P2P Economics and Commons-Based Reciprocity Licenses

#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