Berlin Commons Conference 2010 talk on the tension between openness and the commons. I look at the main areas where such tensions manifest themselves.

1.
openness & the commons
glyn moody

2.
the GPL commons
 free software commons
 open by definition
 actually several disjoint commons
 community norms defined by licences
 biggest is defined by GNU GPL and
compatible licences
 licence most frequently chosen by
businesses based around open
source

3.
enclosing the GPL commons
 most open source business use dual
licensing
 own the copyright to all the code
 alongside GPL licence, offer
”commercial” licence
 this creates an asymmetry
 only the company can offer such a
commercial licence
 only the company can enclose the
GPL commons

4.
policing the GPL commons
 recently, communities have started
forking
 MySQL forked as Drizzle and
MariaDB
 OpenOffice.org forked to become
LibreOffice
 copyright of contributions remains
with coders
 policed by community

5.
the Wikipedia commons
 strong sense of community
 open to all, but has some strict
rules: NPOV and Assume Good Faith
 policed by the community, enforced
by senior members
 twin threats of too open and too
controlled
 issues of sustainability

6.
open content commons
 digital content: commons with
enclosures
 actually very open: enclosures
have ”porous” perimeters
 physical policing ineffectual in
digital world
 virtual policing with *legal* code
 HADOPI, Digital Economy Act,
ACTA

7.
open educational commons
 open courseware - MIT OCW; cc-nc,
monolithic
 OER: Moodle, Chamilo, Sakai
 weak openness, weak commons
 Connexions (Rice) – modular,cc-by
 National Digital Resource Bank
(UK)
 cc materials
 (re-used) open source code

8.
open access commons
 open online access to academic
papers
 main problem not enclosure but
squatters on the commons
 publishers claiming to be open
access, but imposing conditions
like user names,passwords etc.
 policed by the community via
reputation

9.
open data commons
 licences – PDDL, ODC-By, ODC-ODbL
 open data popular – low-hanging
fruit for open government
 too much openness?
 personal info about politicians
 aggregating anonymous data can
sometimes reveal
unexpected/personal
information
 hard to predict/police

10.
open science commons
 open access, open data, open
notebook science
 Science Commons (cf. Creative
Commons): patents, MTA
 problem of rivals pre-empting
discoveries using public data
 policed by the relevant community
 Human Genome Project drew up
Bermuda Principles 1996
 worked well

11.
open personal genomics
 genomic databases (digital)
 cost of sequencing DNA plummeting
 OpenPCR project
 biobanks
 DNA samples, necessarily linked to
people's identity
 Personal Genome Project – 100,000
genomes from volunteers
 perhaps genomic privacy is
illusory/irrelevant (cf. Facebook)

12.
open synthetic biology
 analogue DNA units can create
modular parts: synthetic biology
 enclosure a real threat
 BiOS (Biological Innovation
through Open Science): ”protected
commons” - like Apache licence
 royalty-free licence to patents
 problems of openness
 ”bugs” in the code; accidental
release; bioweapons

13.
open hardware commons (1)
 Arduino
 hardware reference designs under CC
licence
 software released under GPL
 99.9% open: ”Arduino” name is only
for offical products
 trademark issues
 Freeduino fork for 100% freedom
 minimal policing by
company/community

14.
open hardware commons (2)
 open source car
 OSCar
 c,mm,n
 Open Source Green Vehicle (OSGV)
 digital designs freely available
under open licences
 crucial constraint on openness is
safety
 policed by regulatory authorities

15.
open hardware commons (3)
 fabbers (3D printers)
 MakerBot Thing-O-Matic Kit;
Fab@Home; RepRap
 shared digital files for analogue
objects
 Thingiverse.com: mainly GPL, cc
 safety is a constraint
 what happens when you can print
guns etc.?

16.
problems of openness
 attacks (copyright, patents, ACTA)
 equilibrium (anarchy/authority)
 impersonation (false community)
 introversion (community failure)
 intrusion (privacy/aggregation)
 occlusion (false reputation)
 safety (accidental harm)
 security (intentional harm)

17.
between the commons
glyn.moody@gmail.com
@glynmoody on identi.ca/Twitter
opendotdotdot.blogspot.com