The digital commons refers to shared
digital resources—such as software, knowledge, data, and cultural content—that are collectively produced and governed by a community and intended for public use. These
commons
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons ...
are distinguished by open access, participatory management, and licensing practices that preserve reuse and redistribution. Digital commons play a vital role in areas such as education, research, software development, and civic engagement.
Examples of the digital commons include
wiki
A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...
s,
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
, and
open-source licensing. The distinction between digital commons and other digital resources is that the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources.
[Fuster Morell, M. (2010, p. 5). Dissertation: Governance of online creation communities: Provision of infrastructure for the building of digital commons. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/14709]
The digital commons provides the community with free and easy
access to information. Typically, information created in the digital commons is designed to stay in the digital commons by using various forms of licensing, including the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...
and various
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
licenses.
Early development
One of the first examples of digital commons is the
Free Software movement
The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for user (computing), software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets thes ...
, founded in the 1980s by
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman ( ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
as an organized attempt to create a digital software commons. Inspired by the 70s programmer culture of improving software through mutual help, Stallman's movement was designed to encourage the use and distribution of free software.
[Bollier, David. ''Viral Spiral. How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own''. New York, London, New Press http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/ViralSpiral.pdf , 2008]
To prevent the misuse of software created by the movement, Stallman founded the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...
. Free software released under this license, even if it is improved or modified, must also be released under the same license, ensuring the software stays in the digital commons, free to use.
Current Landscape
Today the digital commons takes the form of the Internet. People and organisations can share their software, photos, general information, and ideas due to the digital commons.
Mayo Fuster Morell proposed a definition of digital commons as "information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between or among a community and that tend to be non-exclusive, that is, be (generally freely) available to third parties. Thus, they are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity. Additionally, the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources".
The Foundation for P2P Alternatives explicitly aims to "creates a new public domain, an information commons, which should be protected and extended, especially in the domain of common knowledge creation" and actively promotes extending
Creative Commons Licenses
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...
.
Modern examples
Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
(CC) is a non-profit organization that provides many free copyright licenses with which contributors to the digital commons can license their work. Creative Commons is focused on the expansion of flexible
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...
. For example, popular image sharing sites like
Flickr
Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...
and
Pixabay, provide access to hundreds of millions of Creative Commons licensed images, freely available within the digital commons.
[Walljasper, Jay. ''All That We Share: How to save the Economy, the Environment, the Internet, Democracy, Our Communities, and Everything Else That Belongs to All of Us.'' New York: New, 2010.]
Creators of content in the digital commons can choose the type of Creative Commons license to apply to their works, which specifies the types of rights available to other users. Typically, Creative Commons licenses are used to restrict the work to non-commercial use.
Wikis
Wiki
A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...
s are a huge contribution to the digital commons, serving information while allowing members of the community to create and edit content. Through wikis, knowledge can be pooled and compiled, generating a wealth of information from which the community can draw.
Public software repositories
Following in the spirit of the
Free Software movement
The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for user (computing), software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets thes ...
,
public software repositories are a system in which communities can work together on open-source software projects, typically through
version control
Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code t ...
systems such as
Git
Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively.
Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and suppor ...
and
Subversion
Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to sabotage the established social order and its structures of Power (philosophy), power, authority, tradition, h ...
. Public software repositories allow for individuals to make contributions to the same project, allowing the project to grow bigger than the sum of its parts. A popular platform hosting public and open source software repositories is
GitHub
GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...
.
City Top Level Domains
Top Level Domains or TLDs are Internet resources that facilitate finding the numbered computers on the Internet. The largest and most familiar TLD is .com. Beginning in 2012, ICANN, the California not-for-profit controlling access to the Domain Name System, began issuing names to cities. More than 30 cities applied for their TLDs, with .paris, .london, .nyc, .tokyo having been issued as of May 2015. A detailing of some commons names within the .nyc TLD includes neighborhood names, voter related names, and civic names.
Precious Plastic
Precious Plastic is an
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
project which promotes recycling of plastic through the use of hardware and business models which are available for free under
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
license.
It collaboratively designs and publishes designs, codes, source materials and business models which can be used by any person or group to start a
plastic recycling project of their own.
The online platform also consists of an online shop where hardware and recycled plastic products can be bought. As of January 2020, more than 80,000 people from around the world are working on some type of Precious Plastic project.
Digital Commons as a policy
In October 2020 the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...
adopted its new Open Source Software Strategy 2020–2023. The main goal of the strategy being the possibility to achieve European wide digital sovereignty.
It has been recognized that open source impacts the digital autonomy of Europe and it is likely that open source can give Europe a chance to create and maintain its own, independent digital approach and stay in control of its processes, its information, and its technology.
The digital strategy makes it clear that ‘collaborative working methods will be the norm within the Commission’s IT community to foster the sharing of code, data and solutions’. The principal working methods encouraged by this open-source strategy are open, inclusive and co-creative. Wherever it makes sense to do so, the Commission will share the source code of its future IT projects.
For publication of these projects, the
European Union public licence (EUPL) will be preferred. The Commission will focus these efforts on an EU-centric digital government code repository (for ex. one in Estonia) In addition, the developers will be free to make occasional contributions to closely related open-source projects. The principles and actions of the new open-source strategy will make it easier to obtain permission to share code with the outside world.
Open data
Both definitions of Open Data and Commons revolve around the concept of shared resources with a low barrier to access.
Open Data
Open data are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license.
The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-so ...
usually is linked to data produced by the government and make available to public but it can come from many sources like science, non-profit organizations and society in general.
