Pushing back a bit suits me as well. Just finished chapter 2 yesterday. Didn’t make a lot of notes, and in any case I think @chadkoh bullet points provide a really good snapshot.
Given it is my favoured theory/philosophy, I was curious if explicit reference was going to be made to complexity theory/science and its key ideas. Considering the period (1990) I’m not surprised it wasn’t, but the complexity Ostrom articulates throughout the chapter hints at benefits to conceptualising and modelling CPR’s as Complex Adaptive Systems.
A little searching turned up these more recent publications, and suggest Ostrom’s work itself has since proved foundational for researching the Commons from a complexity theory perspective…
“how do past commitments bind the appropriator to future sacrifices? And given that it may be possible to steal water without being observed, how do the other appropriators know that commitments are actually being kept? No one wants to be a “sucker,” keeping a promise that everyone else is breaking.”
“To assume that the incentives are offered in a decentralized way, by mutual monitoring, gives rise to a second-order free-rider problem.”
“the ease of observing and measuring appropriator activities”
This worries me a little bit. She has mentioned this a few times now in the second chapter. Can a CPR really not be stable without monitoring the appropriators? Although I guess using the word “monitoring” makes it sound worse than it actually is, maybe it just means that people need keep each other in check?
A lot of questions after this chapter, but I guess that’s the intention. I may need to re-read this chapter before continuing to the next though.
There are some details in this chapter that I didn’t fully grasp either. But I am going to continue on to Ch3 to see her framework in action with some examples before going back and re-reading the last third of Ch2, which is really dense.
I was thinking it might be in the direction of a previous Fission book club:
@jessmartin is a big fan of that book (@b5 also flashed it to me once from his bookshelf) but I have not read it yet. I think she does some work adapting Ostrom’s work to FOSS. Can anyone chime in and enlighten us?
Hey all, we are thinking of booking a call next Thursday for a check in. It would be nice to know what your timezones are if you want to get on the call.
EG, Philipp is in Germany and I am in Japan. So if we do my evening it is his morning. It kinda puts Toronto very early though:
So, ROLL CALL! What timezone are you reading from?
Sorry everyone, this is a little long. It is a roundup with some interesting quotes pulled out, with some of my observations and questions.
covers successful examples in Switzerland, Japan, Spain, Philippines
some of these date back to 1000 years!
details how groups solve two of the major puzzles discussed in Chapter 2: the problem of commitment and the problem of mutual monitoring.
Restrictive rules have been established by the appropriators to constrain appropriation activities and mandate provisioning activities.
“all face uncertain and complex environments” UNCERTAINTY is key. Thus the need for an adaptable, local system
fines are surprisingly low… large monetary fines may produce resentment and unwillingness to conform to the rules in the future.
==In thinking about software development, are the PROVISIONERS == MAINTAINERS? Is that different from the CONSTRUCTORS?==
5 attributes of land-use patterns with the differences between communal and individual land tenure (applies to both Swiss and Japan examples):
the value of production per unit of land is low
the frequency or dependability of use or yield is low
the possibility of improvement or intensification is low
a large territory is needed for effective use
relatively large groups arc required for capital-investment activities
figuring out the right metric is important and it is not necessarily simple and might take generations of trial and error to be figured out… oh, and also, there could be a number of metrics/conditions that have to be met simultaneously. Not monocausal!
water courts! “oral, public, summary, and cheap”
level of monitoring that is used in the huertas is very high
after Alicante was recovered from the Muslims rights to withdraw water for fixed time periods were separated from ownership of land and a market in these rights existed apart from the market for land.
many owners of land sold their water rights to others or regularly rented their rights
Holders of both new and old water rights obtain “scrip” equivalent to their recorded water rights in denominations from one hour down to one-third of a minute.
==In OSS is MONITORING the problem? Is that the solution that something like utilities token can help with?==
A few parcels, located at the tail end of the system, are assigned to officials of the association as payment for their services. … enhances the incentives for those in leadership positions to try to get water to the tail end of the system.
Precedence is given to parcels with the greatest need (Common practice across all these examples)
none of the examples featured participants that varied greatly across a number of characteristics
Interesting observation. And if there WAS disparity? What would that entail? Does this actually describe OSS? Say for example, you have an irrigation system controlling the water. There are 5 plots of similarly sized rice land AND a Coca Cola factory that uses the water to make their product. It is kind of like a giant corp using an open source library to sell their product at massive scale. The providers/constructors are massively outnumbered by the appropriators, and don’t have similar benefits.
Ostrom’s 7 Design Principles (tentative)
Clearly defined boundaries
Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions
Collective-choice arrangements
Monitoring
Graduated sanctions
Conflict-resolution mechanisms
Minimal recognition of rights to organize
Nested enterprises
==QUESTION: What is the diff between common property and open access?==
Strategic actors are willing to comply with a set of rules, Levi argues, when (1) they perceive that the collective objective is achieved, and (2) they perceive that others also comply.
Perceiving others is a key part of building culture!
The costs of monitoring are low in many long-enduring CPRs as a result of the rules in use (eg. Irrigators are side-by-side, and keep an eye on one another as they pass responsibility)
Interesting. So far in OSS I’ve thought of the common resource as not the code, but the maintainer’s time, with the problem being that the maintainer’s time per month is relatively fixed and needs to be used sustainably. (of course this can change with more maintainers up to a certain degree, contributions, etc.)
