Published on ONLamp.com (http://www.onlamp.com/)
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/07/28/commons.html
The Commons Doesn't Have a Business Plan
by Andy Oram
07/28/2005
The "commons" is the part of the economy that doesn't have a business plan
yet.
Once somebody can figure out how to turn a social trend into a moneymaking
operation, he or she can raise capital, get a product on the shelves, and
collect revenue. A business plan certainly isn't child's play, but at least
there's a process in place.
It's during that breathless span of time before the business plan takes
shape--a month, a year, a decade, that critical time when a notion is
incubating in society and no one knows quite what to make of it--when we
need the commons. Understanding the commons is more important than ever.
Traditionally, a commons was a grassy area in the center of town where
everyone could graze their animals. In modern times, people have applied the
notion of a "commons" to anything that is available to all comers without
restriction. In particular, sociologists consider ideas, cultural artifacts,
and other intellectual contributions to have become part of our commons.
Many people already appreciate the commons. But those who demand that ideas
have business plans in order to be usable should ponder the first sentence
of this article to see a hardheaded justification for the importance of the
intellectual commons.
This article explores how this concept fits in with free software, also
known as open source software. I will also touch on some ways that business
imperatives, imprudently pursued, can weaken the commons, that fertile field
from which the most promising future businesses will emerge.
Briefly, open source software is software distributed in the form of its
original source code, which is the form the programmer writes it in. Thanks
to permissive licensing, everyone who has access to a computer potentially
has access to the software, and anyone who chooses to access the software
can change and adapt it just as easily as the original creator can.
Open source software often benefits from community development. While a core
of developers usually does most of the work, a cast of thousands potentially
contributes to the software by examining the source code and submitting bug
fixes. The end result, for popular projects, is often more robust, more
highly functional, and more secure than closed software.
For closed software--also called proprietary software--the feature set must
achieve a certain size before it's worth putting together a sales program,
and marketing the software effectively requires a degree of business savvy.
Many programmers earn a modest sum with small, niche programs, but there's
always some effort involved in commercializing the software.
That is not to say that open source becomes irrelevant when software can
support a business plan; the two can definitely coexist, as robust activity
in the open source space by IBM and other companies proves. But a special
charm hangs over free software created by inspired individuals and released
into the wild.
Open source lowers barriers to the creation and distribution of software. It
therefore allows innovation in that broad space between inventions that have
purely personal value and inventions that can support a business plan.
Some observers claim that open source software simply imitates proprietary
vendor offerings--that innovation takes place only in proprietary software.
This view demonstrates a poor understanding of programming history. What
about the stored digital computer program, the internet, all-purpose
scripting languages, the Web, online chat, and peer-to-peer file sharing?
Those fundamental technologies, used daily by millions of people, were open
source innovations.
Proprietary vendors are good at exploiting an idea that incrementally
improves the user's experience or productivity. Some historic,
groundbreaking technologies certainly came out of corporations: the compiler
and the graphical user interface are two examples. But many world-shaking
breakthroughs in communication and personal empowerment occur on a level at
which proprietary vendors cannot build a business model. The proprietary
products must follow, not lead, open source.
Open source can be commercial, too. Commercializing such software is good
for open source, good for business, and good for the public. Vendors can
take snapshots of major open source projects and turn them into products
that can be easily and safely used by large, cautious organizations that
value reliability.
But no matter how much money vendors and other large organizations pour into
open source projects, the driving force that creates value comes from the
intrepid innovators that flock to these projects. They exist both within and
outside the established organizations, and they do not only coding but also
testing, training, documentation, and advocacy.
Not everything has to be open source. One of the most supple implementations
of open source, the Creative Commons, allows many gradations between
openness and control.
What else is there to learn about the commons by seeing it as the source of
innovation outside a business plan? Indeed, in this sense the commons keeps
bubbling up over and over, starting from our earliest knowledge of human
communities.
Art (which includes music, poetry, dance, and many other forms of
expression) is a commons. For a long time, people created it to satisfy
personal or religious impulses. A few figured out how to make money at it,
but the love of money does not drive art.
Language is a commons. Those who learn to shape it with delight or cunning
can make a living at it, but the vast majority of language use goes
unremunerated.
The constant factor in the commons of art and language is that each addition
tends to build on what others have done. People view art that inspires them,
listen to music that moves them, and read texts that persuade them before
they produce their own creations. Their new works invariably refer to ideas
in the earlier ones. When you find a work that is startling and seemingly
new--by James Joyce or Schoenberg, for instance--it simply means the
references are more cleverly hidden and require more thoughtful elucidation.
