Nowadays, anyone looking for information or wanting to know something only needs to click a few times to end up on Wikipedia. But 25 years ago, the online encyclopedia was still completely unknown. And then the reference work sparked a small revolution. Because anyone can participate and make their own professional knowledge accessible to everyone. Digital commons and “commons” have become an integral part of everyday life.
However, commons are not a new phenomenon—they have been around for thousands of years. Even in ancient Egypt, people worked together on irrigation systems, and in the Middle Ages, villages shared the “commons,” i.e., land that belonged to the village community. Communal goods (nowadays mostly referred to as public goods) and jointly managed and used commons were first described scientifically in the 19th century, explains Richard Sturn, professor of economics at the Schumpeter Center at the University of Graz.
"Communal goods differ significantly from private goods. For example, when I eat a slice of pizza, no one else can consume that slice. But with common goods, that's possible. When a student reads a Wikipedia article, it doesn't take away anyone else's opportunity to do the same,“ explains Sturn. ”In economics, we call this non-rivalry—and that's exactly what distinguishes common goods and digital commons."
No exclusion
Non-rivalry makes it advantageous for the community that no one is excluded from use – even if they cannot pay enough for it. However, this is difficult for private companies. If something is freely available to everyone, you cannot make money from it. That is why communities take on the development and maintenance of commons, from medieval villages to modern open-source projects or Wikipedia. And above all, this requires a clear set of rules.
“The openness of these systems makes them special, but it also poses a risk,” explains Sturn. Traditional agricultural commons and fishing grounds therefore need rules against overuse or overfishing. With digital commons, the problem is slightly different: if too many people work on a project at the same time in an uncoordinated manner, it threatens to become chaotic. The community must therefore develop rules and incentives. Who is allowed or expected to contribute (what, when, and how)? Who checks the quality of the contributions? Are there consequences for misconduct, and how are they enforced?
Balance between freedom and rules
But as important as rules are, they also cause problems, explains the economist. “Standards naturally also represent a barrier that can hold back innovation.” The trick is to find the right balance: to remain open, but still provide structure. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, it is important that user communities are aware of this tension and regularly review and develop their roles and standards,” says Sturn.
Last but not least, commons thrive on people who participate and remain motivated. Writing code or Wikipedia articles is only the beginning. “Maintaining and servicing these offerings also requires effort,” explains the researcher. Incentives are needed to keep users engaged. “And that applies to open source and Wikipedia just as much as it does to the maintenance of millennia-old irrigation systems.” And the success of these systems shows that when communities work together in a meaningful and regulated way, they can create valuable and important goods – then as now.
Curious about how different forms of goods and services shape society? In the Bachelor's program in Economics, you will learn everything about different economic systems.