biotechnology, Genomics and Proteomics
2. Peer Production and Industrial Cooperation in Alternative Energy‎‎
3. Peer Production and Industrial Cooperation in Educational Materials‎
4. Peer Production and Industrial Cooperation in Telecommunications

Key Video

• Charles Leadbeater on the Rise of the Amateur Professional