Knowledge commons

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The term "knowledge commons" refers to information, data, and content that is collectively owned and managed by a community of users, [1] particularly over the Internet. What distinguishes a knowledge commons from a commons of shared physical resources is that digital resources are non-subtractible; [2] that is, multiple users can access the same digital resources with no effect on their quantity or quality. [3]

Contents

Conceptual background

The term 'commons' is derived from the medieval economic system the commons . [4] The knowledge commons is a model for a number of domains, including Open Educational Resources such as the MIT OpenCourseWare, free digital media such as Wikipedia, [5] Creative Commons–licensed art, open-source research, [6] and open scientific collections such as the Public Library of Science or the Science Commons, free software and Open Design. [7] [8] According to research by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, [3] the conceptual background of the knowledge commons encompasses two intellectual histories: first, a European tradition of battling the enclosure of the "intangible commons of the mind", [9] threatened by expanding intellectual property rights and privatization of knowledge. [10] Second, a tradition rooted in the United States, which sees the knowledge commons as a shared space allowing for free speech and democratic practices, [11] and which is in the tradition of the town commons movement and commons-based production of scholarly work, open science, open libraries, and collective action. [3]

The production of works in the knowledge commons is often driven by collective intelligence, respectively the wisdom of crowds, and is related to knowledge communism [12] as defined by Robert K. Merton, according to whom scientists give up intellectual property rights in exchange for recognition and esteem. [13]

Ferenc Gyuris argues that it is important to distinguish "information" from "knowledge" in defining the term "knowledge commons". [14] He argues that "knowledge as a shared resource" requires that both information must become accessible and potential recipients must become able and willing to internalize it as 'knowledge'. "Therefore, knowledge cannot become a shared resource without a complex set of institutions and practices that give the opportunity to potential recipients to gain the necessary abilities and willingness". [15]

Copyleft

Copyleft licenses are institutions which support a knowledge commons of executable software. [16] Copyleft licenses grant licensees all necessary rights such as right to study, use, change and redistribute—under the condition that all future works building on the license are again kept in the commons. [17] Popular applications of the 'copyleft' principle are the GNU Software Licenses (GPL, LGPL and GFDL by Free Software Foundation) and the share-alike licenses under creative commons. [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free software</span> Software licensed to be freely used, modified and distributed

Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source license</span> Software license allowing source code to be used, modified, and shared

Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code, modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in the Open Source Definition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free Art License</span> Type of free content license

The Free Art License (FAL) is a copyleft license that grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works except for computer hardware and software, including for commercial use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Software license</span> Governs the use and/or redistribution of software

A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-design movement</span> Movement for product development with publicly shared designs

The open-design movement involves the development of physical products, machines and systems through use of publicly shared design information. This includes the making of both free and open-source software (FOSS) as well as open-source hardware. The process is generally facilitated by the Internet and often performed without monetary compensation. The goals and philosophy of the movement are identical to that of the open-source movement, but are implemented for the development of physical products rather than software. Open design is a form of co-creation, where the final product is designed by the users, rather than an external stakeholder such as a private company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source hardware</span> Hardware from the open-design movement

Open-source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design, in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open educational resources</span> Open learning resource

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve, and redistribute under some licenses. These are designed to reduce accessibility barriers by implementing best practices in teaching and to be adapted for local unique contexts.

Commons-based peer production (CBPP) is a term coined by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler. It describes a model of socio-economic production in which large numbers of people work cooperatively; usually over the Internet. Commons-based projects generally have less rigid hierarchical structures than those under more traditional business models.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Commons</span> Shared resources

The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values employed for a governance mechanism. Commons can also be defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free-culture movement</span> Social movement promoting the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others

The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or open content. They encourage creators to create such content by using permissive and share-alike licensing, like that used on Wikipedia.

An information commons is an information system, such as a physical library or online community, that exists to produce, conserve, and preserve information for current and future generations. Wikipedia could be considered to be an information commons to the extent that it produces and preserves information through current versions of articles and histories. Other examples of an information commons include Creative Commons.

This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open data</span> Openly accessible data

Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free content</span> Nonrestrictive creative work

Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software program, or any other creative content for which there are very minimal copyright and other legal limitations on usage, modification and distribution. These are works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and modified by anyone for any purpose including, in some cases, commercial purposes. Free content encompasses all works in the public domain and also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor and uphold the definition of free cultural work.

OurProject.org (OP) is a web-based collaborative free content repository. It acts as a central location for the construction and maintenance of social/cultural/artistic projects, providing web space and tools, and focusing in free knowledge. It claims to extend the ideas and methodology of free software to social areas and free culture in general. Since September 2009, Ourproject is under the Comunes Association umbrella, and gave birth to the Kune collaborative social network for groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyleft</span> Practice of mandating free use in all derivatives of a work

Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, freedoms refers to the use of the work for any purpose, and the ability to modify, copy, share, and redistribute the work, with or without a fee. Licenses which implement copyleft can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works ranging from computer software, to documents, art, and scientific discoveries, and similar approaches have even been applied to certain patents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Software categories</span> Groups of software

Software categories are groups of software. They allow software to be understood in terms of those categories, instead of the particularities of each package. Different classification schemes consider different aspects of software.

