Commons-Based Peer Production

We describe a new model of collaborative production called Commons-based peer production (CBPP). This model is frequently supported by digital plat‐ forms characterized by peer to peer relationships, resulting in the provision of common resources. Traditionally, it is associated with cases such as Wikipedia or Free Software, but we have recently observed an expansion into other areas. On the basis of an extensive empirical work, we enquired-How does CBPP apply value? and How does value creation function in CBPP? We present an updated version of the meaning of value and sustain the relevance of this debate. After that, we propose how to measure value. We formulate what we call internal and external indicators of value. The first are linked to the internal performance of the CBPP and the second relates to its social value and reputation. Finally we highlight the main features of value that we identified and discuss the limits that we found developing and imple‐ menting the proposed diversity indicators.

In recent years, the increasing need for global coordination has attracted interest in the governance of global-scale commons. In the current context, we observe how online applications are ubiquitous, and how emerging technologies enable new capabilities while reshaping sectors. Thus, it is pertinent to ask: could blockchain technologies facilitate the extension and scaling up of cooperative practices and commons management in this global context? In order to address this question, we propose a focus on the most paradigmatic and widely successful examples of global cooperation: global digital commons. Examples of these are the digital resources maintained by large peer production communities, such as free/libre open source software and Wikipedia. Thus, this article identifies and analyzes the potentialities of blockchain to support the sustainability and management of global digital commons. Our approach draws on Elinor Ostrom's classic principles for commons governance, although revisiting and adapting these to the more challenging scope of global digital commons. Thus, in this work we identify the affordances which blockchain provides (e.g., tokenization, formalization of rules, transparency or codification of trust) to support the effective management of this type of global commons. As part of our analysis, we provide numerous examples of existing blockchain projects using affordances in line with each principle, as well as potential integrations of such affordances in existing practices of peer production communities. Our analysis shows that, when considering the challenges of managing global commons (e.g., heterogeneity or scale), the potential of blockchain is particularly valuable to explore solutions that: distribute power, facilitate coordination, scale up governance, visibilize traditionally invisible work, monitor and track compliance with rules, define collective agreements, and enable cooperation across communities. These affordances and the subsequent analysis contribute to the emergent debate on blockchain-based forms of governance, first by providing analytical categories for further research, but also by providing a guide for experimentation with the development of blockchain tools to facilitate global cooperation.

The Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) was an international agrarian knowledge-production programme created in 2003 by the CGIAR. GCP aims at developing drought tolerant varieties by reconciling upstream biotechnology based advanced research with the downstream development at the farmer's field. The objective of this paper is to apply the theory of Commons Based Peer Production (CBPP) to analyse the knowledge production process of GCP, especially the case of drought tolerant rice research network in Indian context (GCP-RRN). CBPP represents the theorisation of a mode of production that can be distinguished from market (private) and state (public) knowledge-production systems that was developed by observing the phenomena of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The organisational attributes of the CBPP mode applied in computer software production include the modulation of work, small-size granularity of components, and mechanisms that integrate these modules into an end product. Socioeconomically , this form of production is based on cooperation, collaboration and collective action rather than property, contract and managerial hierarchies. This paper argues that GCP-RRN knowledge production is basically a hybridised one in which there are certain inclinations towards CBPP within certain larger context, and there are other attributes too that do not fall within CBPP the-orisation. Further, this paper elaborates on the implications of this hybridised model for agrarian knowledge production discourse and institutions.

