Collaboration, open source communities and co-operatives
Irving W-B is always worth a quick read as his longevity in the industry and his (enviable) position give him a nice abstract perspective on trends. He recently
blogged on “The Economic and Social Foundations of Collaborative Innovation”, and referenced work by Yochai Benkler (Prof of Law at Yale Law School).
Prof Benkler has been looking for some time at the nature, structure, motivations and behaviours of collaborative innovation efforts and open-source software creation in particular. But as someone with a passing interest in co-operative societies, what I find surprising is that (unless I’ve missed something really important) in his work he dismisses the relevance of co-operative movements and their parallels with today’s online collaborative innovation efforts and open-source software development communities.
The “commons-based peer production” model of creative innovation is not, as far as I can see, an “emerging third model of production” (beyond market-driven production, and firm-driven production) at all – it’s just a new spin on the 200-ish year old principle of co-operative societies, super-charged by the
world-flattening nature of the Internet. Today’s online collaborative efforts seem to differ from historical farming, retail or other co-operatives largely in the dynamic ways in which co-operative communities can be created, enlarged and modified – and in the ways in which the fruits of co-operative labour can be distributed.
For anyone who’s interested, some interesting insights into open-source development communities can be gained by looking at them through the co-operative lens. Take a look at the
7 principles of co-operative identity, for example, and see the parallels between these and the principles that drive open-source development communities.
What’s also interesting is that there are some nascent attempts to bring these ideas together and think about if there are beneficial implications for software development communities (and communities more widely). There are some interesting examples (some more ambitious/strange than others) of joining the dots
here,
here and
here.
Last but not least – it’s not exactly exhaustive research but from a bit of Googling and web-searching it does appear that there is a strong correlation between those countries whose governments are playing strong Linux advocacy roles (China, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, India, Japan, Phillippines, etc), and those
countries where co-operatives play significant economic roles.
I’d like to find out more about this if anyone out there has done anything more exhaustive!
