(2023-03-09) Marick Governing The Commons Part 3: Man, 63, Seeks Software Teams, Any Age. Object: Matchmaking

Brian Marick on Governing the Commons, part 3: Man, 63, seeks software teams, any age. Object: matchmaking. In the previous two episodes, I’ve encouraged you to think of a software codebase as enough like a commons that Elinor Ostrom’s writings about successful commons can apply. There’s been a fair amount of skepticism

The first is a reaction to Ostrom’s eighth design principle which, in Nordman’s formulation, is: “[Outside] authorities recognize a right to self-organize”. People commented that software teams have bosses

Ostrom wasn’t willing to say her design principles are prerequisites; that is, necessary conditions, but she does have a table of 14 case studies on page 180. Six of those commons are marked “robust”, three are marked “fragile”, and five are marked “failure”. Of the eight marked “fragile” or “failure”, six have a “weak” or “no” annotation when it comes to self-organization. All the robust commons have a “yes”.

Other aspects of Ostrom’s work are troubling for us. She emphasizes long-term time horizons: not exactly something characteristic of software product development.

Indiana University contains a building called the “Ostrom Workshop”...a place that facilitates the study – and the putting into practice – of commons-like ideas.

The week after next, I’ll be talking to people from there, thanks to Erik Nordman’s facilitation.

Here’s a slightly modified version of an idea I floated to them:... By keeping in touch with what’s happening in the team(s), you get ethnographic-ish, publishable data in a new domain that’s of considerable economic importance....

I’m able to spend some of our family money to make it happen. Probably more grant money than my wife got for a lot of her work.

My conference call would probably be better if I can say I’ve heard from teams who might participate.

The other main objection people make goes like this: sure, I could see commons governance as useful before a codebase has devolved as far as ours has. But it’s too late for us.