Commons-oriented Peer Production in Knowledge and Software

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Definition

Peer to peer is a form of relationality between human beings whereby people can connect to each other without permission, and aggegrate around the creation of common value. In human anthropology, and in particular according to the relational grammar of Alan Page Fiske, it is considered one of the four basic human ways to relate to each other. In peer to peer, individuals 'exchange' with a totality, without direct reciprocation. Though peer to peer has been documented across all cultures and in each stage of human evolution, the available of a global peer to peer infrastructure of communication and cooperation, has greatly extented its scope and scale, from the hyperlocal to the global. Linked to this capacity of global cooperation around shared objects of creation is the concept and practice of a commons. A commons is a shared resource that is either inherited from nature (and Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Laureate in economics, has documented the rationale and governance of such natural resource commons), or created by human beings, either in the 'immaterial fields' of knowledge and culture (this includes free and open source software and shared designs), or by holding productive human capital (machinery and the means of production) in common stock.

The increased ability to generate peer to peer relationships has led to the emergence of what prof. Yochai Benkler calls 'commons-based peer production', in which the creative energy of large numbers of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the internet) into large, meaningful projects, largely without traditional hierarchical organization or financial compensation." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_production)

This definition needs to be amended however:

- communities of contributors need not be large, there are many small-scale projects

- the lack of financial compensation is not vital, there are now many commons with strong corporate participation in the majority of commons-contributors are employees of firms.

It is useful to break down the process of peer production in three phases:

- an input fase, where contributors can freely contribute to a common resource by either creating or using freely available raw material

- a process phase, which to the degree that the contributions are done by volunteers, need to be participatory, and whereby even corporate contributors need to adopt to a substantial degree to the rules and norms of the peer producing communities

- an output phase, whereby the product of the common activity, i.e. the commons of knowledge, software or design, is protected not from private use but from exclusive private appropriation.

Hence, peer production is a process of production whereby contributors can freely contribute to a common resource that will be available to all.

Within pure play peer production, resources are not allocated either through a market (supply and demand dynamics regulated through pricing), nor through the centralized decisions of a firm, but through the dynamic of social relationships themselves.

However, in reality, peer production exists in adaptation to the existing market and institutional structures, and firms and markets do have a role, which we will explicit later on.

An interesting analogy here is to consider that the horizontalisation of human productive relationships in peer production, when confronted with the more 'vertical' (centralized, hierarchical) players of the market economy, will lead to a wide variety of diagonal adaptations. This means that in a market economy, the p2p economy is essentially a 'hybrid economy'.

For example, we have developed a 'ladder of participation' which highlights possible combinations between peer production communities and corporations, framed around a polarity of influence between both. The ladder of participation typology is discussed in our section on the institutional framework for peer production.

Peer production projects will there essentially exhibit at least dual logics. The core of the project, where value is created and exchanged, is driven by the community logic of joint contribution to the common project, is based on, and further creates 'social capital'. The value is deposited in a commons, which cannot be privatized without destroying the commons logic. But around and on top of the commons, market value can be created, and value can be captured and monetized by the private firms.

It is important to distinguish the commons logic of genuine peer production, from the sharing logic of social media, and the logic of crowdsourcing commodity value. In the sharing platforms, individuals are exchanging their individual creative expressions, and are not creating a common object, while in crowdsourcing platforms, contributors attempt to create monetary value for a marketplace, and not use value for a commons. Nevertheless, all different manifestations of the collaborative economy will exhibit the dual logic in some form, whether in the form of sharing, as in social media platforms, or collaborating, as in crowdsourcing platforms. In each case, a logic of social capital is in tension with a logic of market capital. Each domains needs to be carefully delineated so as to respect the autonomy of each sphere.

