P2P Economics and Commons-Based Reciprocity Licenses

@simontegg - Do you want to focus on P2P economics or reciprocity licenses or their interaction? Or did you just want to get these topics out of the already overloaded openappsjs update discussion?;-}

@bobhaugen not too worried, I guess the latter :)

My initial thoughts are that I'm keen for CBRL that:
* allows non-commercial organisations to use the software freely
* encourages commercial, commons/mission-oriented organisations to autonomously set their own license 'fee' ideally as a percentage of revenue in projects that use the software, even if this amount is token. These might be Open-Value Networks, worker coops, social enterprises etc. Unsure about non-profits 'cos IKEA, FIFA and so on are non-profits and they mostly use it as a tax loop hole.
* asks commercial for-profit entities to pay license fee unless they contribute to the code. For simplicity this might be a flat yearly fee. A % of revenue might be too hard a sell.

#Reference #License #PeerProduction

Nice. For reference, link to one of such licenses :
http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License

#Money #Governance #Power #Centralization

May be interesting to find out what variants can be developed, understand where money flows to when forking code, and understanding , if all money flows to the same organization, how the money is managed ( and if other people contributing to code and/or forking it have their say ? ).

#Permissiveness #Virality #vsLibre

Also understand the viral aspect of such licenses, and how permissive they can be.

How different from Libre licenses, viral or non viral ? (GPL , MIT , ... )

#Stakeholders #SocialEconomy #Sales #Pitch

I imagine early adopters within the "social economy" segment of economic activity may be interested by these kinds of licenses. Will it bridge to other segments of the economy ? Possibly government related ?

In Europe, it is estimated that 1 job in 10 is occupied by what they call "The Social Economy". ( http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/promoting-entrepreneurship/social-economy/ )

What interest would small or bigger for profit companies have in supporting it ? Because its cheaper ( is it ? ) ? Because there is more "fairness" ? ( and is there really , more fairness ? ) More transparency ? Because it works better ? Or because it is a better way of enabling the financing of research and development, in a networked approach, with less money spent on paying shareholder dividends related to proprietary licenses ?

#Overlap #Governance #Ideology #History

And how does it relate, broader speaking, in terms of "ideologies" ? Can it enable a convergence, a synthesis, a diversity, an "update" ?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/econowmix/geolibertarian/econowmix/GAS-FIKODcE/zVl-YFV9-m0J

#PeerProduction License" Vs ( updating ? ) #GeoLibertarianism , #Mutualism , #Distributism , ...

Synergies possible ?

Can, for example,
certain licenses such as forms of Peer Production Licenses
http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License

be adapted for forms of GeoLibertarianism ( or Mutualism, or Distributism , ... )

in a way that updates the notion of commons, and income through labour
( knowledge as commons , automation, ... ? )

in some of these ideologies ( midst others ),
ideologies seem to have developed when production may have been more dependent on land,
or when ( older notions of ? ) labour was still much more central to production ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism

Geolibertarians consider land to be the common property of all humankind. They say that private property is derived from an individual's right to the fruits of their labor. Since land was not created by anyone's labor, it cannot be rightfully owned. Thus, geolibertarians recognize a right to secure possession of land (land tenure), on the condition that the full rental value be paid to the community. This, they say, has the effect of both giving back the value that belongs to the community and encouraging landholders to only use as much land as they need, leaving unneeded land for others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_%28economic_theory%29

#Forums #Loomio

Interesting to look into other conversations around license, on loomio forums :

https://www.loomio.org/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_form[query]=license

#Tax #Redistribution #TaxEvasion #Power

If one considers a fee ,
and if such fee is applied to people outside of the not for profit and peer production realm, how to determine who has the power to decide who is who ?

If one for example imagines corporations setting up not for profits to conglomerate common interests amongst them, conglomerates which would be supporting peer production related to their own interests, while using tools developed by organizations and people supporting peer production licenses ?

First, would it be counter productive to exclude them ?
And second, would it be considered as "tax evasion" if they are included, contribute , yet do not pay fees while enabling them to develop peerproduced components or services supporting , further in the chain, other proprietary components or services ?

#vsTesla ?

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

#ConsumerPower ? #Commons #Governance #Strategy #ResourceAllocation #CommonsTax #Investments #Reputation #Transparency

Or, let the ( corporate ? ) "consumer" who pays the license choose where to allocate the money to ?

With choice of allocation of funds determined within a specific networked conglomerate of research and development / commons ?

Hence power residing in deciding who would be part, or not, of such network ?

