Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue* COMMONS-BASED peer production is a socio-economic system of production that is emerging in the digitally networked environment. Facilitated by the technical infrastructure of the Internet, the hallmark of this socio-technical system is collaboration among large groups of individuals, sometimes in the order of tens or even hundreds of thousands, who cooperate effectively to provide information, knowledge or cultural goods without relying on either market pricing or managerial hierarchies to coordinate their common enterprise. 394 cooperating productively with strangers being virtuous human beings exhibit and experience virtuous behavior The central thesis of this paper is that socio-technical systems of commons-based peer production offer not only a remarkable medium of production for various kinds of information goods but serve as a context for positive character formation. 494-395 I. COMMONS-BASED PEER PRODUCTION – EXAMPLES The best-known examples of commons-based peer production are the tens of thousands of successful free software projects that have come to occupy the software development market. FOSS development Free or open source software development is an approach to developing software that resembles nothing so much as an idealized barn raising—a collective effort of individuals contributing towards a common goal in a more-or-less informal and loosely structured way. 395 The flagship products of free or open source software development—the GNU/Linux operating system, the Apache web server, Perl and BIND—are the most famous. free software seriously as a sustainable form of production, >>> interesting to businesss interesting from a social and moral perspective>>>> social and human structure of the projects No one is a formal manager who tells different people what they must do so that the project can succeed. Though leadership is present in many projects, it is based on no formal power to limit discussion, prevent subgroups from branching off if they are unhappy with a leadership decision, and in any event never involves the assignment of projects—no one can require or prohibit action by anyone. The effort is sustained by a combination of volunteerism and good will, technology, some law—mostly licensing like the GNU General Public License that governs most free software development—and a good bit of self-serving participation. But all these factors result in a model of production that avoids traditional price mechanisms or firm managers in organizing production or motivating its participants. 396 >> on the WEB :: peer prod emerging phenomenon of “barn raising”-like production on the Net. As one begins to look at information, knowledge and cultural production on the Internet, it becomes clear that free software is but one, particularly salient, instance of a more general phenomenon, the phenomenon of commons-based peer production. 396 SETI@home The simplest example of large-scale volunteer production is distributed computing. Take SETI@home for example. NASA Clickworkers experiment. In this project, tens of thousands of individual volunteers collaborated in five-minute increments to map and classify Mars’s craters, three richer examples of large-scale collaboration, where contributions are larger and require more of the knowledge of the participants and their willingness to participate in a cohesive social process. the Wikipedia project, The first such project is the Wikipedia project, which involves some 30,000 volunteers who collaborate to write an encyclopedia. collaborative authorship tool collaoborate to produce information products. >>>WIKIPEDIA its most interesting characteristic is the self-conscious use of open discourse, usually aimed at consensus, and heavy reliance on social norms and user-run quasi-formal mediation and arbitration, rather than on mechanical control of behavior. It begins with a statement of community intent—to produce an “encyclopedia”—rather than a series of opinion pieces. It continues with a technical architecture that allows anyone to contribute, edit and review the history of any document easily. These two characteristics account for the vast majority of document development. 397-398 Wikipedia requires much more than mere mechanical cooperation among participants. It requires a commitment to a particular approach to conceiving of one’s task, and a style of writing and describing concepts, that are far from intuitive or natural. It requires self- discipline. 398 This combination of an explicit statement of common purpose, transparency, discourse and the ability of participants to identify each other’s actions and counteract them—that is, edit out “bad” or “faithless” definitions— seems to have succeeded in keeping this community from devolving into inefficacy or worse. 398 -large-scale geographically dispersed group social cooperation in a in a large and geographically dispersed group of otherwise unrelated participants: -Slashdot the most visible collective commentary project on the Internet as of the mid-2000s is Slashdot, a collaboration platform used by between 250,000 and 500,000 users. II. COMMONS-BASED PEER PRODUCTION – PRINCIPLES The phenomenon of large- and medium-scale collaborations among individuals, organized without markets or managerial hierarchies, is emerging everywhere in the information and cultural production system. 400 peer production is a model of social production, emerging alongside contract- and market-based, managerial-firm based and state-based production. 400 >>> Characteristics of peer prod The first is decentralization. Authority to act resides with individual agents faced with opportunities for action, rather than in the hands of a central organizer, like the manager of a firm or a bureaucrat. The second is that they use social cues and motivations, rather than prices or commands, to motivate and coordinate the action of participating agents. 