EXPLAIN HERE THE INTERSECTION WITH THE MARKET

Institutional Realities

TO BE REWORKED

"The new institutional reality could be described as follows:

THE FIRST LAYER: COLLABORATIVE PLATFORMS

- At the core are the enabling collaborative socio-technological platforms, that allow knowledge workers, software developers and open design communities to collaborate on joint projects, outside of the direct control of corporate entities.

Interesting questions already arise here: who is the driving force behind the creation & development of such platforms? They can be initiated by developing communities, managed and maintained by a new type of non-profit institution (like the FLOSS Foundations), or they can be corporate platforms that have been opened up to external participants

THE SECOND LAYER: OPEN DESIGN COMMONS

- Around the corporate platform is the open design community and the knowledge/software/design commons ruled by a set of licenses which determine the particular nature of the property.

Interesting questions here are: Is it a true commons license like the GPL, a sharing license like the Creative Commons where the stress is on the individual sovereignity in determining the level of sharing that is allowed; or is it a corporate license, giving very limited rights, or even with outright digital sharecropping, i.e. the expropriation of the totality of the creative output reserved for usage by the organizing corporation?

THE THIRD LAYER: ENTERPRENEURIAL COALITIONS

- Around the commons are the entrepreneurial coalitions that benefit and sustain the design commons, create added value on top of it, and sell this as products or services to the market.

Important questions raised here are: how is the coalition itself organized? Do all parties have equal say, as in the Linux Foundation, or does one big party dominate, like with the Eclipse Foundation and IBM. How does the business ecology relate to the community. Is is nothing but a corporate commons?

THE FOURTH LAYER: FUNDING ECOLOGIES

- In addition, there is a funding infrastructure.

What is the process governing the stream of returns from the monetized market sphere, to the commons, its community, and the infrastructure of cooperation? Do businesses support the community directly, through the foundations? Is the government or a set of public authorities involved. Are there crowdfunding mechanisms?

THE FIFTH LAYER: THE PARTNER STATE AS ORCHESTRATOR?

- Finally, there is the role of public authorities and governments in orchestrating the public-private-common triad in order to benefit from the local effects of the new networked coopetition between entrepreneurial coalitions and their linked communities.

In the not so far future, wealth building or sustaining capacity will be determined to a large degree by the capacity of cities, regions and states to insert themselves within the global coopetition between different enterpreneurial coalitions (think drupal vs. joomla, but on a much larger scale)."

Understanding the ladder of participation

TO BE REWORKED

Here are ten different co-creation modalities, depending on the polarity of control between peer producers and the corporate entities:

The first five are written from the point of view of corporate entities, wanting to engage with productive communities:

1. Consumers: you make, they consume. The classic model.

2. Self-service: you make, they go get it themselves. This is where consumers start becoming prosumers, but the parameters of the cooperation are totally set by the producing corporation. It’s really not much more than a strategy of externalization of costs. Think of ATM’s and gas stations. We could call it simple externalization.

3. Do-it-yourself: you design, they make it themselves. One step further, pioneered by the likes of Ikea, where the consumers, re-assembles the product himself. Complex externalization of business processes.

4. Company-based Crowdsourcing. The company organizes a value chain which lets the wider public produce the value, but under the control of the company.

5. Co-design: you set the parameters, but you design it together For examples, see here www.p2pfoundation.net/Co-Design

In the next set, the control moves towards the communities:

6. Co-creativity: you both create cooperatively. In this stage, the corporation does not even set the parameters, the prosumer is an equal partner in the development of new products. Perhaps the industrial model of the adventure sports material makers would fit here. For examples, see here www.p2pfoundation.net/Co-Creation

7. Sharing communities create the value, Web 2.0 proprietary platforms, attempt to monetize participation.

8. Peer production proper: communities create the value, using a Commons, with assistance from corporations who attempt to create derivative streams of value. Linux is the paradigmatic example.

9. Peer production with cooperative production: peer producers create their own vehicles for monetization. The OS Alliance is an example of this

10. Peer production communities or sharing communities place themselves explicitely outside of the monetary economy.