Allocating 1/3 of funds to initial developers ( not in their pockets, but a not for profit pool for re-investing money - with transparent funding , and limits to personal enrichment - ) ?
1/3 distributed evenly to all developers in the network ( hence a defacto funding by joining the network ? )
1/3 decided by the corporate licensee consumer ? ( in a commons that corresponds to his/her preferences and/or strategic interests ? )

Combining it with a reputation based "reversed debt" approach ?

http://cashwiki.org/en/Debt_to_Intention

For which semantic technologies would be used ?
http://sharewiki.org/en/Transaction_Graphs
http://sharewiki.org/en/Transaction_Graphs_2014

@bobhaugen @simontegg i put together this map when we were looking to figure out which license we wanted to put Metamaps out under: http://metamaps.cc/maps/32

As i think was pointed out by Bob earlier, the PPL isn't written for software at all. There's a few licenses that we managed to find that were 'off the beaten path' - these are in the map.

The Visage license basically equates to a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license ported to software.

The Humanitarian license by Inder Coman, if rewritten somehow to refer to the Commons, cooperatives, etc. could potentially serve a similar purpose as the PPL for software.

Also, there is potentially a simpler route, as it is possible to dual-license with AGPL, then permit licenses for companies who do not want to give back to the Commons. There are quite a few companies out there who are doing this, however its not always taken the best by the open source community. There are some sticky questions in relation to governance and extraction of wealth from contributors if its done this way as well.

All these point to a different issue as well - if you've got multiple developers contributing to the code base, is the IP consolidated and held by a single entity or is it distributed? It can't just simply be put 'in the public domain', this isn't even possible legally in some jurisdictions. If it is distributed ownership, for actual litigation purposes (not that I ever want us or anyone else to have to enter into that), there can be no entity which legally can defend those rights if they are violated. This is why FSF makes their contributors assign the IP to the custodian/steward (a non-profit entity).

Here is another structured conversation we're having that is ongoing around IP governance and contributors agreements, because this ties in with the IP and licensing question quite closely - http://metamaps.cc/maps/933

I'll stop here now because I don't want to crowd too much into one post here, but to summarize:

TL:DR
- we didn't use PPL because its not designed for software, but there's other licenses that can potentially be 'hacked' to provide commons-based reciprocity functionality
- someone/some entity's gotta hold the IP in order to actually be able to enforce the CBR of it, otherwise its a bit pointless
- a strategy related to Contributors License Agreements (CLAs) or Contributors Assignment Agreements (CAAs) should be considered, in relation to the license and possible evolution of it.

@ishanshapiro - nice overview of the licensing landscape.

Stacco, Michel and others are working on a new commons reciprocal license, but it won't be ready until next year. You can read about it here:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/a-short-video-on-commons-based-reciprocity-licenses/2014/09/21
http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-4-value-and-currency/invited-comments/between-copyleft-and-copyfarleft-advance-reciprocity-for-the-commons/

Their opinion is that it is good to adopt the PPL as-is now as a statement of solidarity. If the open apps gang does so, we will do likewise. Might add some language.

Re enforcement: in my opinion, it's only possible by moral suasion and reputation effects on people who care about that. Only way to get to commercial companies with money and lawyers is to become like a patent troll, get some sharks and go into it for blood.

In other words, its mostly a political statement. Which can be useful.

That's from my viewpoint. I expect Metamaps will have a different viewpoint. I remember some long conversations about this stuff with the Dojo gang when they were setting up a foundation and adopting CLAs. They had eyes on enterprise markets, where the legalese matters. We don't.

Thanks for the info @bobhaugen. I agree that its mostly a political statement at this time, and there can definitely be a utility in that. I don't necessarily have too different of a viewpoint on this than you, but I am interested in knowing the possible scenarios of how actually this stuff plays out besides on a 'statement' level.

If Openapp is to grow (and for me as a participant and as a metamaps affiliate to get behind it/contribute), I feel it important that governance is pretty clear, I've read plenty of stories about how by not even having bad intentions, but simply confusing approaches to the license which code is being contributed under, can be a disincentivisation for many developers to collaborate.

in terms of governance, if you do decide to adopt now, know that to change the license going forward is a matter of governance and points to the issue of shared ownership, where everyone who's work is part of it explicitly agrees to changing the license together. If one person doesn't, well it could get sticky for the whole project.

or not, with the code of that contributor is not of critical importance and/or could be rewritten and replaced.

If it is held by one entity, there can be a group decision making process still that is defined (could be 'only with consensus of all contributors', or '2/3 majority' or any other decision-making mode) Not impossible by any means, but it is a consideration worthy of attention.

Just good to scenario out all the implications. Our network as it stands hasn't come to an explicit agreement about this issue, however the vast majority of the code has been written by Connor and so its fairly straightforward at this time. We are thinking about how do we best facilitate the project to grow and evolve by engaging with other developers?