A partir de la relevancia del sector agropecuario para hacer efectiva la transición hacia la economía social del conocimiento común y abierto en Ecuador, el presente documento analiza los límites del capitalismo cognitivo que se está imponiendo en este sector, restringiendo las posibilidades de uso de un conocimiento tradicionalmente
compartido en cuanto a insumos como semillas y a técnicas de producción y herramientas. En contraste, se propone un modelo alternativo de agricultura sustentable en la que los alimentos se consideran comunes y no pura mercancía,
a la par que el conocimiento libre constituye un elemento fundamental para incrementar la productividad, reducir la dependencia de los pequeños agricultores y favorecer
la participación y autoorganización de los pequeños productores. En concreto, se analiza el proceso de transición ocurrido en la región de Andhra Pradesh (India) y
proyectos de producción de maquinaria agrícola con diseño abierto, con el fin de establecer lineamientos y recomendaciones para la política pública ecuatoriana

El presente documento parte de un análisis de las políticas energéticas en Ecuador y de las necesidades del país en el contexto de los límites biofísicos del planeta, como base para proponer orientaciones y directrices estratégicas de política pública en el ámbito energético, así como un conjunto de casos y proyectos ilustrativos de las medidas propuestas. En particular, se consideran las condiciones para una transformación de la matriz energética del país que acompañe a la transformación productiva general, lo que implica disminuir la dependencia de los combustibles fósiles, fortalecer el rol de las energías renovables y descentralizar la producción energética, potenciando una escala productiva en la que la ciudadanía pueda pasar de ser mera consumidora de energía a participar en la producción y la gestión del sistema energético, a través de su mayor conocimiento y empoderamiento en la materia, lo
que en definitiva afecta no solo a la oferta energética, sino también a la demanda. Asimismo, son propuestas fundamentales la mejora de un conocimiento diversificado y ajustado al territorio, así como la puesta en común de los diseños y saberes técnicos al respecto.

Nearly a decade after the publication of the white paper in which Bitcoin and Blockchain came to light (Nakamoto, 2008), there remains a need to understand whether the key technical properties introduced by Blockchain, such as decentralisation, inmutatibility and transparency, do indeed offer transformative capacities. For example, could they foster the experimentation and emergence of new forms of blockchain‐facilitated governance? The limits, balances and tensions between the technical and social aspects of these speculative new forms of governance are starting to attract the attention from social science perspectives (Risius & Spohrer, 2017). Two confronting standpoints seem, however, to be dominating the current debate. On the one hand, techno‐determinist perspectives, which envisage the emergence of new forms of governance characterised primarily by decentralisation and rely on the idea of " market ". For example, they commonly assume that hierarchies between the participants in the decision‐making processes seem to vanish thanks to the disintermediation enabled by distributed consensus and trustlessness (e.g Swan (2015), Hayes, (2016)). These accounts, however, tend to ignore the complexity of social organisation. They provide over‐reductionist accounts with regards to the distribution of power, failing to acknowledge issues such as the generation of oligarchies (Atzori, 2015, pp. 26‐30). On the other hand, there is a critical stand with these techno‐determinist perspectives which tends to reinforce the role of traditional central authorities as inherently necessary to enable democratic governance (Atzori, 2015). This reflects the traditional responses against unregulated markets from positions that reinforce the role of the state: envisioning blockchain properties in non transformative ways to more efficiently exert the control required by traditional centralised forms of governance. For example, providing more transparency to central institutions (Nguyen, 2016) or more efficient mechanisms to avoid tax fraud (Ainsworth & Shact, 2016). In this paper we aim to analyse the extent to which it would be feasible to incorporate principles from self‐governance which neither rely on the logics of private markets, as implicitly assumed by these former perspectives, nor on the coercion of traditional centralized institutions, as in the case of these latter accounts. Our aim is to begin to bring together the literature on the self‐governance of common goods within this emerging debate on these new forms of blockchain‐facilitated governance.

While researchers are becoming increasingly interested in studying OSS phenomenon, there is still a small number of studies analyzing larger samples of projects investigating the structure of activities among OSS developers. The significant amount of information that has been gathered in the publicly available open-source software repositories and mailing-list archives offers an opportunity to analyze projects structures and participant involvement. In this article, using on commits data from 263 Apache projects repositories (nearly all), we show that although OSS development is often described as collaborative, but it in fact predominantly relies on radically solitary input and individual, non-collaborative contributions. We also show, in the first published study of this magnitude, that the engagement of contributors is based on a power-law distribution.