Gnomunism

Overview
gnomunismeGnomunism is the ideal of keeping all easily-duplicated, non-personal knowledge in common as a public resource. It emerges from the relatively new ease with which vast amounts of data (including video and audio) can now be stored and organized for retrieval because of the digital revolution which began in the late 20th century.

The word Gnomunism comes from gnose (Greek for "knowledge") and the ideal of communism, i.e. sharing property in common. (To some extent it also evokes GNOME, a major component of the GNU Project which originated the first open-source text license used by the first major knowledge commons project, Wikipedia.)

Also called: digital commons, electronic commons, information commons, virtual commons, communication commons, intellectual commons, Internet commons, technological commons – all are referencing the new shared territory of global distributed information, from different angles.

« Lorsqu’on partage un bien matériel, il se divise. Lorsqu’on partage un bien immatériel, il se multiplie. » (When sharing a physical asset, it is divided. When sharing an intangible, it multiplies.) (fr)Serge Soudoplatoff

Types of Knowledge
The types of knowledge to which this applies are, in general:
 * all intelligible ideas and data
 * all types of understanding gained through experience or study, whether indigenous, scientific, scholarly or nonacademic.
 * creative works, such as music and the visual and theatrical arts

...in whatever form in which it is expressed or obtained that can be duplicated on a computer at a cost that is so low it is difficult to calculate.

Why this is necessarily a success
Take an example GoldenDict, software to translate by simple-click, better than Babylon because free (under licence GNU GPL) ! How a private company can compete a legal free software, mainly built reusing other legal free components (e.g. including translation software StarDict under licence GNU GPL).

This pyramid of free components can be enriched with no limit quite quickly, as a chain of consequences. This produces more and more sophisticated software, providing myriads of functionalities as synonyms, phrase translation, encyclopedias in all languages, etc., all through simple-click.

This single example should convince that sharing and reuse freely provides necessarily a virtuous result, for the benefit of everybody, rich or not (assuming the access is available).

Examples of success
Here are examples of success (even in not in public domain, at least most of them are in open commons licences):
 * Wikipedia and many encyclopedias, as Issuepedia
 * GNU-GPL, open source software, as LINUX, FireFox, Mozilla, etc.
 * some blog and forum contents
 * Free art

Come and build the car of the future - http://www.cmmn.org/nc/en/home.html : C,mm,n (pronounced ‘common’) could be a future example of success, if you participate to this open source community for sustainable personal mobility :
 * To develop a new type of electric car. C,mm,nity is open to anyone with a creative, intelligent and enterprising perspective on mobility issues, and who wants to help create a better world. C,mm,n follows the open source model: as with open source software, we focus our services around the product. Anyone can use it to offer mobility services, just as long as any derived work produced is released back to the community under an open source licence. Please read about our latest developments here.


 * Note: The deployement of open-source licences as GNU-GPL/FDL, Free Art license, Creative Commons ShareAlike, is a useful step before the public domain. Indeed any modification is authorized, provided that the new work is also under same license.

How to finance
How to finance research and creative works if all is put in public domain and accessible for free on internet ?

Solutions are to be explored and developped, including :
 * volunteering, donation
 * cooperation, coopetition
 * patronage, sponsoring
 * crowdsourcing and all tools/technics produced by internet

The enterprises are stimulated to research in common, through international and open networks. That is currently the case in some extent.

The research cost beeing shared, the selling price of the products would drop down, for the benefit of the business (B2B) end the final customer (B2C).

Some artists are stimulated to creat in common, through open internet tools and platfoms. The creation is multiplied, the versions of one piece of art are multiplied.

How to go
Changing in one night is not possible. Thirty years would be necessary to meet the goal.

The patents on foods (GMO...) and drugs would evolve faster (social dimention), followed by art (cultural dimention), ending with general patents (economical dimention) ?

Who wins
All actors win ; it's a win-win relationship.

A quasi-monopoly get benefit from creativity and inventions of all start-ups aroud the world ; and start-ups get benefits froms knowledge of quasi-monopoly.

Poor countries can produce drug and medicine at local production cost, also food with modern technics, helping to reduce social and political troubles with other countries.

How competition can survive
Thanks to Gnomunism all companies could know all strategies and research on all competitors. So how competition can survive ? Competition would be on actual products an services provided to the customer :
 * quality
 * robustness
 * duration
 * efficiency
 * closeness to the need
 * service rapidness
 * relationship, friendliness
 * etc...

Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, Nobel 2009
These extracts of Understanding Knowledge as a Commons are not directly related to Gnomunism, but are copied here as illustration : Whether labeled the "digital," "electronic," "information," "virtual," "communication," "intellectual," "Internet," or "technological" commons, all these concepts address the new shared territory of global distributed information.