Right now I personally am leaning towards having all the rights to the code held by one person who acts as custodian/steward and defers to a defined governance rubric/framework (until we have an entity which acts as custodian, again with defined governance framework) so that we can remain open to changing our license from AGPL to an evolved AGPL, or a CBR license, or to a more permissive license, if that makes most sense. Each can really be, as you put it, a political statement in one form or another, as well as a incentive or disincentive (depending on the community) for participation, and our approach was that AGPL makes the most sense for the growth and evolution of our network, and the platform, at the current stage, holding the possibility that another license may make the most sense for the growth and evolution of the network at a different stage.

we've been discussing licenses at Bevry: bevry/meta#16. i'm interested in a license (which i realize now is similar to the CBR license) where:

• if you are using the software to build libre software, you may use it for free like a copyleft license
• if you are a not-for-profit or worker-owned business, you may use it for free like a copyfarleft license
• if you are a "contributor"[0], you may use it for free like a like a reciprocity license
• if you are using the software to build any non-libre software, are for-profit, are not a "contributor"[0], you must share a percentage of your revenue like a reciprocity license

[0] i define "contributors" as the project members. to become a contributor, it's not enough to get a pull request merged (in services like tip4commit we see people trying to push many minor pull requests so they can get tips), you need to provide continued quality contributions and have a decision in favor from existing contributors. currently, i think this sort of arrangement needs a contributor agreement to work properly, so contributions are assigned to the project members and each member agrees to the project's group process while joining.

The main problem with PPL type of licenses is that they introduce criteria based on the social structures people participate in.

But we are in a period of transition and we are building tools that will create new forms of social structures.

Unless we reach to a point where we know what those structures will be, how can we create a license based on them?

So it would be better for now to simply use (A/L)GPL.

@ahdinosaur - I like where you are going with your outline above. We have thought about how to use something like value network - contribution economy rules for our software project if we ever get enough contributors to make it work.

We figured git commits are economic events, but the value of work would be set by group ratings for issues. In other words, you don't get credit for each commit, you get credit for the issue you resolved. And then all of the proposed work of all kinds goes into the issues list, and gets value-rated.

@apostolisxekoukoul - these kinds of discussions and experiments are actually part of the transition. They are (at least for me) not really legal questions, they are questions about how we want to relate about work and livelihoods. Hope that is clear enuf?

@bobhaugen I am not against discussing about the licences, but the discussion should be done from a technical point of view.

How will our collaborative/legal/material infrastructure transform the productive social structures?

We need to specify this first and then start talking about licenses. Since the above question is a difficult one, I would advice to be cautious at making conclusions.

@xekoukou so what is your opinion on how our collaborative/legal/material infrastructure will transform the productive social structures?

to me, i see holons as the fundamental unit of social structure, so i see our collaborative/legal/material infrastructure as a means to support that structure.

Related via @dominictarr
https://feedopensource.com/
http://dominictarr.com/post/71958587606/some-thoughts-on-the-economics-of-software-development

@simontegg - https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/co-op - from the comments on feedopensource - is also interesting.

(By "interesting", I mean as a datapoint in a graph of related ideas about how to fund open software.)

@ahdinosaur
I want our infrastructure to allow
1) users to determine what is to be produced.
2)users to directly invest their money to projects themselves (not banks).

3)producers/workers to peer produce meaning that
a)there is coordination for the work that needs to be done,
b)there is a method of accounting of the work done,
c)workers have equal power and control at whichever place they work and thus equal earnings.
4)peer production to be dynamic, to change easily as needs change.
5)for a global coordination of the economy(across the chains of productions and taking into account the global needs of a society).

Social (sub)structures of society will emerge so as to reduce complexity (information overhead).

I don't know much about holons to have an opinion but from what I read, it is similar to what I say.

@ahdinosaur
I want our infrastructure to allow
1) users to determine what is to be produced.
2)users to directly invest their money to projects themselves (not banks).

3)producers/workers to peer produce meaning that
a)there is coordination for the work that needs to be done,
b)there is a method of accounting of the work done,
c)workers have equal power and control at whichever place they work and thus equal earnings.
4)peer production to be dynamic, to change easily as needs change.
5)for a global coordination of the economy(across the chains of productions and taking into account the global needs of a society).

Social (sub)structures of society will emerge so as to reduce complexity (information overhead).

I don't know much about holons to have an opinion but from what I read, it is similar to what I say.

Silke Helfrich wrote about a "Commons Creating Peer Production" Licence that evolves exactly out of the idea of reproducing the Commons instead of only using them.