A free license or open license is a license that allows copyrighted work to be reused, modified, and redistributed. These uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or other Intellectual property (IP) laws. The term broadly covers free content licenses and open-source licenses, also known as free software licenses.

The digital commons are a form of commons involving the distribution and communal ownership of informational resources and technology. Resources are typically designed to be used by the community by which they are created.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open source</span> Source code made freely available

Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open source appropriate technology, and open source drug discovery.

References

  1. ↑ Ambrosi de la Cadena, Marco (2017). "Knowledge commons: an alternative to proprietary knowledge". Maskana. 8 (1): 43–59. doi: 10.18537/mskn.08.01.04 .
  2. ↑ Mansell, Robin (2013-08-29). "Employing digital crowdsourced information resources: Managing the emerging information commons". International Journal of the Commons. 7 (2): 255. doi: 10.18352/ijc.395 . hdl: 10535/9115 . ISSN   1875-0281.
  3. 1 2 3 Hess, Charlotte; Ostrom, Elinor (2007). Understanding Knowledge as a Commons - From Theory to Practice. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. pp. 12–13. ISBN   978-0-262-08357-7.
  4. ↑ Potts, Jason (2019-08-22), "Rules of the Innovation Commons", Innovation Commons, Oxford University Press, pp. 109–152, doi: 10.1093/oso/9780190937492.003.0006 , ISBN   978-0-19-093749-2
  5. ↑ Sampsel, Laurie J. (2017-10-02). "Finding Open Educational Resources for Music: OER Commons, MERLOT II, Openstax CNX, and MIT OpenCourseWare". Music Reference Services Quarterly. 20 (3–4): 224–226. doi:10.1080/10588167.2017.1364608. ISSN   1058-8167. S2CID   165880193.
  6. ↑ Joshua M. Pearce, "Open Source Research in Sustainability", Sustainability: the Journal of Record, 5(4), pp. 238-243, 2012. DOI free and open access
  7. ↑ Schweik, Charles M. (2006), "Free/Open-Source Software as a Framework for Establishing Commons in Science", Understanding Knowledge as a Commons, The MIT Press, pp. 277–310, doi:10.7551/mitpress/6980.003.0014, ISBN   978-0-262-25634-6 , retrieved 2021-05-24
  8. ↑ Fernandez, Peter D.; Tilton, Kelly (2018). Applying library values to emerging technology : decision-making in the age of open access, maker spaces, and the ever-changing library. Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. ISBN   978-0-8389-8939-5. OCLC   1024320754.
  9. ↑ Boyle, James (2003). "The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain". Law and Contemporary Problems. 66 (1–2): 33–74. Archived from the original on 2010-11-23.
  10. ↑ "Knowledge Commons". Research Handbook on the Economics of Intellectual Property Law: 655. 2019. doi:10.4337/9781789903997.00077 (inactive 1 November 2024). ISBN   9781789903997. S2CID   261727871.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
  11. ↑ Lozano, Rosina (2018-04-24), "The United States Sees Language", An American Language, University of California Press, doi:10.1525/california/9780520297067.003.0006, ISBN   978-0-520-29706-7 , retrieved 2021-05-24
  12. ↑ Mouzouni, Charafeddine (2018-03-14). "The Wisdom Of Crowds: When Collective Intelligence Surpasses Individual Intelligence". Science Trends. doi:10.31988/scitrends.12858.
  13. ↑ Kampf, Roger (2013). "From data to wisdom: the contribution of intellectual property rights to the knowledge pyramid". Access to Information and Knowledge: 235–257. doi:10.4337/9781783470488.00019. ISBN   9781783470488.
  14. ↑ Győri, Róbert; Gyuris, Ferenc (2015), "Knowledge and Power in Sovietized Hungarian Geography", Geographies of Knowledge and Power, Knowledge and Space, vol. 7, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 203–233, doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9960-7_10, ISBN   978-94-017-9959-1 , retrieved 2021-05-24
  15. ↑ Gyuris, Ferenc (2014). "Basic education in communist Hungary. A commons approach". International Journal of the Commons. 8 (2): 531–553. doi: 10.18352/ijc.458 . hdl: 10535/9597 .
  16. ↑ Sen, Ravi; Subramaniam, Chandrasekar; Nelson, Matthew L. (December 2011). "Open source software licenses: Strong-copyleft, non-copyleft, or somewhere in between?". Decision Support Systems. 52 (1): 199–206. doi:10.1016/j.dss.2011.07.004. ISSN   0167-9236.
  17. ↑ Stewart, Daxton (2021). "Rise of the Copyleft Trolls: When Photographers Sue After Creative Commons Licenses Go Awry". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3844180. hdl: 1811/101769 . ISSN   1556-5068. S2CID   235276455.
  18. ↑ Carver, Brian W. (2018-08-15). "Share and Share Alike: Understanding and Enforcing Open Source and Free Software Licenses". Berkeley Technology Law Journal. 20 (443). doi:10.31228/osf.io/p327s . Retrieved 2021-05-24.
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