B. Innovative Aspects of Peer Production Practice
Peer production carries with it many different fundamental innovations,
that are starkly different from traditional business practice. Here are a
number of these practices, contrasted with the practices of the market and
the business firm:
- Anti-Credentialism, refers to the inclusiveness of peer production.
What matters is the ability to carry out a particular task, not any formal
apriori credential ( >< credentialism).
- Anti-Rivalry ; see also: Anti-Rivalness of Free Software: sharing the
created goods does not diminish the value of the good, but actually
enhances it ( >< rivalry).
- Communal Validation: the quality control is not a 'a priori' condition
of participation, but a post-hoc control process, usually community-driven
( >< hierarchical control).
- Distribution of Tasks: there are no roles and jobs to be performed,
only specific tasks to be carried out ( >< division of labor).
- Equipotentiality: people are judged on the particular aspects of their
being that is involved in the execution of a particular task ( >< people
ranking).
- For Benefit: (Benefit Sharing; Benefit-Driven Production). The
production aims to create use value or 'benefits' for its user community,
not profits for shareholders ( >< for-profit).
- Forking: the freedom to copy and modify includes the possibility to
take the project into a different direction ( >< one authorized version).
- Granularity: refers to the effort to create the smallest possible
modules (see Modularity infra), so that the treshold of participation for
carrying out tasks is lowered to the lowest possible extent.
- Holoptism; transparency is the default state of information about the
project; all additions can be seen and verified and are sourced ( ><
panoptism).
- Modularity: tasks, products and services are organized as modules,
that fit with other modules in a puzzle that is continuously re-assembled;
anybody can contribute to any module.
- Negotiated Coordination: conflicts are resolved through an ongoing and
mediated dialogue, not by fiat and top-down decisions ( >< centralized and
hierarchical decision-making).
- Permissionlessness: one does not need permission to contribute to the
commons ( >< permission culture).
- Produsage: there is no strict separation between production and
consumption, and users can produce solutions ( >< production for
consumption).
- Stigmergy: there is a signalling language that permits system needs to
be broadcast and matched to contributions.