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GLOSSARY
Terms and the definitions we are finding for them in this course.
Authors: Civicsense, Joe Corneli, ...
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Autocracy
best practices
BSD and BSE like licenses
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very close to public domain licenses, allow almost anything to be done owth the source code, apart from improper authorship notification. (DeLaat, P. 2007)
case studies
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What's model do they try to use? What actually happens? What worked well and what was frustrating or ineffective? what's the scale of the effort? One person? 10,000 people? 7 billion people? In their world, what do they consider "best practices" for open governance?
co-operatives
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Voluntary and Open Membership
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Democratic Member Control
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Member Economic Participation
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Autonomy and Independence
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Education, Training and Information
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Co-operation among Co-operatives
common purpose
Commons
community of practice
Continental Bioregional Congress
Debian
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A case of open governance; As an organization it is distinct for its large international body of contributors and representational governance by leaders controlling long release cycles after years of bug-tracking and resolution.
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As a knowledge-product, Debian is a free (libre) and open source software (FLOSS), distinct for requiring all constituant packages to be FLOSS, while users are free to use it as they see fit. For example, Ubuntu OS is based on 6-month snapshots of Debian, controlled by Mark Shuttleworth.
Delegation of decision-making
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‘delegation of decision-making’ corresponds to ‘vertical decentralization’ in organizational development parlance. (DeLaat, P. 2007)
democracy
discourse analysis
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For example, one way we might bring audio into written form (qualitative analysis of a discourse) is to listen for (in this case best practices) and apply key words to portions. First making a list of practices, then sorting them into useful categories for the intended audience, for p2pu or others.
Division of roles
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‘division of roles’ corresponds to ‘vertical differentiation’ in organizational development parlance. (DeLaat, P. 2007)
ecological governance
establish understandings
final outcomes
Formalization
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In general, formalization refers to moving away from informal relations (personal friends, personal family, personal guests, personal trade partners) and toward broadly recognized (transparent) and respected (publicly deliberated with positive outcome) criteria for role and process legitimacy (binding agreements) within a given project.
FOSS (free and open source software)
Gaja University
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ecological governance: 150 people in North and South America.
global governance
Governance
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governance towards outside parties; "As soon as an OSS community of the democratic-organic type has created such a foundation as a protective shell around it, the prototype of the ‘community managed model of governance’ has evolved." (DeLaat, P. 2007) The evolution refers to the ability to govern actions of others, as well as self, so a corporate form, such as a non-profit foundation, gives a mature project the ability to move in a coordinated manner in relation to entities outside its own internal participants.
Government
group cohesion
hard skills
healing
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we might look at "healing" as an improvement on something that is not working well. A conflict may hurt. It may be healed in any number of ways. Healing may come from amputating the hurt limb. Or healing may occur by hearing the limb's voice "there is burning here" Healing happens when the entire body responds to that limb by moving away from the fire. Or healing may be done by understanding differences in how the left and right arms experience the world, and taking that difference in account when seemingly "conflicting messages" are combined in the future. Healing might be "renormalization" or organizationally learning new expectations after a period of change.
individual's learning
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the subjective experience of each individual has an impact on the learning the organization accumulates about itself and about the rest of the world.
Internal governance
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DeLaat, P (2007) found that the second phase of empirical studies of OSS governance found that projects were internally governed with these 6 main categories of tools: modularization, division of roles, delegation of decision-making, training and indoctrination, formalization, and autocracy/democracy. (DeLaat, P. 2007)
internal versus external motivations
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First empirical studies of OSS developers motivations included intellectual stimulation and improvement of skills (internal and external motivations), a sense of obligation to the open source community (internal commitment to external entity), a need for the program for private uses (internal motivation) and a need for the program for work (external motivations) (Lakhani and Wolf 2005). (DeLaat, P. 2007)
learning
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a change in behavior as a result of experience
Modularization
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As OSS developer participants grew, programs split into modules. For example, distinctions between stable and experimental versions gives both innovation and maintenance their own niches. Modularization corresponds to ‘horizontal differentiation’ in traditional organizational development parlance. (DeLaat, P. 2007)
negative case studies
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groups that tried to implement open governance and it didn't work out
normalization
norms
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shared expectations about what is best, or appropriate, see "best practices".
