Free software and commons-based peer-production
 
Yochai
 
 

Free Software

Characteristics
                                                               i.      Apache has 60+ percent
                                                             ii.      Linux  - 30% of IS market
                                                            iii.      Proprietary SW
1.      use permitted in exchange for $$$
2.      Learning often prevented to prevent copying/competition
3.      customization usually only within controlled parameters
4.      no redistribution permitted so as to enable collection by owner
                                                           iv.      Free SW
1.      limit’s owners control
2.      use for any purpose
3.      study source code
4.      adapt for own use
5.      redistribute copies
6.      make and distribute modifications
a.       notification of changes
b.      copyleft
7.      identifying characteristic is cluster of user permitted, not absence of price (not talking free beer here)
                                                             v.      anatomy of Free SW
1.      Raymond, Moody
2.      one ore more programmers write sw and release It on the net
3.      others use, modify extend or test
4.      mechanism for communicating, identifying and incorporating additions/patches into a common version
5.      volunteers with different levels of commitment and influence on testing, fixing, and extending
 


Institutional framework
                                                               i.      Property
1.      property is institutional core of market and firm-based production
a.       parameters of exclusion permit charging a price and controlling output of employees.
2.      public domain/open access
a.       dedication to domain makes sw free
b.      allows anyone to use, modify and redistribute
c.       weakness: ease of defection/reappropriation by downstream actors may cause demoralization and ex ante non-participation by peers
3.      copyleft
a.       cluster of licensing provisions that rely on the control property rights provide to make software “free” while protecting against some defections that an open-access commons approach permits
b.      distributions is under same terms as original work was licensed
c.       clear notifications of changes and attribution
d.      covenants run with the program
                                                                                                                                       i.      if you break, you lose the license
e.       gpl and open source definition do not discriminate between commercial and non-commercial sw
f.        Major current questions: what counts as “modification”
4.      Ads vs disads of copyleft v public domain
a.       Reduces incentives to adopt a proprietary strategy
b.      Reduces opportunities for “defection”
c.       Retains the integrity of contributions as part of the peer-review process.

Commons-based peer-production

Peer production
                                                               i.      Various sized collections of individuals
                                                             ii.      Effectively produce information goods
                                                            iii.      Without price signals or managerial commands


Human parallel to distributed computing?
                                                               i.      Various @home projects
                                                             ii.      Gnutella, freenet


Examples
                                                               i.      Academic research
1.      we select our projects
2.      build on what others have done
3.      distribute as widely as possible
                                                             ii.      wikipedia
                                                            iii.      mars crater analysis
                                                           iv.      http://slashdot.org
                                                             v.      google
1.      they build web sites by figuring out what people link to…
                                                           vi.      distribution
1.      gnutella
2.      distributed proofreading
                                                          vii.       

Economic analysis

Motivation
                                                               i.      OSS economics literature maps the diverse appropriation mechanisms
1.      intrinsic (make me better off)
a.       hedonic
b.      community ethics
2.      extrinsic
a.       supply-side – human capital, reputation
b.      demand-side – service contracts, widgets
                                                             ii.      diverse motivations
1.      care for different things other than money
                                                            iii.      initial implications
1.      where component contributions are too fine grained to transact around, peer production dominates (too small to do for money, great to do for greater good)
2.      discussion made along lines of formula
                                                          iv.      peer production limited not by total cost or complexity of project, but by
1.      modularity (how man can participate)
2.      granularity (min investment necessary)
3.      cost of integration
                                                            v.      value in economic terms
1.      human capital difficult to specify/define (can’t price it)
2.      by comparison to firms and markets peer-production has
a.      information gains
                                                                                                                                      i.      human capital highly variable
1.      time, task, mood, context, raw information materials. Project
                                                                                                                                    ii.      difficult to specify completely for either market or hierarchy control
                                                                                                                                  iii.      in peer-production agents self-identity for, and self-define tasks
b.      allocation gains
                                                                                                                                      i.      best agent on optimum resources
                                                          vi.      Commons problems
1.      different kinds of commons have different solutions
2.      information only a provisioning problem, not an allocation problem
3.      primary concerns
a.      defection through unilateral appropriate undermines intrinsic and extrinsic motivations
b.      poor judgment of participants
c.       providing the integration function
4.      solutions
a.      formal rules
b.      tech like slash
c.       moral/social norms
d.      redundancy or avging out
e.       iterative peer production of integration
f.        reintroduction of market and hierarchy with low cost and no residual appropariate

Business models

Surfers
                                                               i.      Cost reduction and improved quality
1.      google
2.      live 365
3.      ibm, hp widgets
                                                             ii.      translation into the price system
1.      services/customization/massification


toolmakers
                                                               i.      sourceforge, OSDN
                                                             ii.      massive multiplayer games

thematic analysis

diverse motivations with complex relationships to money
peer-production, not OSS
anti-defection mechanisms
                                                               i.      formal rules, tech restraints, social norms


business opportunities
                                                               i.      integration without residual appropriation
                                                             ii.      surfers and toolmakers