400 >>> digital networks, information and cultural production >>> information society >> computer technology the phenomenon is a product of the emergence of digital networks and the rising importance of information and cultural production. The wide distribution of low-cost processors, coupled with increasingly ubiquitous computation, changes the capital structure of information production. 400 >>> structural attributes : modularity, granularity, and low-cost integration 400-401 1. Commons-based peer-production relations regularly exhibit three structural attributes. First, the potential objects of peer production must be modular. That is, they must be divisible into components, or modules, each of which can be produced independently of the production of the others. This enables production to be incremental and asynchronous, pooling the individual discrete efforts of different people, with different capabilities, who are available at different times. 2. Second, the granularity of the modules is important. Granularity refers to the sizes of the project’s modules, and in order for a peer-production process successfully to pool a relatively large pool of contributors the modules should be predominantly fine-grained, or small in size. This allows the project to capture contributions from large numbers of contributors whose motivation level will not sustain anything more than quite small efforts towards the project. In addition, a project will likely be more efficient if it can accommodate variously sized contributions. Heterogeneous granularity will allow people with different levels of motivation to collaborate by contributing smaller or larger grained contributions, consistent with their level of motivation. 3. a successful peer-production enterprise must have low-cost integration—the mechanism by which the modules are integrated into a whole end product. Integration must include both quality controls over the modules and a mechanism for integrating the contributions into the finished product. First, the project must include an established, low-cost way of defending itself against both incompetent and malicious contributions. Second, the project must include a mechanism for integrating the competent modules into a finished product at sufficiently low cost. >>>Info-Gain Peer production, by contrast, allows individuals to self-identify for tasks that attract them and for which they are suited. As long as a peer-production enterprise institutes mechanisms for peer review of some sort to weed out mistakes, peer-production enterprises generate more textured and dynamically updated information about the capabilities and availability of agents for actions. 402 >>NON-PRICED BASED By definition, peer-production enterprises are non-price based, that is, they are devoid of marginal payments to contributors for contributions. 402 >>>> VOLUNTAREERISM behavior >> positive social relations. peer-production enterprises thrive on, and give opportunity for, relatively large scale and effective scope for volunteerism, or behavior motivated by, and oriented towards, positive social relations. People contribute for a variety of reasons, ranging from the pure pleasure of creation, to a particular sense of purpose, through to the companionship and social relations that grow around a common enterprise. 403 What makes peer-production enterprises work best has been the capacity to harness many people, with many and diverse motivations, towards common goals in concerted effort. 403 peer production begins to offer a rich texture in which to study the much more varied and multifarious nature of human motivation and effective human action. 403 >>> VIRTUE Taking a moral perspective, we argue that the remarkable social and technical phenomenon of commons-based peer production fosters virtue by creating a context or setting that is conducive to virtuous engagement and practice, thereby offering a medium for inducing virtue itself in its participants. 403 sociotechnical systems of commons-based peer production **particular virtues and characteristics inherent to commons-based peer prod >>> through their involvement in co-b-p-p participants are abele to develop virtuosity 405-40 cluster I :autonomy-independence-liberation -volunteerism and self selection -individuals have chosen freely to participate and are free to continue or leave -descentralized, non-hierarchical settings -as volunteers they exercise independence of will, initiative, discretion and free spiritedness. -free to act accordingly to self articulated goals and principles -liberation and self direction cluster II: creativity, productivity, industry -new creative and productive practices -active intellectual and social participation online -everyone creates and consumes -active participants :: collaborating in community networks, commenting on the news, and so on. cluster III: benevolence, charity, generosity, altruism -benefit others In helping others, in small ways such as donating spare cycles, or larger ways such as creating carefully researched encyclopedia entries without receiving conventional, tangible payments or favors in return, peers exercise kindness, benevolence, charity and generosity. 407 In the specific case of free and open source software, the literature is ambiguous on the centrality of the role that this cluster of virtues plays. Some, like Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement, seem more animated by the linkage with virtues in the autonomy and self-reliance cluster, though they also highlight themes of helping friends and neighbors through the sharing of software.20 407 Some proponents of open source, trying to bring it into the business world’s mainstream, have sought to depoliticize free software by explaining the motivations of participants in terms palatable to believers in homo economicus. ...but also talk of gift economy 407 Although it is entirely possible that the persistent and pervasive practice of spending time and effort producing something of value and giving it freely to be used by others for no compensation can be explained as self-serving behavior in pursuit of, say, reputation, a more efficient and direct explanation in many, if not most cases, is the pleasure or satisfaction of giving—generosity, kindness, benevolence. 