There is tremendous interest in digital commons, or digital common goods. Governments at all levels want something from the European Commission, Germany and France, to the municipality of Amsterdam. Potentially, they contribute to our sovereignty, self-determination, democracy and sustainability. We need to think about open source software and services like nextcloud and libre office, decentralized communication and social media like matrix and mastodon. But also sharing and collaborative management of data and knowledge such as through creative commons licenses and wikipedia.
Are the commons a way to âtake back the Internetâ? Then, important questions are: How do digital commons contribute to a transformation where communities are at the helm? How can we design our digital infrastructures to contribute to self-determination and democratic practice?
Commons Network is working with the Ministry of the Interior to seek a common understanding of digital commons, the possible role of government to support them and the stumbling blocks in doing so. The SIDN fund supports various digital commons initiatives and projects.
In this panel, we will discuss how building blocks of the commons such as collective ownership, democratic management and collaboration are taking shape and discuss the challenges and opportunities through use cases.
