Notes on the Sustainability of Open Source and P2P Practices
Written by Kalle Pakkala on March 30, 2009.It has been claimed that sustainability is something inherently “peer-to-peer” and “open”, or, at the very least, that sustainable systems need to be developed through co-design and co-evolution. At the same time open source software (OSS) development and other social models involving p2p interaction have been hailed as a revolutionary way of organising work and resources. In the case of OSS, several bottlenecks of community sustainability may be observed. In fact, most of the communities and projects never reach maturity.
Some of these cultural and social bottlenecks relate directly to the political economy of OSS collaboration, suggesting that the OSS model is not easily transferred outside the realm of digital production. Also, several successful OSS projects have been co-opted or integrated into the capitalist mode of production. However, open source collaboration has already transformed software business, and is in the process of changing business practices in publishing, media, art and so on.
Therefore we need to be careful and precise in trying to identify the characteristics that make open source and p2p //alternative// economic models pointing beyond the uneasy co-existence with currently prevailing economic institutions.
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