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.
Just an FYI but I am only halfway through Ch4, and I think Philipp and Steven are not caught up either. So I am shooting for a Ch4 commentary by the next Friday.
No pressure all! We do this because we enjoy it, not because we have to.
This chapter covers some examples of water rights in California. It also covers the institutional formation of a new water district which spanned multiple water basins.
despite the topic, the reading can get pretty dry
throughout the chapter we see a heavy reliance on the courts (This is America!)
The Problem
A lot of over-extraction:
the pumping-cost externality: “Pumping costs increase as the pumping lift increases, because of falling water levels, and therefore each person’s withdrawals increase the pumping costs for others.”
“Given the uncertain legal structure, attorneys advising water companies and public utilities had consistently advised their clients to pump as much water as they could profitably use and worry about defending their water rights later.” Lawyers! :shakes-fist:
Transparency
In order to come to an agreement to work together, they needed a shared picture:
“essential to know the quantities supplied and demanded from a basin to determine the presence or absence of a surplus.” So they got in 3rd party surveyors. Knowing how much of the resources is, and its replenishment rate came up in previous chapters.
Given the accuracy of the information and its ease of access, each pumper knows what everyone else is doing, and each knows that his or her own groundwater extractions will be known by all others. Thus, the information available to the parties closely approximates “common knowledge,”
Some key points on Monitoring
“Instead of perceiving itself as an active policing agency, the watermaster service tries to be a neutral, monitoring agency.”
Makes me think of the role of professional police vs community policing. If everyone is bought in to the community, you shouldn’t need hierarchical police beating people down…
“The levels of quasi-voluntary compliance with the final judgments in all of these court decisions have been extremely high.”
She is highlighting voluntary compliance, but I was like: there still is a court… but I guess in the US the courts are general use. Other cultures might have a “water court” but the US is generally a very litigious place
“participants continue to have control over the monitoring system”
this is a key point. The funders provide the budget for the watermaster and can petition the court to have them replaced if they are not perceived at doing well
Creating new institutions
“No one ‘owns’ 9 the basins themselves. The basins arc managed by a polycentric set of limited-purpose governmental enterprises whose governance includes active participation by private water companies and voluntary producer associations. This system is neither centrally owned nor centrally regulated.”
Take that private enterprisists and socialists!
I love the position of THE POLYCENTRIC PUBLIC-ENTERPRISE GAME. “polycentric” is such a key term
“Instead of relying strictly on hierarchical relations … the management system is governed by negotiation and bargaining processes among many different actors in several different arenas.” and “Strict majority-rule procedures are rarely used in any of the decision arenas governing this system.”
Consensus vs the tyranny of the majority!
she points out that having a shared view was the first step to getting alignment on interests,
she points out that in California, once an institution is formed their system makes it easy to be applied elsewhere: “participants in one setting could learn from the experiences of those in similar settings” which we see in FOSS all the time.
Other
There are some interesting nodes to rule systems that I thought I would bring up since there are a lot of programmers here in this convo:
Institutional rules are prescriptive statements that forbid, require, or permit some action or outcome
One of the three deontic operators-forbid, require, permit-must be contained in a statement for it to be considered a rule
is the concept of “deontic operators” used in PL theory?
In trying to apply an Ostrom framework for OSS, we quickly identified that the resource is not the “code” itself. We identified “hours” as the limited resource that needs management. As we worked through an example on our Halfway Call, we came to some more conclusions. I thought I would try and capture it below. This is all WIP of course, as we read the book, but take a look at this as a way to think through it:
CSR = Work
Maybe that term is too general… but it basically comes down to the labour needed to maintain and grow a project.
Formerly we said “hours” but I think this could be more expanded to include things that make those hours more “productive”, for example supplying resources like infratstructure, more experienced talent (which makes those hours more efficient), or even automation.
Work includes things like:
maintenance
issue grooming
reviewing PRs
implementing new features
documentation, documentation, documentation
etc
PRODUCERS of the WORK:
Founding developer (aka the initiating STEWARD)
Hobbyists
Other Open Source Projects, large and small
Small Firms
Large Firms
How does each actor produce/contribute to the Work? How does this change over the lifecycle of a project?
At first the founding developer might start with just dedicating evening and weekend hours. They might be able to secure income in order to dedicate more of thier time. As the project grows in popularity, a firm might take over the stewardship, dedicating financial resources, talent, infrastructure, etc to the project.
APPROPRIATORS of the WORK:
Founding developer
Hobbyists
Other Open Source Projects, large and small
Small Firms
Large Firms
Key point here is that the “work” of an Open Source project is created and consumed by the same types of actors in the ecosystem (even if it is not all the actors in an ecosystem)
Everybody seems to be slowing down a bit. Well, here is my overview of Chapter 5:
This chapter covers a number CPR examples that are not doing well. Each case study is full of detail, and at the very end she puts them all in a matrix alongside some of the previous examples with her design principles (and some more criteria) thusly:
national governments trying to horn in on local business almost always went bad
fishermen in Canada
Nepal passed the “Private Forests Nationalization Act” and then just a few years later rescinded it when they realized it “disrupted previously established communal control over local forests”
same for bringing in labour who did not have such a close connection to the resource… this also goes for people who owned just shares in the harvested resources.
incentives need to be aligned at the local level
lack of proper monitoring and sanctions was big in some of these examples
“The costs of overcoming size differences and heterogeneity are substantial.”
“In a political regime that does not provide arenas in which low-cost, enforceable agreements can be reached, it is very difficult to meet the potentially high costs of self-organization.”
but not all is lost, as in the care of Gal Olya, Sri Lanka which was able to be turned around with some external pressure to organize locally
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 
).
