[p2p-research] peer governance, community vs. Foundation

[Michel Bauwens]

I would like to share my vision here on the proper relation between the
community of users and contributors, and the role of the formal Foundation
and its Board

Generally speaking, as I see it, there are 3 main players in peer production
communities so far

1) the core is the community of contributors and users, and the
self-organized processes that the community evolves over time to regulate
its work and its conflicts

2) the for-benefit foundation associated with the communith does not direct
and manage the community, but protects and funds the infrastructure of
cooperation, and aims to find ways to extend its capabilities and influence,
and these foundation are usually governed as associations

Obviously there is a wide variety of practices used by both 1 and 2

3) the third player are the partner associations and enterpreneurial
entities that use the commons for their own for profit or not for profit
activities and find some ways to use and sustain both the community and the
foundation on which they depend

The reading above is based on my observations of knowledge and free software
communities, and may not adequately reflect (but it could), how this is
evolving in the shared design/making world

So, how did this evolve, and what is my view of its further evolution, in
the case of the P2P Foundation

We have a small community of contributors, and somewhat larger community of
sympathizers and participants, and a larger user base.

We know some about the two first, not much about the latter apart from the
stats.

The small community of contributors are in direct touch with each other, if
need be, via the wiki or private email or the list, and until today, any
differences were solved through dialogue

The prime vehicle for sympathizers is through the mailing list, where anyone
can express his opinion and be part in the formation of any necessary
consensus when that it necessary,

We had no specific arbitrage process until now, for the very reason that no
major incidents of lack of consensus have occured (the exception is the mark
fawzi case, when mark left voluntarily after failing to convince the
community of his desired changes to the mailing list protocols)

The role of the formal Foundation in this has been minimal to non-existing,

Why? The reason we created it, was primarily as a vehicle for fund-raising
and for having the capability to receive research funding. We did not
actively pursue the first, and our first experiment with the latter did not
succeed.

We may now have arrived at a point where the community and the project have
sufficiently matured, to have the Foundation and its Board play a more
important role.

However, the key relation still stands:

- it is the role of the Foundation, in my view and congruent with the
practice of other communities, to support and extent the possibilities of
cooperation by the self-organized community

Thus, the Foundation is not the community, and does not direct the
community, but it raises money, manages the physical infrastructure, and
legally represents the project when necessary or required.

Nevertheless, it remains a good principle that both formal rules of
self-organization, and the need to develop the Foundation as a separate
vehicle, remain organically tied to the real evolution and emergence of the
community.

There should not be a hyper and independent evolution of a Foundation, it
should proceed as an expression of the community, to solve emergent needs
and problems.

 My opinion is that a number of these issues are conflated right now:

- there is a danger of seeing the Foundation as the manager of the community

- there is a danger of a particular monological view of what peer to peer
is, expressed as a set of binding rules for the Foundation, which become
directives for the community.

- there is the very concrete case of a particular indivdual, expressing a
particular point of view of p2p as a monological solution, creating pages
which purport to be official policy of the Foundation, but which only
reflect that monological interpretation

There is a very real danger for the future of the community, and for the
future of the Foundation, of evolving into a cultic and collectivist entity.
In other words, parallel to the danger of imposing code representing a
monological view, imposing new rules on users without their consent, there
is now a parallel effort to create code parading as official policy, which
would have the same effect in the social rules of the community and
Foundation. These efforts proceed from an idealized view of what p2p is and
should be, and are introduced without any due process and collective
processing, without any consensus.

My view is that we should not proceed from

1) an idealized view which is then developed into an endless series of
documents purporting to be 'the' p2p way and the official policy of the
Foundatioon

2) on the contrary, both community rules and the different formal democratic
structures of the Foundation should proceed from the reality of the life of
the community

3) the aim of the Foundation is to be based on formal membership and
democratic procedures, (with perhaps special rules to invite non-paid
membership for active contributors without financial means)

4) the Foundation does not direct the work of the community, which again
organically evolves its rules

Much of the present conflict is not a problem of autocracy, but a problem of
lack of rules to prevent an autocratic takeover.

I have no formal and autocratic power to prevent what I see as these
destructive efforts, I can only appeal to a set of individuals with the
technical skills and admin rights to do this. If they fail to do this, then
the whole situation will evolve to a situation of permanent conflict and
civil war (virtual of course, but with real life emotional and practical
consequences).

I trust that the group of core contributors would do the right thing to
prevent further damage, such as the imposition of unwanted code, and the
creation of fake policy pages purporting to be official policy of the P2P
Foundation.

Both are serious matters requiring attention,

When the hot crisis is over, the time seems of course mature to develop the
Foundation as a formal association as a democratic organization, and to
continue to formulate community rules for arbitrage in case of difficult
conflicts, such as the one we have seen now.

Michel


-- 
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100813/043412e9/attachment.html>