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See also Benkler on norms as one way to help fulfil the "integrating" function that combines modules generated in a peer-production environment. The norms will indicate what modules are "appropriate to" or "good enough for" the project, and also also how they should fit together (e.g. "good fences make good neighbours"). Technologies that "do" integration are likely to embody community/organisational norms (see "Transparency").
open Governance
open learning environment
organization
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Since we seem to be using this word a lot, we might as well try to define it ;-P. Maybe an "organization" is roughly what happens when a set ofnorms is made transparent.
organizational learning (or "learning-as-a-group")
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We might think good "organizational learning" should include establishing understandings of "norms" or expectations about what is best, at least for now, or what is considered a beneficial goal in the long term (see "norms").
(organizational) partnership (also "Consortium/Coalition/Collaboration/team-up")
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This seems like an interesting case because it requires organisations (not just people) to work across their boundaries and find (sub)sets of shared norms. It can provide one model for what happens when people get together to collaborate, too, though probably not a perfect one.
peer-based learning
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see peer-to-peer learning
peer-governed
peer production
peer-to-peer learning
platform for asking and answering questions within an organisation
protocol
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relation to standards, as in open standards
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"Prior to its useage in computing, protocol referred to any type of correct or proper behavior within a specific system of conventions. It is an important concept in the area of social etiquette as well as in the fields of diplomacy and international relations. (...) [W]ith the advent of digital computing, the term has taken on a slightly different meaning. Now, protocols refer specifically to standards governing the implementation of specific technologies." (Galloway, A. 2004)
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"a technique for achieving voluntary regulation within a contingent environment." (Galloway, A. 2004)
public good
regulated commons
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a result of an institutional framework affecting rights to shared resources, this may include non-profit foundational structures. (DeLaat, P. 2007)
rent-seeking versus donator motivations
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In first empircal studies of OSS projects, they found egoistic motivations (‘rent-seekers’) versus altruistic motivations (‘donators’). A successful aspect of OSS licensing framework is that rent-seeking does not crowd out donations. With this framework, though a minority of hackers are staunch supporters of the cause of free software as a public good, the large majority of OSS projects chooses to operate under GPL-conditions (GNU public license). (DeLaat, P. 2007)
resilience
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flexibility and ability for ongoing renewal.
self-perpetuating regulations
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Some copy licenses favored by OSS projects, restrict users to apply the same license to all future uses of the work. This protects the commons from private appropriation, (DeLaat, P. 2007). These licenses such as GPL, are successful because they allow private individuals and firms to benefit, while not allowing removal of the code from the commons.
soft skills
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"Soft" or "fuzzy" are terms commonly used in opposition to "hard" or "tangible. More accurately, the referents are usually complex and more difficult to describe observations, rather than intangible ones. "Soft" skills are relatively less amenable to simple quantitative analyses or reproducable reports of observations. For example the considerably complex nature of social, organizational, and communications skills are usually referred to as "soft".
source code commons
* (DeLaat, P. 2007)
spontaneous’ governance
* Phase-one of empirical studies of OSS projects found what they considered "spontaneous governance," with roughly half of developer contributors "allowed" to perform OSS work during work hours, (DeLaat, P. 2007). This means employer expectations might also be in effect.
subjective experience
The Farm
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Intentional community in Tennessee USA.
Training and indoctrination
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A necessary function in ongoing organizations, requiring increasing formalization as size and complexity increases. (DeLaat, P. 2007)
Transparency
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Often applied to processes like voting or accounting.
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Many governments have some variant on the "freedom of information act". But many also have state secrets. Similarly, a governance model like "rough consensus" may be perfectly open, but not completely transparent as to how it works.
Transferable knowledge and/or skills
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skills and knowledge that are applicable in new contexts
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example: transferring best-practices from open governance environments to more closed environments. How might a (communications?) consultant transfer knowledge from openly governed projects to private and/or closed working beuarcracies? (thanks Adil)
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transferable across scales, for example transferring skills from face-to-face organizations to global bodies.
Transformative learning (thanks Patrick)
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experience which changes the learner, and/or the learner's environment
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personal transformation; affecting a person's internal sense of the world, or actions toward others.
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structural transformation; affecting power relations
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example: A government organization on natural resources may voluntarily negotiate with a private company or other non-governmental organization. The negotiation might result in "transformational learning" that changes the way these decisions are made in the future (structural transformation). It may transform the individuals involved as well (personal transformation).
Unlearning
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'Unlearning' is particularly important in collaborative endeavors because of cultural environments that teach poor collaboration skills which might best be "unlearned".