408 CLUSTERIV: SOCIABILITY, CAMARADERIE, FRIENDSHIP, COOPERATION, CIVICVIRTUE -these virtues imply giving to a commons, a community, a public, a mission,... -promote common ends in social cooperation -similar to notions of public virtue and civic virtue the virtues also imply giving, but the open-hearted contribution is to a commons, a community, a public, a mission, or a fellowship of which the giver is a part, and the giving dimension might be only one aspect of it. Its core is a conception of the self as part of a collective and of one’s efforts as a part of a collective effort, whether the collective or common search for extra-terrestrial life, the quest for a free encyclopedia for all, or for a balanced, popular vision of advanced technologies in society. The giving, therefore, does not merely involve agents parting with something of value, but agents working in cooperation with others to give or produce something of value to all. 408 participants in a commons-based peer effort cooperate, build upon the work of others, contribute time, effort and expertise to create and enhance a public good. 409 >>>link between structure of c-b-p-p, properties, and the posibility of engagement in "creative, autonomous, benevolent, and public-spirited undertakings" ambitious claim :: c-b-p-p is connected to virtue two directions : virtue lead people to participate in cbpp projects, and that participation may give rise to virtue FLOSS values In the context of free software and open source, the rhetoric of movement leaders like Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and Eric Raymond clearly endorses the relevance of values such as autonomy, self-reliance, gift-giving, collaboration, active participation, liberation and creativity in motivating participation. 411 prove that sympathy and generosity exists >>>peer participation is prosocial there is good reason to hold that a sizable proportion of peer participation is pro- social, or morally praiseworthy in the ways discussed. 412 significant sources of virtue include good habits and practice If, as we have suggested, participation in commons-based peer production is an instance of an activity that not only enables the expression of virtuous character but serves as a training ground for virtue, it holds the potential to add to the stock of opportunities for pro-social engagement. 414 >>> tech world and materiality considering the stage not only as a social context but as the material context, designed by others, into which we must enter. For the philosophers and social scientists who study technology, this metaphor draws attention to a world in which we are constrained not only through the narratives and expectations of the self and other social agents and institutions, but by the material world which is constituted in increasing measure by technology. 416 >> tech embodies values idea that technical systems and devices, in virtue of their properties, architecture or functionality, have the capacity both to limit and to facilitate what individuals and collectivities are able do.43Rejecting the view of technology as neutral, producing outcomes only as a result of the uses and applications chosen by people, these theorists of technology, and others, hold that technology embodies values. Values may be “built into” technical design characteristics of technologies, which, in interaction with the social, political, economic and cultural characteristics of the contexts in which they are embedded, produce outcomes skewed in one way or another. 416 technical systems and devices are as much a part of political and moral life as practices, laws, regulations, institutions and norms that are more commonly seen as vehicles for moral and political values. 417 commons-based peer production generates new modes of contributing to the public good by facilitating the collaborative engagement of thousands of ordinary individuals in the voluntary, creative, communal, regular, non-commercial production of intellectual and cultural goods, for a wide variety of reasons and motives. 417 Wikipedia45call for significant commitment, work, time, patience, dedication, fairness and civic-mindedness. 418 >>> enable to contribute to the public good commons-based peer production opens a path previously restricted by economic cost and industrial organization to small numbers of professional producers of information, knowledge and culture to large numbers of ordinary people, enabling them to contribute to the public good in a particular domain. The path does not bypass virtuous action, but generates new opportunities for it. 418 ALTERNATIVE c-b-p-p as alternative to the models of production of the industrial information economy/era/society >> old institutions and firms have not adjusted to the new economics of networks, and recognized the poential and value of peer production. FLOSS The most visible conflict between commons-based peer production and incumbent firms is in the area of free or open source software. Here, FLOSS is seen as a potential alternative, and is actively supported and used by major corporations and many governments. This has led Microsoft, in particular, to try to resist these developments. 418 c-b-p-p- >> no barriers to access to information conclusion we have offered new reasons to find peer production to be a morally attractive set of social, cultural and economic practices. 419 attractiveness from the perspective of a variety of liberal commitments: to democracy, autonomy and social justice. peer production can be said to provide a social context in which to act out, and a set of social practices through which to inculcate and develop, some quite basic human, social and political virtues. 419 exceptional socio-technical phenomenon that serves not only as the source of knowledge and information but as a platform for virtuous practices and the development of virtue in its participants. 419