[p2p-research] Am I missing any commons?

[Alex Rollin]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com>wrote:

> Ryan Lanham wrote:
> > Ovens, tractors, etc. really more co-ops or communes.  A commons isn't a
> > commune.  The point of a commune is community ownership.
>
> After looking through the list of Common 'types' I found something
> that sounds quite a lot like what I was imagining for using Private
> Property in a GNU way:
>
> http://P2PFoundation.net/Common_Property_Regime
>
> "'
> In common property regimes there is no free access to the resource and
> common-pool resources are not public goods. While there is relatively
> free but monitored access to the resource system for community
> members, there are mechanisms in place which allow the community to
> exclude outsiders from using its resource. Thus, in a common property
> regime, a common-pool resource has the appearance of a private good
> from the outside and that of a common good from the point of view of
> an insider. The resource units withdrawn from the system are typically
> owned individually by the appropriators.
> '"
>
> > You can't put your sweater into a commons.  It is a limited resource.
>
> So is land, water, fish, seeds, air, etc.  We had better start
> treating these as the finite resources they are!
>
>
> I was mentioning earlier that I found a sort of incompatibility in my head
between the name 'boundary conditions' and what I was thinking of regarding
the physical (and non-physical) intersections/exchanges/barriers and other
meeting points between one Commons and another.  I was making the point that
the definition of the Commons was as important as the systems that manage
it.

Patrick and others have stated something around the definition of a Commons
is important to the organizing of operations to support that Commons.

Since all Commons are inextricably linked, and are limited resources in some
way, then, the definition problem includes naming exchange points and
liminal areas towards the effort of offering definition and context for A
Commons while still acknowledging that everything is interdependent.

It seems to me that the work of offering language to meet the needs of this
systemic approach to defining boundaries could be a useful place to do some
work, even if all we do is figure out how to name some of the approaches to
the work itself.

For example, starting with a crucial resource in a locale and following
through a network of connections to that resource, all the while focusing on
building an understanding of that resource in the community and developing a
"P2P" overview of interactions with that resource.

A
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