Counterfoil

Research

Commons

Resources a community holds and governs together, from fisheries to free software.

  • Elinor Ostrom and the open source commons

    Ostrom showed that people can govern a shared resource without a sovereign or a market. Her eight principles, read as questions for WordPress, and what Illich adds.

  • Judge a tool by what it does

    Illich’s “counterproductivity” and Stafford Beer’s “the purpose of a system is what it does” reach the same destination by different roads. Justin Warren puts the same tests to work on open source.

  • What would Ivan Illich make of large language models?

    Ivan Illich would ask about thresholds, call the hosted language models a radical monopoly, and relate them to the first loudspeaker that ended silence as a commons in a community of equal voices.

  • The gift is always being given

    Lewis Hyde’s gift economy explains why free software and open protocols last. Gifts gain value by circulating; a tool for convivial tools should be one.