The document discusses various types of commons, including GPL, educational, data, and hardware commons, highlighting the community norms and licensing challenges that characterize them. It emphasizes the tension between openness and the risks of enclosures, along with the importance of community policing to safeguard these commons. Additionally, it addresses issues of sustainability and privacy across different domains of openness.

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