I just published "Capital and enclosure in software commons: Linux & Ethereum"

Capital and enclosure in software commons: Linux & Ethereum

Entities which extract profits from software commons like Linux and Ethereum have the greatest incentive and capacity to co-opt them.

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Software commons are an increasingly important part of our daily lives. The people and frameworks involved are able to provision novel goods outside of the state/market dichotomy.

Not all software commons will experience the same enclosure dynamics. Those that do can still exist and thrive in spite of it - perhaps it only becomes problematic when the scale of extraction becomes too large relative to the rest of the commons. It remains to be seen whether this conflict is an unavoidable early phase of commons bootstrapping or perhaps this will be a site of ongoing ever-increasing conflicts between the two modes.

It’s also possible for capital and the people wielding it to exercise restraint i.e. “dont kill the golden goose.” The underlying motivation (e.g. build a moat now to profit in the future) will eventually surface.

Linux is an ongoing demonstration of the possibilities and challenges involved in software commons stewardship. At the start of our own work, the Ethereum community should better develop a critical understanding of capital’s interest.

Today, the protocol community is largely aligned on the vision for near-term Ethereum. Layer 2 teams are a crucial component to making this work, and should be celebrated. In the future, will the different parts of the community agree on the right path forward?

Do native forms of capital embedded in resource production give a better ability to modify negative externalities? Or does it supercharge incentives for external capital to enter and co-opt the resource production system over time? How can we develop better heuristics for thinking about this challenge and developing safeguards?

There are decision-making norms which try to privilege the health of the network commons against apathy and “death by a thousand capital cuts”. As the number of profit-seeking stakeholders inevitably increases, will this always be the case?

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I've been working on this since the talk I gave at Protocol Berg in Sept. 2023, now written up as a deeper exploration of the topic! what do you think about the challenges presented and the implications they suggest?