Commons

Governance Masterclass
Melbourne 6 Dec with Michel Bauwens
Sydney 8 Dec with Michel Bauwens and Janelle Orsi

DISCUSSION PRIMER / CASE STUDY BACKGROUND

Commons
A commons arises whenever a group of people decides to collectively manage a
resource with a special regard for equitable access and long-term stewardship.
David Bollier (paraphrased by Janelle Orsi)

Open Food Network
An example of a commons based infrastructure: an open source platform that
empowers interconnected communities of food producers, distributors and buyers
to co-create decentralized, transparent and sustainable food systems.
www.openfoodnetwork.org
www.openfoodnetwork.org.au

CONTEXT
The Open Food Network is made up of a rapidly growing global community. We are
currently reviewing global governance arrangements to ensure we can scale
participation / contributions / impact of the OFN commons. More detailed
background to this process is provided in the Appendix if people want to drill down.


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1) How do we ensure that the livelihoods of commoners (contributors) are
supported?

2) How do we ensure intrinsic motivation is maintained to contribute to commons?

3) Defining boundaries. Who makes up the different communities that interact
with the commons what interests do they have and what rules (institutions
or patterns of relations) apply?

4) How does the commons interface with external economic and social (e.g. legal)
systems? How can the commons be protected from appropriation? How can
we use interface mechanisms to draw extra resources into the commons (e.g.
philanthropic grants)?

5) How do we promote interoperability and working together across projects rather
than reinventing the wheel or through focus on single platforms? For
examplesee lots other projects re food: https://github.com/ouisharelabs/food-
dashboard

6) What is the opportunity and appropriate role of technology in supporting
distributed governance?

7) In designing governance solutions: how are we delineating and what weight do

we give the economic problem of coordinating value/work and the political
problem of participation in decision-making about systems that impact us?


OPEN FOOD NETWORK CASE STUDY

Current

Code

AGPL license
(requires people to
keep any additions
to the code open).

No means or
mechanisms to
defend terms of
license.

Community

Interim partner
agreements between
Open Food Foundation
and values aligned orgs
in different regions
covering responsibility in
use of brand identity.

Mutual (benefit whole
community) roles /
functions / tasks covered
by lots of different
people/orgs across the
world (largely volunteer).

In process of
designing/implementing
better processes for
working together (see
Figure 1 in appendix) .

Business ecosystem

Australia is only regional
software as a service to
paid customers e.g.
subscribers (others in
pilot phase).

On top of this Australian
dev team providing paid
software services to
other regional orgs; and
to users (e.g. new
features).

Future?

Implement international
governance process
outcomes

New role of foundation
versus regional orgs?
New constitution?

New decision-making
processes?

** Mechanism for
community members
to contribute
(voluntary?) portion of
revenue to support
commons?

https://github.com/
openfoodfoundation
/openfoodnetwork


Top down
cathedral (not
bazaar)2

http://community.openf
oodnetwork.org/



Communal

Orgs running different
regional/country
instances of OFN using
different business models
to provide services to
multiple stakeholders:
producers/hubs/industry
orgs/buyers/social
impact investors /
philanthropy**.

Other orgs using code to
run differently branded
services.

Many software service
providers e.g.
deployment and feature
development services**


http://openfoodfoundati
on.org


Exchange

Pattern of
relations1

More
info

White label version
of code (OFN
identity stripped
out).

License conditions
require for-profit
users of code to
contribute to
community? e.g.
Commons-based
reciprocal?

APPENDIX: DETAILED BACKGROUND TO CASE STUDY

Current context / governance review
Released branded version of software in 2015.
Australian service launched June 2015 openfoodnetwork.org.au
New organisations set up in UK and Scandinavia to launch OFN service based on
software. Existing organisations in South Africa and Canada also launching
pilots/services. Groups in other countries developing projects. The membership
of these orgs is made up of potential users of the software (producers and
hubs) and other interested stakeholders.
All have different structures and business models. All not for profit or
equivalent.

