Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing like "peer money"
- From: "Michel Bauwens" <michelsub2004 gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:09:21 +0700
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Hi Raoul,
As free software moves from the margins to centerstage, more and more
corporations adapt to the model, and pay programmers to do such parts of the
free software as needed for themselves, but they use the open licenses.
So these corporations compete, but also collaborate through the common
platform of free software.
For Linux, 75% of programmers are now paid by such corporations, which means
they have an increasing influence over the direction of development, have a
seat in the Foundations etc ...
Joel West, which has studied this more closely and writes about the tension
of openness, which creates value, and closedness, which captures value, and
also about the community-corporation governance models.
I think I have read this formula of the corporate commons in his work,
meaning that free software commons are increasingly influenced by their
corporate developer and user base.
This is inevitable, as no free software project can survive in the long run
without a core of developers being paid. The reality of the various projects
is then strongly influenced by the governance model, which can be controlled
primarilty by a community-oriented foundation, or by a corporate-oriented
format.
I'm asssuming that this process of mutual adaptation changes both realities,
But it is important to realize that most if not all viable and strong FS
projects, follow this logic, and not the logic of free volunteering that is
characteristic of their starting days.
Michel
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Raoul <raoulv club-internet.fr> wrote:
Hi Michel,
You wrote:
what do you make of this: that most peer production in software evolves to
a
corporate commons?
I am not sure I understand correctly your question. What do you mean by "a
corporate commons"? My English is rather poor. According to what I
understood from the dictionary: "corporate" may have two opposite meanings:
one refers to something related to corporations, and thus to
private/excluding property; the other refers more generally to the
collective quality of something, and thus does not involves necessarily
private/excluding property. I suppose you are using the first meaning,
otherwise it would be a sort of redundancy.
But "Commons" are the contrary of private property. The products in the
Commons are at everybody's disposal. Corporate products are *normally* not,
the exception being free/open software produced by programmers paid by
corporations. As that reality develops, do you mean by "corporate commons" a
sort of "commons" which would be at disposal only for "corporations"? But
does that exist?
By itself, the fact that corporations have more and more recourse to
open/free software, and even produce an increasing share of it only
evidences that important aspect of the germ-form theory, that the new
germ-form must be useful to the old/dominant forms in order to develop. But
I think you know and agree with that vision.
Could you be more explicit?
Raoul
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