Sustaining Open Communities: Exploring Open Knowledge Models Through Case Studies

Abstract

Knowledge is a non-rivalrous resource which currently has no satisfactory resolution to its core problem - in theory sharing knowledge creates new knowledge, but in reality without proper resources to create high quality knowledge, sharing knowledge does nothing. The two battling mechanisms for promoting a knowledge economy are the Patent Economy or the Traditional IP system, and the Open Knowledge movement. However the Patent Economy has increasingly been failing to successfully boost the rate of innovation globally (Huebner, 2005), and the Open Knowledge movement seems to fail to produce outcomes that resemble the utopic claims of free, high-quality, and verified knowledge for all to use and access. In my research I evaluate that both of these systems focus to often on the individual creator as the unit of innovation. Instead I take an organizational approach. I use the Institutional Analysis and Design framework developed by Elinor Ostrom to evaluate how two organizations set up the regulations to evaluate knowledge, the monetary resources to maintain that knowledge, and the rules to ensure that that knowledge is consistently shared with the rest of the world for free. My results indicate that the biggest areas for risk within these structures are the lack of checks and balances on the financial distributor, and the lack of mechanisms for developing social consensus around the common resource.