1 E.g. following David Graeber, a key question is what is the appropriate mix / proportions institutions supporting

2 Although anyone has right to fork; this tends not to happen and project is very much a cathedral (top down)

pattern rather than bazaar e.g. central product management; central quality assurance before code is
incorporated in master releases to the community.

Interim agreements with regional entities in terms of use of identity / brand

responsibilities of being in the community.
Also possible for anyone to use the unbranded/white label code (without
becoming an OFN partner).
Australian team offers contract development and deployment services
Regional/country orgs currently busy developing technical capacity (own devs);
setting up business models and applying for grants.
Anselm Ibing and Myriam Boure volunteering as global community facilitators

Figure 1: Global governance review process kicked off mid-year.

Links to all relevant docs to points 1-4 below here:
http://community.openfoodnetwork.org/t/global-process-roadmap/395

Ouishare deceleration week (Anselm; Myriam and Lynn from UK) enabled
intensive look at what was not working tensions as participation scaled
Very practically focussed, resulting in 6 collaborative projects:
1) Beautiful and well-communicated value board values that guide
community generated from bottom-up. In process.
2) OFN contributors mill This process will better define regional and
mutual roles and organise them into circles/communities of practice.
3) Clear and light communication tools and processes iterative
improvement to set of tools/processes. We are using the following tools:
o Github (tech)
o community.openfoodnetwork.org (discussion board including
collaborative specification of features / pipeline)
o Monthly google hangouts (face to face)
o Shared global trello board (to coordinate non tech actions - new).
o Shared global drive (new)

4) The access game - a smooth way to get involved an interactive map
of the ecosystem to help orient contributors to most suitable entry
point. (Work under way)

5) Lean collaboration and decision making processes a space to discuss
global operations coordination and processes in an efficient and joyful
way, enabling us to prioritize tasks and strategies and take decisions
together (To be developed!)

History
Timeline: http://openfoodnetwork.org/about/history-team/ Most of the value
created to date has been generated through volunteer time and government and
philanthropic grants (Australia).

Original governance design was based on three legs of stool loosely modelled on
P2P foundation at the time.


1) The Foundation
The Open Food Network is a project of the Open Food Foundation. The Foundation
is a non-profit, registered tax concession charity established in October 2012, to
develop, accumulate and protect open source knowledge, code, applications and
platforms for fair and sustainable food systems. While established in Australia, its
remit is to support global collaboration on open source projects. Specifically, it is a
Company Limited by Guarantee under Australian law. It has asset lock and non-
profit clauses (no distribution). It has 9 directors on the board and 5 individual
members who are technically entitled to vote. A minimal constitution was
developed at the outset and was always intended to be replaced with a decision
making process that incorporated stakeholders. This hasnt happened yet. The
foundation was conceived of as a boundary entity that could hold and protect
conditions of an open source software license and also talk to or interface with the
dominant economy / legal system.

2) Open Source License
Software code is published on github and conditions of its use are as per AGPL
licence, which basically requires that modifications to code are also kept open. We
have no resources / processes to defend conditions of this licence.

3) Services
We originally envisioned the OFN team of contributors (here and internationally)
establishing a separate services collective or cooperative. This hasnt eventuated.

Different types of OFN stakeholders
Anyone person can wear multiple hats at one time
Eaters
Producers
Food Hubs (e.g. other food entities that distribute food)
Industry organizations (e.g. accreditors; marketing bodies)
Philanthropy / social impact investors / government investors
Workers (developers; others)

Different types of interrelated organisations may be appropriate at different scales
Sub-regional level organisation example: A food hub may service one particular
region and has members that are eaters and producers. It uses OFN infrastructure
to run its business and is a member of the organisation that provides OFN at
regional/country scale.

Regional/country level organisation example: A member based org/coop set up by
stakeholders in one country to provide OFN services (producers; other food
enterprises/food hubs; industry groups; developers might be members).

Global level of organisation example: as a mechanism to collaboratively develop
code / support growth and protection of commons.