@jonrichter - good article, altho I am reading it via google translate...a Guerrilla Translator version would be much better. And I like the name and idea. I did not see the license in that article, though - did I miss something?

She mentions it in footnote seven. Tweet her at @commonify to request a translation ;)

See also https://plus.google.com/u/0/116589201391591303703/posts/gqHwvbtdeSa

@lynnfoster - that (above) is a link to the conversation I was talking about.

@ahdinosaur what you describe is EXACTLY what we're working to achieve through CM.

the best I can do in figuring it all out is as you can read on the site. well. almost! recently approached by the strategic innovations team at http://www.suncorp.com.au/, AMAZING conversation last Sunday via Skype.

They contacted me following seeing the hangout I did 'The Great Currency Debate' on Michel Bauwens site. They liked how collaborative CM is / encompasses so many aspects of 'new ways of doing things' and want to help fund the continuance of both this debate, the currency exchange and the development of CM at large. They have proposed a sponsorship idea. They are fine with us getting additional sponsorship. This is the start of something big.

We're going to use the hangouts to determine how we'll do things on CM. Where do revenues go etc.

@joshuavial hey Joshia. Reason I mention you here is because during the call with Suncorp, I talked about Loomio and how we intend to use this and Cobudget. The guy who led the conversation (Tim O'Brien) was familiar (as he was with Qoin as well - our currency partner / the team we're sighted to build the exchange). He commented that they may well be able to help fund CM / Loomio needs.

I'll hear more late October/early November.

I've also developed a sponsorship proposal based on above. Intro attached.

Assoc Links:
http://thecitizensmedia.com/
http://bit.ly/YzNiuJ

The Great Currency Debate:

Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbOyjaGS7SM

Main: http://youtu.be/SQ0_2mFU_RI

https://plus.google.com/u/0/116589201391591303703/posts/gqHwvbtdeSa
@simontegg @joshuavial @ahdinosaur (or anybody else) - what should I say to Michel's question? I can roll my own, but help would make it better. Or one of you could write it. Or we could each write our own.

One reason for not responding immediately myself is that I don't know how many people share my view of an Open Apps Ecosystem, or if I misinterpreted Enspiral's idea.

To explain: I'm spinning off @simontegg 's idea in the recent OpenApps update: "We’re thinking of licensing things in a Peer-production license and stir up these developers and get them thinking about alternative economic models that support open-source developers directly (rather than just working for big corporate and doing open-source on the side). "

So what that could mean is something like microservice architecture plus open value network income distribution.

Sorta like inverse Conway's Law. Conway's Law says "organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." Which means, inversely, that if you want a distributed P2P software organization, you should use a microservices architecture.

Now, I don't know how many people here would agree with both clauses of that statement (microservices plus OVN rules). And really, we don't know how the microservice architecture will work in a distributed P2P network either. (We (mikorizal.org) currently have a monolothic architecture, so we don't have much advice to offer, but we still think Open Apps could be transformative and want to follow your lead. And if we succeed in participating, we will follow OVN rules ourselves.)

So another hesitation is how much to say to the world now...or what is premature. (Michel has a pretty big audience.)

Anyway, that's some of my thoughts. What do you think?

Thanks for prompting this @bobhaugen. I broadly agree I'm putting some more complete thoughts down and I'll update here soon.

@joshuavial @alanna @benjaminknight @richarddbartlett @craigambrose @craigtaubeschock @jonlemmon @nanz1

How do some quiet folks feel?

I don't think Michel is coming from "wants to learn more", although he may want to do that. I told him I thought the Open Apps Ecosystem could be transformational. He wanted to know why I thought so, and if he agreed, he would write it up (or you collectively could write it up) on the P2P Foundation website. Enspiral is already out there, several times: https://www.google.com/#q=enspiral+p2pfoundation

I asked here if people wanted to do that, and what to say, and Jon proposed a process to do so.

The message to Michel could be "we do not have a coordinated vision to be spread into the world". Ok with me.

I think we certainly have some notions and values, but clearly there's work needed to be done to make that into a cohesive vision. We could certainly err on the side of not thinking about that enough, but at the moment it seems like we're in danger of focusing a bit too much on the abstract and not enough on the practical. I'm personally not terribly interested in overall vision and roadmap until we have a small working piece of software to talk about.

@craigambrose couldn't agree more.

+1 to @craigambrose

To clarify, if you're a developer working on a potential ecosystem app and you have limited time, you may (as I do) want to spend more time pushing code than doing comms.

If you've got more energy for comms or ideation then I don't want to discourage you from using this group to explore ideas or speaking to others about those ideas.
It'll currently be difficult to reach an 'official openapp position' given the above, but that does not exclude low-key comms with Michel about what's going on.