Could our intellectual heritage suffer a "tragedy of the commons," as
described by Garrett Hardin when he introduced that term in 1968? What
Hardin described was a degradation or exhaustion of the commons through
overuse. Clearly, there can be no tragedy of the intellectual commons in
this sense, because the commons of ideas provides enough for every taker.
Rather, two different tragedies threaten it.
The threat most resembling the classic tragedy is a fencing off of the
commons, a predatory and premature division of its goods among private
owners. This indeed can starve the commons. The trend worries librarians,
researchers, creative artists, and others responsible for tending the
commons of ideas.
The creator of a new work should not be allowed to monetize it completely,
because it owes its existence to the commons and contains part of that
commons. The new work is a shared achievement--shared between the individual
who added his or her personal touch and the community in which it arose--so
both sides must respect each other. This means the public must allow the
creator a fair reward, and the creator must allow a certain amount of reuse
by the public. Copyright is a short-term monopoly meant to encourage new
works, and it was recognized as such by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.
Fencing off the commons has proceeded along several lines, which have been
reported in the press but scarcely considered by the wider public.
* The Supreme Court ruling on June 27 earlier this year that allowed
movie and music studios to sue the makers of file-sharing software is a
minor step in the slow devaluation of the commons. The ruling creates new
tools making it easier for someone with a business plan to trample down the
commons when it conflicts with the business plan. Innovators, including
those with no resources for court challenges, must worry that they may be
sued for the results of experiments they offer to the community. The ruling
therefore endorses the past at the expense of the potential.
* Extensions of copyright to periods of time way past the current
historical era are violations of the commons and are directly contrary to
the tradition Adam Smith recognized. The most recent extension by the U.S.
Congress keeps works under copyright until 70 years after the author's
death. In upholding the law, the courts pointed out that the law adheres to
the international Berne Convention--which simply spreads the shame more
widely.
* Restrictions on people making their own copies of material they've
bought, or experiencing it outside of particular times and places, are
violations of the commons. But movie and music makers routinely put such
limits on downloaded material, in a losing battle against unauthorized
sharing. A whole field of computing has grown up around digital rights
management, which keeps people from making full use of copyrighted material.
* Invocations of trademarks or trade secrets to squelch free speech are
violations of the commons. One blatant example is a claim by Cisco, just
reported, that they are "protecting [their] intellectual property" as they
invoke legal measures to suppress public debate about a serious security
flaw they've left unrepaired in their routers.
* Explicit censorship is a violation of the commons. China is the focus
of current news about censorship, but it goes on in many places and distorts
the entire environment for information sharing.
The fencing off of the commons has divided industries, with different sides
taken by different creative artists, software makers, publishers, and
others.
But the biggest worry of movie and music studios, along with software
companies, newspapers, and many publishers, is another threat: that the
commons will swallow up everything else. Specifically, they claim that
consumers will seek to get everything for free, and thus undermine their own
self-interest by shredding the incentives for artists and programmers to
create new, independent works of value.
This threat is not quite as tragic as the content vendors make it out to be,
because payment regimes for art and information have changed drastically at
many turning points over the centuries. The simple model whereby each
individual pays for a copy or a performance has worked for many artists, but
not all. Changes brought about by digital technology will create new winners
and losers.
The early radio broadcasters were nonprofits: in other words, radio started
out as part of the commons. Under the pressures of corporations and the
Federal Communications Commission, radio quickly developed a business plan.
Interestingly enough, however, broadcasts remained free of charge.
Advertising support replaced the pay-per-copy or pay-per-performance model.
In addition, due to the basic physics of radio--each station can cover only
a limited geographical area--a show can be recorded and syndicated for more
income. Still, it's hard to grasp now that for many years the three U.S.
television networks carried on a 1950s-style hysteria campaign against
proposals for "pay TV." We now suffer a broadcasting regime that is not free
enough--one that may stifle innovations such as podcasting.
In passing, it's worth noting that traditional notions about pay-per-use are
making it hard to get medicines to AIDS patients and other desperately sick
people in developing nations. WTO and U.S. rules, in trying to ensure that
individual companies bear the rewards for developing drugs, end up depriving
millions of people of medical care while contributing hardly anything to
company profits.
New media, which will probably use digital networks and be more interactive,
will present new payment opportunities. They may well build on the open
source movement. We should celebrate the existence of open source, and
defend the commons in every area of innovation as our guarantee of
innovation.
Andy Oram is an editor for O'Reilly Media, specializing in Linux and free
software books, and a member of Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility. His web site is www.praxagora.com/andyo.
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