Self-organisaon in Commons-Based Peer Producon Drupal: “the drop is always moving” Department of Sociology – PhD seminar (22/11/2017) David Rozas This work was parally supported by the Framework programme FP7-ICT-2013-10 of the European Commission through project P2Pvalue (grant no.: 610961). @drozas davidrozas.cc
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Self-organisation in Commons-Based Peer Production · Commons-Based Peer Production New mode of production (Benkler, 2006), characterised by (Fuster-Morell, 2014): Collaborative process
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Self-organisation in Commons-Based Peer Production
Drupal: “the drop is always moving”
Department of Sociology – PhD seminar (22/11/2017)
David Rozas
This work was partially supported by the Framework programme FP7-ICT-2013-10 of the European Commission through project P2Pvalue (grant no.: 610961). @drozas
● “Talk is silver, code is gold”● What does it mean to contribute?: code-centrism in communities & literature● What about other contributions? Affective labour as the “lifeblood” of the
commons (Bollier, 2014): immaterial labour creates or modifies emotional experiences (Hardt, 1999)
● > “What types of activities are understood as contributions in the Drupal
#F1: Relevance of “community-oriented” contributions
“[...] attending these meetups was really good. Because you realise there are people behind the source code, right? [...] And you meet people that can tell you a kind of personal story. [...] And then, it [the community] stops being something anonymous, it becomes something yours.”
I1, Drupal developer and devop, M, 1 year
● Different types of emotional experiences which foster collaboration. Vary according to degree of experience
● Not only understood as a type of contribution; not onlyunequally represented; they are key for sustainability
“[...] Doocracy refers to the idea that there is no external body or hierarchy that decides how actions should be carried out. [...] authority over an action is held directly by those developing it.”
Fuster-Morell (2010, p. 282)
“The Drupal community uses a do-ocracy model, meaning people work on what they want to work on, instead of being told what to work on. Decisions are usually made through consensus building and based on technical merit, trust and respect.”
Self-organisation in Commons-Based Peer Production
[…] the salient characteristic of commons, as opposed to property, is that nosingle person has exclusive control over the use and disposition of any particular resource in the commons. Instead, resources governed by commons may be used or disposed of by anyone among some (more or less well-defined) number of persons, under rules that may range from ‘anything goes’ to quite crisply articulated formal rules that are effectively enforced.
Benkler (2006, p. 61),
“How does a large and global Commons-Based Peer Production community self-organise?”
> “What are the main organisational aspects and dynamics that have characterised the growth of a global CBPP community of such a scale?”
> “What type of governance emerged in the Drupal community?”
#F2: Emergence of socio-technical systems of contribution
STSoC: A set of interacting parts, including people, software, hardware, procedures or rules among others, which form a complex whole that revolves around networks of human activity systems which are perceived as contribution within the community and share a similar main focus of action.
[...] procedures have to be more formalised in order for it to be welcoming for new contributors. Because people need to know how we do things, who to talk to, and why. Otherwise, it looks like... like you have to be part of the in-crowd, or you have to know certain people, or you have to be in a backchannel, and that stuff is really bad. It will drive away new contributors. So the formalisation has definitely increased [...] we talk about how to do them [decisions], and we come to some kind of agreement and plan. [...]
I9, Drupal core developer and mentoring organiser, F, 8 years
@drozas davidrozas.cc
Formalisation and decentralisation in peer production: intertwined, and despite main medium / type of activity; and counter-intuitiveness with hacker ethic and do-ocratic values
#F3: organic and mechanistic organisation, polycentric governance
● Organisational changes experienced illustrate emergence of STSoC:
○ Core, contributed modules, organisation of DrupalCons, DrupalCamps, local events, etc.
● Counterbalancing and simultaneous co-existence of socio-technical systems of contribution varying in their degree of organicity (Burns & Stalker, 1961), in which Drupalistas have developed multiple governing authorities
● Emergence of polycentric governance (Ostrom, Tiebout & Warren, 1961): variant numbers of centres of decision-making to distribute authority “to make at least some of the rules related to the use of that particular resource” (Ostrom, 1999, p. 528)
ConclusionStory of how hundreds of thousands of participants in a large and
global Commons-Based Peer Production community have organised themselves, in what started as a small and amateur project in 2001
#F1: Contribution as meanings under constant negotiation between participants in peer production communities according to their internal logics of value
#F2: Organisational dynamics: formalisation and decentralisation, despite main medium / type of activity / OO vs CO / hacker values
#F3: Resulted in emergence of polycentric governance and organisational forms with different degrees of organicity (interacting)
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