With "subtractive" resources such as fisheries, for instance, one person's use reduces the benefits available to another. High subtractability is usually a key characteristic of common-pool resources. Most types of knowledge have, on the other hand, traditionally been relatively nonsubtractive. In fact, the more people who share useful knowledge, the greater the common good.

Knowledge is cumulative. With ideas the cumulative effect is a public good, so long as people have access to the vast storehouse, but access and preservation were serious problems long before the advent of digital technologies. An infinite amount of knowledge is waiting to be unearthed. The discovery of future knowledge is a common good and a treasure we owe to future generations. The challenge of today’s generation is to keep the pathways to discovery open.

One person's use of knowledge (such as Einstein's theory of relativity) did not subtract from another person’s capacity to use it. This example refers to the ideas, thoughts, and wisdom found in the reading of a book—not to the (physical) book itself, which would be classified as a private good.

Corporations have supported increased patents and copyright terms, while many scientists, scholars, and practitioners take actions to ensure free access to information. Universities find themselves on both sides of the commons fence, increasing their number of patents and relying more and more on corporate funding of research, while at the same time encouraging open access and establishing digital repositories for their faculty’s research products.

The tragedy of the anticommons in the knowledge arena lies in the potential underuse of scarce scientific resources caused by excessive intellectual property rights and overpatenting in biomedical research.

(In some situations) participants are "trapped" in perverse incentives and cannot themselves find ways of increasing trust, developing norms of reciprocity, or crafting new rules.

The narrative of enclosure is one of privatization, the haves versus the have-nots, the elite versus the masses. This is the story of Boyle’s (2003) "Second Enclosure Movement," featuring the enclosure of the "intangible commons of the mind," through rapidly expanding intellectual property rights. The occurrence of enclosure is an important rallying cry on the part of legal scholars, librarians, scientists, and, really, anyone who is alert to the increasing occurrence of privatization, commodification, and withdrawal of information that used to be accessible, or that will never be available in our lifetimes.

This trend of enclosure is based on the ability of new technologies to "capture" resources that were previously unowned, unmanaged, and thus, unprotected. This is the case with outer space, with the electromagnetic spectrum, and with knowledge and information. The case of distributed digital technologies is particularly complex and problematic, as many stakeholders seek to renegotiate their interests in the new digital environment. Currently there are a vast array of enclosure threats to information and knowledge – including computer code as law (Lessig 1999) and new intellectual property legislation (DMCA, TRIPS, the Copyright Term Extension Act, the Patriot Act, and so on) – that undermine free access to public, scientific, and government information.

The U.S.-type commons underscores the importance of shared spaces and shared knowledge in fostering viable democratic societies. Libraries, as Kranich (2004) has pointed out, have been the quintessential strongholds of democracy. Traditionally, libraries have been the "protected areas" of the knowledge commons and librarians are the stewards. This narrative calls forth the urgency for all information users and providers to become stewards of the global digital commons.

...there are ever-greater restrictions on access through intellectual property legislation, overpatenting, licensing, overpricing, withdrawal...

...serious thinkers are equally concerned with the imposition of private control over knowledge that many argue should be in the public domain.

We think the framework will now be of value in understanding knowledge as a commons—in regard to both the public-good aspects of this commons and the common-pool resource aspects.

...greater access to cultural and scientific materials by individuals and groups outside the academy might have a remarkable impact on scholarship, culture, and possibly even science. He urges that the knowledge commons not be restricted to the scholarly community.

Would the original author of a very successful series of books—he uses J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books as an example—really be concerned that copyright protected her work for seventy years after her death rather than merely fifty years? Yes, if a corporation held the rights, they would be concerned to gain protection for as long as a government was willing to assign it. Those extra years, however, have nothing to do with creating an incentive to put in the hours of work needed to produce good books, pathbreaking research, or enticing music. At a substantial cost to the public, those extra years of protection generate profit to those who did not make the original investment in producing creative work. The chapter illustrates that knowledge is the domain of the public and that as much of it as possible needs to be freely available.

...a knowledge commons can be used effectively to stimulate students and citizens more generally to engage in research of public value, using as well as contributing to the knowledge commons.

A libertarian commons is one that anyone can access if they choose.

...associational commons will be an important part of the democratic use of knowledge commons in the future. .../... By producing knowledge for the commons, students learn about public issues in a way they would not do otherwise. Levine then urges other scholars to develop associational commons of this type as a way of producing important contemporary knowledge, and as a way of training students about their own communities as well as how to produce and evaluate knowledge about communities.

...the collaborative principles around Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) development projects could potentially be applied to develop new knowledge commons in science.

Elinor Ostrom, Nobel economic 2009
She works on knowledge commons :
 * Understanding Knowledge as a Commons
 * Resumé of Understanding Knowledge as a Commons
 * RECIPROCITY, TRUST, AND THE SENSE OF CONTROL
 * Her other publications

Other

 * Libre knowledge on Wikipedia