Blog post by me from 2018: Commons Based Peer Production

The problem with the term open source is that everyone means something different when they use it. Some people just mean licensing. Some people think of a particular community’s set of practices. Others think that it means some kind of fuzzy democracy and mob rule.

Ted Leung, Explaining Commons Based Peer Production, er, Open Source

In this paper I explain that while free software is highly visible, it is in fact only one example of a much broader social-economic phenomenon. I suggest that we are seeing is the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode "commons-based peer-production," to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based models of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands.

Yochai Benkler, [[Coase’s Penguin]]

Commons-based peer production

radically decentralized, collaborative, and nonproprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other without relying on either market signals or managerial commands.

– The Wealth of Networks » Chapter 3: Peer Production and Sharing

I feel like the [[IndieWeb]] is a great example of commons-based peer production, as per Benkler’s definition.

It was Benkler (2002, p. 369) who, focusing on the [[digital commons]], postulated the emergence of a new mode of production, which he called commons-based peer production: “Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands”.

– [[dulongderosnay2020: Digital commons]]