Open-source agriculture
Open-source agriculture emerges as a technology-oriented social movement. It aligns itself with other technology- and product-oriented movements, which seek to create alternative technological practices and artifacts. Examples of such movements range from the
Luddite movement of the nineteenth century, which opposed profit-driven technologies, to the appropriate technology movement of the 1970s, advocating for human-centered, small-scale, affordable, and environmentally friendly technology with local autonomy. Additionally, the organic food movement promoting alternative agricultural methods and the open-source software and hardware movement opposing proprietary software and hardware production have contributed to the legacy on which open-source agriculture now builds.
Open-source agriculture follows the principles of open-source software development, facilitating the sharing of agricultural knowledge, practices, and data within the farming community. By encouraging collaboration and transparency, this movement aims to enhance innovation and efficiency in farming practices. Farmers can freely access, modify, and redistribute information, empowering them with customizable agricultural technologies and solutions suited to their unique contexts. By adopting open-source principles, open-source agriculture strives to foster sustainability and resilience in the agricultural sector while challenging traditional proprietary approaches. Through its inclusive approach to agricultural innovation, the movement seeks to create a more equitable and sustainable future for farmers and communities worldwide.
Issues
Opportunity of digital commons
The usage of digital commons has led to the disruption of industries that benefited from publishing (authors and publishers) while providing potential to other industries. Many wikis help to pass knowledge to be used in a productive manner. They also have increased opportunities in education, healthcare, manufacturing, governance, finance, science, etc.
Massive open online course
A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the World Wide Web, Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and p ...
s (MOOCs) are a great example of opportunities that digital commons bring, by bringing the opportunity to access high quality education to many people.
Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic () is a Nonprofit organization, private American Academic health science centre, academic Medical centers in the United States, medical center focused on integrated health care, healthcare, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science ...
is another example of spreading the medical knowledge to public availability. Nowadays most scientific journals have an online presence as well.
Gender imbalance in digital commons
The traditional under-representation of women and the lack of gender diversity in the field of
STEM and in the
programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming.
The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...
culture is also present in digital commons-based initiatives like
open science
Open science is the movement to make scientific research (including publications, data, physical samples, and software) and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society, amateur or professional. Open science is transparent and accessib ...
and open-source-software projects like
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
or
OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap (abbreviated OSM) is a free, Open Database License, open geographic database, map database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveying, surveys, trace from Ae ...
. Also smaller initiatives, like
hackerspaces
A hackerspace (also referred to as a hacklab, hackspace, or makerspace) is a community-operated, often "not for profit" (501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) in the United States), workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, mac ...
,
makerspaces or
fab labs are characterized by a considerable gender gap among their participants.
There are different initiatives trying to face these challenges and bridging this gap by providing and creating empowering spaces where women and non-binary persons can experiment, exchange and learn with and from each other.
Feminist hackerspaces were founded as a reaction to women's experiences of sexism, harassment and misogyny shown by the
brogrammer culture in hackerspaces. Besides closing the gender gap among participants and creating
safe spaces for female and non-binary persons, some projects additionally want to visualize the under-representation and lack of gender-related topics in the movements and in the outcome of their work. The collective
Geochicas for example is engaged in the OpenStreetMap community looking on maps through a feminist lens and visualize data linked to
gender
Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
and
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
. One project launched during 2016 and 2017 aimed to map cancer clinics and feminicides in Nicaragua. In the same years Geochicas created visibility campaigns on Twitter under the hashtag "#MujeresMapeandoElMundo" and the “International Survey on Gender Representation”. In 2018 they created a virtual map by analyzing data from OpenStreetMap to rise awareness of the lack of representation of women's names on the streets of cities in Latin America and Spain.
Tragedy of digital commons
Based on the
tragedy of the commons
The tragedy of the commons is the concept that, if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised vo ...
and
digital divide
The digital divide is the unequal access to information technology, digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide worsens inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information ...
, Gian Maria Greco and Luciano Floridi
have described the "tragedy of digital commons". As with the tragedy of the commons, the problem of the tragedy of the digital commons lies in the population and arises in two ways:
# the average user of the information technology (
infosphere) behaves in the way
Hardin's herdsmen behave by exploiting common resources until they no longer can recover, meaning that users do not pay attention to the consequences of their behaviour (for example, by overloading of the traffic by wanting to access the webpage as quick as possible).
# the pollution of the infosphere, i.e., the indiscriminate and improper usage of the technology and digital resources and
overproduction
In economics, overproduction, oversupply, excess of supply, or glut refers to excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market. This leads to lower prices and/or unsold goods along with the possibility of unemployment.
T ...
of data. This brings excess information that leads to corruption of communication and
information overload. An example of this is
spam
Spam most often refers to:
* Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
...
, which takes up to 45% of email traffic.
The tragedy of the digital commons also considers other artificial agents, like
computer worms, that can self-replicate and spread within computer systems, leading to digital pollution.
See also
*
Knowledge commons
The term "knowledge commons" refers to information, data, and content that is collectively owned and managed by a community of users, particularly over the Internet. What distinguishes a knowledge commons from a commons of shared physical resources ...
*
Commons
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons ...
*
Tragedy of the commons
The tragedy of the commons is the concept that, if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised vo ...
References
External links
1st International Forum on digital commons{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160211144603/http://www.digital-commons.net/ , date=2016-02-11
Computer law
Copyleft
Digital rights
Economics of intellectual property
Public commons