Peer to Peer Ethos

Modified from a document developed at the P2P Foundation

1.     Anti-Credentialism: Refers to the inclusiveness of collaboration. What matters is the ability to carry out a particular task, not any formal title (≠ credentialism).

• Anti-Credentialism: Refers to the inclusiveness of collaboration.No credentials required.  What matters is the ability to carry out a particular task, not any formal title. (≠ credentialism).
• People are valued on their ability to contribute, not their title.

2.    Anti-Rivalry: collaborating does not diminish the value of our work, but actually enhances it ( ≠ rivalry).

3.  Communal Validation: the quality control is not a 'a priori' condition of participation, but a post-hoc control process, usually community-driven ( ≠ hierarchical control).

• Perfection is not the aim--put a marshmallow up there--the product will be improved as others collaborate and drive the process.

4. Distribution of Tasks: there are no roles and jobs to be performed, only specific tasks to be carried out (≠ division of labor).

5. Equipotentiality: people are judged on the particular aspects of their being that is involved in the execution of a particular task (≠people ranking).

6. For Benefit: (Benefit Sharing; Benefit-Driven Production). The production aims to create use value or 'benefits' for its user community, not profits for shareholders ( ≠ for-profit).

• The work that is developed should benefit the food system commons, not the bottom line of one organization.

7. Forking: the freedom to copy and modify includes the possibility to take the project into a different direction  (≠ one authorized version).

8. Modularity: tasks, products and services are organized as modules, that fit with other modules in a puzzle that is continuously re-assembled; anybody can contribute to any module.

9. Granularity: refers to the effort to create the smallest possible modules (see Modularity infra), so that the threshold of participation for carrying out tasks is lowered to the lowest possible extent.

10. Transparency: is the default state of information about the project; all additions can be seen and verified and are sourced ( ≠ panoptism).

11. Negotiated Coordination: conflicts are resolved through an ongoing and mediated dialogue, not by fiat and top-down decisions ( ≠centralized and hierarchical decision-making). (See also "subsidiarity", "the delegation of decision-making power over a particular area of operation by those working directly in that area." [3])

12.  Permissionlessness: one does not need permission to contribute to the commons( ≠ permission culture).

13.  Produsage: there is no strict separation between production and consumption, and users can produce solutions ( ≠ production for consumption).

consumers are also producers, and producers are consumers.

14.  Stigmergy: there is a signalling language that permits system needs to be broadcast and matched to contributions.

(From the hyperlink) Stigmergic collaboration is essential to the success of large-scale online collaboration projects. To qualify as stigmergy, agents cannot communicate directly with one another, but rather must engage indirectly via a medium.