Digital Commons and F(L)OSS

There are enough updates to last year’s “In Search of Foundational FLOSS Freedom(s)” to make a blog category of its own, or almost so. But instead of keeping a year-old post on life support, I’d like to extend a few thoughts from this year on much the same topic.

The new conversation in town is the Digital Commons, a somewhat broader perspective than merely the FLOSS ecosystem. But insofar as FLOSS can be thought of as “a commons”, much of the conversation applies pretty much directly.

It turns out, however, that what people understand by “a commons” may differ wildly.

#A Common Definition of Commons

If we look back at the history of the term, it usually refers to shared natural resources, such as a meadow (in the UK often referred to as “the greens”), or a river or lake or some such.

There are many definitions of the term in the wild, and as usual each has been crafted because the others seemed lacking. The parts that seem to be universally accepted, however, appear to be:

• A shared resource,
• to which access is equitable,
• which is maintained by the community.

Equally common are the typical historical threats to a commons:

• Takeover by a subset of the community.
• Repurposing for interests that are not shared by the community.
• Unfair usage policies; for example, if usage is based on e.g. heads of cattle, the wealthiest cattle owners would have the most benefit.
• Enclosure; literally this is derived from folk buying land around the commons until access is no longer granted except by special permission of the owner of the surrounding lands.
• Over-extraction; the demands on the resource outweigh its capacity.

Summarized in this way, it seems FLOSS is indeed very comparable to a commons, down to the threats against it.

At this point, however, it’s also worth looking back at that previous article I linked above very briefly: our definition of “community” is often lacking, and should likely include more stakeholders, as well as define and enforce shared maintenance more strongly.

#Open Source Definition & Ethics

This post is largely triggered by a fediverse thread in which the Open Source Initiative (OSI) states ethics have no place in the Open Source Definition (OSD), a statement I find worth challenging every time it is made.

I’ll quote my line of argumentation here verbatim, until the end of this section. There is not very much to comment on it:

Frankly, incompatibility with the OSD/FSD is a red herring.

If ethical use is not in scope for those definitions, they are obsolete, and need to be replaced by definitions that do bring such things into scope.

If we step back a bit from “ethical use”, and consider other pertinent restrictions, maybe this becomes a little clearer.

I posit that the goals of FLOSS have been achieved. Source code is everywhere, everyone manipulates it, etc.

What hasn’t been achieved is a FLOSS ecosystem that is fully sustainable. If we span the scope a little more broadly, beyond software, we do not have a sustainable digital commons yet.

There are efforts to address this, e.g. in NGI’s Digital Commons Policy project, but it’s a long road from here to there.

The fundamentals of both a commons and FLOSS in general, however, are to guarantee access, and with that to permit everyone a chance to use and contribute to what exists in those spaces.

Commons have long been threatened by takeover or enclosure, and it’s no different in the digital sphere. To recognize this as a threat is to conclude that the purpose of a commons is not merely access, but equitable access – and then we’re smack in the middle of the purpose of fundamental human rights.

So the stance I hear here is that since fundamental human rights should already guarantee equitable access to shared resources, governing legal documents for FLOSS do not need to. Such things are better reserved for those other regulations.

That’s certainly making FLOSS related considerations easier, but it doesn’t help at all if fundamental human rights are threatened by FLOSS users operating in a country where such rights are not recognized.

In other words, the only way commons related principles can bridge this disconnect between jurisdictions is by taking equitable access into account themselves.

The thing with human rights, however, is that they are indivisible. And that is on purpose, because e.g. equitable access can be granted in principle, but not exercisable when the prospective user is… dead?

That’s perhaps an extreme example, but precisely the angle at which “ethical use” enters the fray. If my software can be used to commit genocide, how are the victims of that still granted the rights I’ve given them by choosing one software license over another?

The TL;DR is, while it’s technically correct and adequate to keep “ethical use” outside of OSD/FSD and relegate enforcement of that to other regulation, in practice this is a pretty meaningless statement.

Unless one happens to live in sufficient privilege that people outside of that privileged zone can safely be ignored.

That’s why I think OSD/FSD is actually obsolete. We need to anchor this to the basic purpose of a commons, which is rooted in fundamental human rights.

#Reactions

Some reactions to this statement have been provided, which I find worthy of highlighting, to wit:

• The governance structure of individual FLOSS projects may not at all be shared, democratic or equitable, and so that raises the concern that this project is not at all like a commons.

  This is absolutely correct – perhaps an overarching digital commons vision must also set governance goals for individual projects.

• Ethical source is already a concept with existing licenses, which are necessitated by ethics guidelines derived from medicine.

  This statement mostly supports that ethics must be part of a future OSD or similar declaration, but also continues to highlight that in some cases at least, the actual licenses are more concerned with compliance with ethics regulations than enforcement of other ethics frameworks.

  In either case, some lessons can be learned from this.

#EuroStack 2025

In a sense, this whole thread hits at a particularly interesting time, because recently the “EuroStack 2025 Report has been issued.

It’s an interesting document, both in what it contains and what it does not. Motivated by a need for digital sovereignty, it outlines how a sovereign stack could be built across Europe. It firmly roots the argumentation in a vision for a digital commons, and includes FLOSS as one of the major drivers behind that vision.

Because of that overarching picture, I can thoroughly recommend this report as an important document for influencing EU policy.

However, there are a number of things also missing from it. As an initial, and incomplete list:

1. The report does not mention how a FLOSS ecosystem could be made sustainable to help underpin this stack (except: see next point).
2. It posits a market-driven, top-down definition of innovation goals, which is to “federate” funds and sub-goals to FLOSS projects, effectively only funding what has immediate market value.
3. It claims to support R&D into fundamental technologies, but shows no understanding of how research actually works – all its language is venture capital language. It seeks “demonstrators” and “minimum viable products (MVPs)”, which cannot be built minimally without already being based on existing fundamental technology. Actions that support the development of such MVPs are broadly discussed, but actions that support fundamental technology development and research are completely absent.

In short, it shows a mental model of a commons that is only based on extraction, not sustainability. It’s a staggeringly bad vision for a sustainable future for the European Union, and can only be viewed as fundamentally harmful to the FLOSS ecosystem and a true digital commons.

This is a short reaction based on a quick read – a more substantial analysis and position is something we’re working on. If you have suggestions on what needs to be included in such a reading, please reach out¹ – I’d love to get a more broadly supported reaction out, perhaps in the form of an open letter as well.

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