Unsustainable use then happens when too many things demand the maintainer’s time. E.g. tons of feature requests without any contributions or bugs reports without additional information, etc. Or even a sudden surge of contributions without the maintainer being able to dedicate time to reviewing them.
I guess the “code is the commons” view of OSS is somehow more intuitive Although I don’t know whether it has this property that “the more it’s used, the more likely it’ll be gone forever” (I fail at using Ostrom’s established terms here ).
We should definitely look at her model at the end and see how it applies to different parts of OSS.
Yes I have definitely seen “the scarce resource is maintainer time” framing for sure. So with that in mind, maybe we can think through who the three actors are in OSS:
Keeping these quotes in mind:
The term I use to refer to those who arrange for the provision of a CPR is “providers.” I use the term “producer” to refer to anyone who actually constructs, repairs, or takes actions that ensure the long-term sustenance of the resource system itself. Frequently, providers and producers arc the same individuals, but they do not have to be…
A national government may provide an irrigation system in the sense of arranging for its financing and design. It may then arrange with local farmers to produce and maintain it. If local farmers are given the authority to arrange for maintenance, then they become both the providers and the producers of maintenance activities related to a CPR.
CPR = maintainer time
APPROPRIATORS = Consumers of OSS
PROVIDERS = (the Maintainers?)
PRODUCERS = the Maintainers
There is sure to be a lot of thinking out there already on this, so we probably don’t need to rebuild the wheel. Has anyone read Working in Public?
I haven’t read it, but I like the thought exercise, even if someone else has perhaps been thinking through this already. But here’s how I’d get more specific about the associations:
CPR = maintainer time
APPROPRIATORS = Consumers of OSS, who need new features or bugs fixed. In short: consumers of OSS who need changes.
PROVIDERS = Maintainers, but perhaps also companies that pay maintainers? Open collective-type things? Donators?
Below are a few half-formed takeaways/thoughts/discussion placeholders from chapter 3 (without yet reading what others have posted above)…
"not yet turned up an example of a commons that suffered ecological destruction while it was still a commons”
reminds me of history of corporations and the idea they started by providing capital to the community they were embedded within, and therefore never became extractive of/from that community. Contrast that with global corps that are “place-less” and highly extractive/destructive
graduated penalties based on past behaviour of offender
criticality of decision making (such as setting rules) by those closest to/most familiar with the local context and the key factors that need to be considered (“situational awareness”)
“As a drought period continues, the syndic and his representatives take more and more responsibility for determining how long each farmer may have water”
“There will always be instances in which those who are basically committed to following the set of rules may succumb to strong temptations to break them”
this hints at problems when strong sense of scarcity/precarity is felt and people may be drawn into decisions that prioritise themselves above the collective (“survival instinct”, self-preservation, “every man for himself”)
is (perceived) scarcity a control parameter that can instigate a phase transition between states of “competition” and “cooperation”???
Can we get stuck in a (vicious) loop of perceived scarcity<>hyper-competition?
how do you break that loop (all the way up to the societal scale)? Can we craft and propagate narratives of abundance and cooperation?
“The maestro has the challenging job of motivating individuals to contribute many hours of physically exhausting labor in times of emergency”
heroic/motivational leader model in times of emergency?
appropriators keeping monitors in check
this is different from many compliance officers who hold significant power over those (employees/workers) they are monitoring, who also often have had little say in establishing the rules
Some tangental thoughts here related to my professional role and interest in informal sport participation (“pick up” games etc)
pickup sport as a commons? Particularly adapting rules based on local context
thinking about our work with a hockey federation where the discussion was around strategic intent of kids getting to play a game and adapting to make that happen, ie if umpires aren’t available then play without umpires. The only “failure” is if the kids didn’t get to play a game of some sort
also the case where kids adapt the rules/teams to keep the game competitive and “alive”…again the success/failure is determined by the sustaining of the game and rules are adapted to achieve that
compare with the rigidity of formal youth sport competitions/leagues where the game is governed by external authorities (and increasingly in the interests of making profit for adults at the expense of children’s enjoyment, wellbeing and long-term development)
As opposed to the emergency dictator from above, I think this line was just in reference to the Philippines right? And the diplomatic skill it takes to convince a bunch of people to do a lot of back-breaking labour. (If I recall the context of this quote). So I would say your “motivational” is correct, but I am not sure about the “heroic”.
On your point about pickup games, some interesting musings here. When you read Graeber’s Dawn of Everything you will see a bunch of mentions of self-organizing and “play”… fun is a great motivator!
Hi all, unfortunately I don’t think I am going to join the call…it will be late here in Adelaide, South Australia (10:30pm) and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open after what has been a somewhat hectic week.
“Using” community resources — chat / forum discussions / issue queue
Filing issues of any kind, from bugs to feature requests.
Documentation is part of the commons. Also no boundaries on it, but in part “solves” for preserving /scaling maintainer time. So contributions to documentation is also something valuable.
“Merely” using the code isn’t consumption.
Where the boundaries of this system are is the hardest to define.
Yes the boundaries is a good shout, and number 1 of Ostroms 8 Design principles.
During our call we whiteboarded a simple example, trying to tie together our current understanding of Ostrom’s framework (only having read half the book!) to FOSS. It was a good exercise and I think I have a much more sophisticated view. I would like to draft that up here maybe tomorrow to be the starting point for another round of critique.
Although I don’t know whether it has this property that “the more it’s used, the more likely it’ll be gone forever” (I fail at using Ostrom’s established terms here 
).