Commons-based peer production
Commons-based peer production (CBPP) is a term coined by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler.
Benkler first introduced the term in his 2002 paper in the Yale Law Journal (published as a pre-print in 2001) "Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm", whose title refers to the Linux mascot and to Ronald Coase, who originated the transaction costs theory of the firm that provides the methodological template for the paper's analysis of peer production.
The paper defines the concept as "decentralized information gathering and exchange" and credits Eben Moglen as the scholar who first identified it without naming it.
According to Benkler, what distinguishes commons-based production is that it doesn't rely upon or propagate proprietary knowledge: "The inputs and outputs of the process are shared, freely or conditionally, in an institutional form that leaves them equally available for all to use as they choose at their individual discretion."
"[9] Aaron Krowne offers another definition: Commons-based peer production refers to any coordinated, (chiefly) internet-based effort whereby volunteers contribute project components, and there exists some process to combine them to produce a unified intellectual work.
CBPP covers many different types of intellectual output, from software to libraries of quantitative data to human-readable documents (manuals, books, encyclopedias, reviews, blogs, periodicals, and more).
Thus, the motivation behind this phenomenon goes far beyond traditional capitalistic theories, which picture individuals as self-interested and rational agents, such portrayal is also called homo economicus.
[12] Similarly, commons-based projects, as claimed by Yochai Benkler, are the results of individuals acting "out of social and psychological motivations to do something interesting".
This theory outlines further reasons for individuals to participate in peer production such as collaboration with strangers, building or integrating into a community or contributing to a general good.
The principle of commons-based peer production is similar to collective invention, a model of open innovation in economics coined by Robert Allen.
Some believe that the commons-based peer production (CBPP) vision, while powerful and groundbreaking, needs to be strengthened at its root because of some allegedly wrong assumptions concerning free and open-source software (FOSS).
The innovative activities of CBPP occur within capitalist competitive contexts, and capitalist firms can gain competitive advantage over firms that rely on personal research without proprietary knowledge, because the former is able to utilize and access the knowledge commons, especially in digital commons where participants in CBPP struggle to earn direct livelihood for themselves.
[21] They also assert that, in a society led by commons, the market would continue to exist as in capitalism, but it would shift from being mainly extractive to being predominantly generative.
