[p2p-research] [ox-en] Commons and Long Tail = Sustainable Combination

Thu Feb 12 03:46:05 CET 2009

Dear Marc,

This is a very cogent summary of your argument and I'm reposting it on the
regular blog on the 18th, see
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/is-a-digital-commons-sustainable-without-corporate-support/2009/02/18

Could also be a useful contribution to our ning forum, so I would encourage
you to repost it there,

I will respond in the next few days,

Michel

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 1:51 AM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com> wrote:

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>
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> A quick note to share the latest thinking on "sustainable commons" which I
> need to mention so as not to be dogmatic about it :-)
>
> In any "sharing" system, if the amount of demand exceeds supply, i.e. if
> there are more leechers than seeders or if certain leechers hog resources,
> the system will eventually run aground.
>
> That is why BitTorrent sharing sites enforce what is called a "sharing
> ratio" so that people seed content as much as they leech content off
> others.
> A ratio of 1 is good but a ratio of 1.5 (more giving than taking) is even
> better. However, these systems come with punishment threats, so if a user
> doesn't uphold the share ratio they get "kicked out" of the community. Not
> a
> good way to run an economy. The share ratio here is besides the share ratio
> forced by BitTorrent itself. It relates to sustaining the content rather
> than the bandwidth, which is dealt with directly by forced sharing in
> BitTorrent itself. When it comes to sharing content, however, BitTorrent
> cannot force it so the community admins end up having to force it
> algorithmically (if they run their own tracker, which most do) by
> monitoring
> the size in Gb of content being seeded and leeched by each user and setting
> a "kick out" threshold of 1.00, below which the user's account
> automatically
> gets disabled or the user gets a warning etc. This is governance by threat
> of punishment, which is not a good way to run anything.
>
> When it comes to so-called free software, projects that have mass appeal
> also have mass funding not only from the individual users but from
> corporations who often employ the project leaders and let them dedicate a
> large portion of their time to the project AND/OR provide direct financial
> support to the project. This includes Firefox (backed heavily by Google in
> several ways), GNU (backed by many big pocket donors... many highly paid
> people at FSF) , Linux kernel and all massively adopted software.  This is
> necessary because the demand on projects like Firefox, GNU and Linux kernel
> exceeds the abilities of any user base to support with because when you
> have
> millions or hundreds of millions of users and only a tiny fraction of them
> contribute financially and you need a good deal of organization and a good
> deal of funding to stay afloat as a project there is no way but to accept
> donations and support from large corporations. So when Google funds Firefox
> and major corporations fund GNU and Linux kernel with millions of dollars
> as
> well as other incentives (like hiring the project leaders and letting them
> work on those free projects) then how is that a generalized exchange?
> Google
> got direct benefit from supporting Firefox by being the default search
> engine and by having an alternative browser to compete against IE and by
> giving them time to get their browser strategy together and learn in the
> process. IBM reaps huge amount of benefit from basing so much of their
> solutions on Linux (very few companies would opt to use IBM AIX *nix OS on
> a
> commodity Intel platform) so the corporations are basically supporting
> these
> projects for direct reciprocal benefit to themselves. If those donors were
> to stop funding those free large-scale projects the projects would collapse
> under the demands of a huge user base in the hundreds of millions. Same
> thing with Wikipedia, huge amount of Wikipedia funding comes from IBM and
> other big corporations, and the $6M they raise from the users is a drop in
> the bucket compared to the infrastructure they get for free from big
> corporate donors like IBM.
>
> So the key question I have is can the commons model be sustainable when you
> have major corporations funding the projects, without which the projects
> would collapse? As far as what's been reported, only a tiny percentage of
> Wikipedia users, or users of free software in general, donate and the bulk
> of assistance comes from the major corporations. What if IBM goes bankrupt?
> What if Google disappears? Who will replace their donations? The users
> certainly won't suddenly start contributing 10X more than they do now. So
> how can the commons in this case be sustainable?
>
> The answer I'm leaning toward is that the commons have proven sustainable
> in
> the context of the long tail model where there are a huge number of very
> small/niche projects that have relatively small user bases. In this case,
> the number of users per each such small project is sustainable by part-time
> developers.
>
> But once a project goes from 100 users to 10 million users there is no way
> based on evidence from all such projects that mushroomed into popularity
> that the user base will fund them sufficiently. There is always a need to
> charge users, raise VC funds, or get major corporate donors.
>
> So as far as placing the commons in the context of sustainability I see the
> need to consider the size of the user base. For small user base, the
> commons
> works. For very large user base, the commons becomes dependent on a few
> major donors (corporations) and that is not exactly sustainable ...
>
> Those are my views and will incorporate the above into the P2P Energy
> Economy <http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Energy_Economy> under evolving The
> Two
> Biggest Dogmas<
> http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Energy_Economy#The_Two_Biggest_Dogmas
> >section,
> once I've had a chance to read/process all and any feedback.
>
> Marc
>
>
> [2 text/html]
> _________________________________
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>

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