Commons-based peer production is a term coined by Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

 professor Yochai Benkler

Yochai Benkler

Yochai Benkler is an Israeli-American professor of Law and author. Since 2007, he has been the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.- Biography :In 1984, Benkler...

 to describe a new model of socio-economic production in which the creative energy of large numbers of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

) into large, meaningful projects mostly without traditional hierarchical organization

Hierarchical organization

A hierarchical organization is an organizational structure where every entity in the organization, except one, is subordinate to a single other entity. This arrangement is a form of a hierarchy. In an organization, the hierarchy usually consists of a singular/group of power at the top with...

. These projects are often, but not always, conceived without financial compensation for contributors. The term is often used interchangeably with the term "social production." Benkler contrasts commons-based peer production with firm production (in which tasks are delegated based on a central decision-making process) and market-based production

Market economy

A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...

 (in which tagging different prices to different tasks serves as an incentive to anyone interested in performing a task).

The term was first introduced and described in Benkler's

Yochai Benkler

Yochai Benkler is an Israeli-American professor of Law and author. Since 2007, he has been the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.- Biography :In 1984, Benkler...

 seminal paper "Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm." Benkler's 2006 book, The Wealth of Networks

The Wealth of Networks

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom is a book by law professor Yochai Benkler published by Yale University Press on April 3, 2006....

, expands significantly on these ideas. In the book, Benkler makes a distinction between commons-based peer production and peer production

Peer production

Peer production is a way of producing goods and services that relies on self-organizing communities of individuals who come together to produce a shared outcome. The production of content by the general public rather than by paid professionals and experts in the field...

. The former is based on sharing resources among widely distributed individuals who cooperate with each other. The latter term is a subset of commons-based production practices. It refers to a production process that depends on individual action that is self-selected and decentralized. YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 and Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

, for example, are based on peer production.

In Wikinomics

Wikinomics

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything is a book by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, first published in December 2006. It explores how some companies in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration and open-source technology, such as wikis, to be successful...

, Don Tapscott

Don Tapscott

Don Tapscott is a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, specializing in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society. Tapscott is chairman of business strategy think tank New Paradigm , which he founded in 1993...

 and Anthony D. Williams

Anthony D. Williams

Anthony D. Williams is a consultant, researcher, and author. He co-authored Wikinomics along with Don Tapscott and is a vice president of research with international think tank New Paradigm...

 suggest an incentive mechanism behind common-based peer production. "People participate in peer production communities," they write, "for a wide range of intrinsic and self-interested reasons....basically, people who participate in peer production communities love it. They feel passionate about their particular area of expertise and revel in creating something new or better."

Aaron Krowne (Free Software Magazine

Free Software Magazine

Free Software Magazine is a website which produces a mostly free-content e-zine about free software....

), meanwhile, offers another definition:

"commons-based peer production refers to any coordinated, (chiefly) internet-based effort whereby volunteers contribute project components, and there exists some process to combine them to produce a unified intellectual work. CBPP covers many different types of intellectual output, from software to libraries of quantitative data to human-readable

Human-readable

A human-readable medium or human-readable format is a representation of data or information that can be naturally read by humans.In computing, human-readable data is often encoded as ASCII or Unicode text, rather than presented in a binary representation...

 documents (manuals, books, encyclopedias, reviews, blogs, periodicals, and more)."

Principles

First, the potential goals of peer production must be modular. That means, objectives must be divisible into components, or modules, each of which can be independently produced. This allows production to be cumulative and asynchronous, merging the individual efforts of many people, with diverse backgrounds and skills, who are available at various places and times..

See also

• Anti-rival good
• Citizen science
  Citizen science
  Citizen science is a term used for the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis...
  
  
• Co-creation
  Co-creation
  Co-creation is a form of market or business strategy that emphasizes the generation and ongoing realization of mutual firm-customer value. It views markets as forums for firms and active customers to share, combine and renew each other's resources and capabilities to create value through new forms...
  
  
• Collaboration
  Collaboration
  Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
  
  
• Collaborative software development model
  Collaborative software development model
  The Collaborative software development model is a style of software development whose focus is on public availability and communication, usually via the Internet.The software development model began widespread adoption with the Linux kernel in 1991....
  
  
• Knowledge commons
  Knowledge commons
  The knowledge commons encompass immaterial and collectively owned goods in the information age. Normatively loaded, it promotes free share of knowledge...
  
  
• Crowdsourcing
  Crowdsourcing
  Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
  
  
• Flow (psychology)
  Flow (psychology)
  Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of...
  
   - a theory describing the conditions under which work can be rewarding without compensation
• Gift economy
  Gift economy
  In the social sciences, a gift economy is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards . Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community...
  
  
• Mass collaboration
  Mass collaboration
  Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature...
  
  
• Peer review
  Peer review
  Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
  
  
• Prosumerism
• Open Business
  Open business
  Open business represents a concept of doing business in a transparent way by intimately integrating an ecosystem of participants, collaborating in public space....
  
  
• Open innovation
  Open Innovation
  Although the idea and discussion about some consequences date back at least to the 60s, open innovation is a term promoted by Henry Chesbrough, a professor and executive director at the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, in his book Open Innovation: The new...
  
  
• Open Music Model
  Open Music Model
  The Open Music Model is an economic and technological framework for the recording industry based on research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
  
  
• Open Source Appropriate Technology
  Open Source Appropriate Technology
  Open-source appropriate technology refers to technologies that are designed in the same fashion as free and open-source software. These technologies must be "appropriate technology" – meaning technology that is designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, social,...
  
  
• Formal education
• Nonformal learning
  Nonformal learning
  Non-formal learning is a distinction in learning between formal and informal learning. It is learning that occurs in a formal learning environment, but that is not formally recognised. It typically involves workshops, community courses, interest based courses, short courses, or conference style...
  
  

External links

• Wealth of Networks - Yochai Benkler
  Yochai Benkler
  Yochai Benkler is an Israeli-American professor of Law and author. Since 2007, he has been the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.- Biography :In 1984, Benkler...
  
  's 2006 book about commons-based peer production.
• Open Source Drug Discovery Foundation - Open Source Drug Discovery Foundation is an international non-profit foundation based in India to accelerate drug discovery for infectious diseases.The foundation is based in India.
• The Foundation for P2P Alternatives - Function as a clearing-house for open/free, participatory/p2p and commons-oriented initiatives.
• The Emergence of Open Design and Open Manufacturing Michel Bauwens, We Magazine Volume 2
• Peerconomy.org - Wiki on peer economy.
• Thinkvast http://thinkvast.org