CS/DC Community Supported Digital Commons

CS/DC (Community Supported Digital Commons) is a network of free software projects that use and build upon existing network protocols, partnerships and ideas, based on solidarity economy principles. Inspired by the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, CSDC exists to build small federated groups to directly address the expressed digital needs of communities. These would be stewarded by several organizations to prioritize community-centered design, maintenance and repair.

We also recognized that there were several values and approaches that overlap between these prototypes, including:

• Learning and sharing best practices for making these projects financially sustainable, while transitioning out of capitalist financial practices and exploitative labor models.
• Strengthening IRL (in person) connections and ensuring that technologies are based on local community needs.
• The acknowledgement of planetary boundaries and maintaining conscious awareness of ecological impacts of the software and hardware that is utilized.
• Building on existing open, interoperable, and legacy protocols and software that enables transparency, privacy and autonomy.

CS/DC was initially prototyped as a at the DisCO Remastered Workshop in September 2023.

Overview

CS/DC gathers FLOSS projects that use and build upon existing network protocols, partnerships and ideas. They emphasize community-centered design, maintenance and repair. They share resources and reject the idea of making new tech. Instead of that, they are projects that emerge from and among several different organisations.

CS/DC DisCO Principles

1: Values-Based Design

• Highlights the hidden costs and human/ecological impacts of digital infrastructure
• Rejects cronyism, nepotism, corruption and elitism

2: Whole-Community Governance

• Co-created Governance Modeling, balancing accountability and fairness
• Cultivates relationships between communities, digital artisans and stewards
• Prioritizes community sensemaking and collective memory
• Rejects the tyranny of purists

3: Active Creators of Commons

• Highlights pro-bono exchange ( Lovework)
• Creates Digital Commons in service to other commons
• Co-creates relevant documentation (including easy-to-read formats)

4: Rethinking Global/Local Economics

• Promotes SMEs that support local needs
• Focuses on the relationships between local community projects (as service providers) and global networks/repos/infrastructure
• Encourages globally federated digital territories for networked solidarity

5: Carework is the Core

• Understands that digital tech is oppresive when human agency is stripped
• Promotes community-supported/led/centered tech with care as a central focus
• Integrates care practices into communication and federation building.
• Promotes intra-DisCO Mentorship and Mutual Support
• Stewards resources for expressed needs, such as virtual office suites, publication, social media etc
• Avoids techno-broism

6: Origins and Flows of Value

• Adaptive Licenses and Pricing based on circunstances
• Shifts from grants and subsidies to community supported and funded work
• Explores possibilities for intra-DisCO Lovework and Carework

7: Primed for Federation

• Promotes critical digital literacy in performance and art
• Rents and maintains servers, moderating digital comms spaces
• Uses existing network protocols, open hardware repair, reuse + partnership ideas
• How to do more with less: Maintenance for shared repos and infrastructure.

Preliminary CS/DC Research and Community Building

The following project proposal has been written to contact FLOSS communities interested in CS/DC and DisCO to contribute their knowledge, ideas and needs to building of the network. This experience will be used to co-create CS/DG's brand identity and strengthen relationships within the fedeation.

Research Question

What stewardship practices can be learnt from existing models of networked commons for small-scale FLOSS communities to federate toward sustainable, distributed, cooperative economic counterpower?

Areas: intersectional feminist, decolonial, community-based commons.

Research Methods

The creation of sustainable livelihoods for FLOSS communities would benefit from the study of alternative organizing principles from areas such as Community Economies, the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) and Ecofeminism. This would also result in movement-specialized tooling, decreasing dependence on ideologically opposed corporate solutions.

Our research and implementation applies the practices and messaging of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to the digital commons. Practices include economic contributions via subscriptions to share the costs, risks, and benefits of strengthening shared infrastructure. The messaging focuses on the ethical and ecological aspects of technology, paralleling the environmental and communal ethos that characterizes CSAs for local food systems. The goal is to create persistent feedback loops of community and institutional support and demand for FLOSS creators, tools and practices.

Commons Based Peer Production (CBPP) has taken a similar approach and has been a successful model for many digital commons. However, voluntary contributor profiles are often limited to those privileged by gender, race, economic status and ability. Community Supported Digital Commons (CS//DC) is an extension of the DisCO.coop model, which leverages human-level care and relationality within small commons into large-scale distributed infrastructures.

As a major sector of the Social Solidarity Economy, cooperativism has the potential to radically reshape economies and overturn inequality, with 2.6 million cooperatives have over 1 billion members, and a combined turnover of 3 trillion US$, similar to the pre-pandemic combined market capitalization of Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook. Platform Cooperativism has brought cooperativism to the digital economy , but to appreciably leverage and expand it, we need to promote the adoption of digitally networked solidarity strategies and large scale governance found in peer-to-peer, commons networks. This is the way to crystallize radical reimaginations of value creation and distribution transnationally.

Community Supported Digital Commons was created by DisCO.coop to develop DisCO governance and economic solutions with existing FLOSS projects that could form potential solidarity networks within the Decentralised Web movement. We will conduct iterative cycles of desk research, data gathering (interviews, case-study type information gathering, surveys), participatory prototyping, reflection (PAR) with these communities to co-learn and co-develop fresh, accessible audiovisual documentation for CS//DC. This will prioritize in-person visits and social research methods, including quantitative and qualitative analysis of the human/felt dimension, creating a space to address invisibilized work, precarity and power dynamics. The research methods will evaluate current offerings informed by values-in-design and value-sensitive design frameworks, among others, empowering the participating communities to define their own metrics and strengths and find a balance between CS//DC overall and their individual aims.

Implementation will be guided by the question, "What kinds of technologies do people actually want and need?" We favor federated distribution over decentralization as a cultural and structural approach to provide modular, eco-aware and intersectional feminist economic practices, and the development of matching technologies.

Final outputs will be collaboratively designed and implemented by participants in order to launch CS//DC, incorporate early supporters, and provide inclusive on-ramping for future collectives to join and extend the project.

Data and Resources

We will first conduct in-person workshops and participative exercises with select communities. Then we will survey a wider set of collectives. We will draw on historical data on CBPP and CSA successes/failures in small coops and commons, defining success by well-being, quality of life and positive social-environmental impact, not profit. Other datasets will analyze the economic potential of CS//DC, highlighting the economic and environmental waste of mainstream, growth oriented proprietary tech, versus federated FLOSS solutions.

Identifying CS//DC's potential users: 2.5 billion people worldwide, mainly in the global south, depend on some form of natural resource commons, yet many of these commons remain unprotected and at high risk of destructive enclosure. A similar number has been postulated for those co-creating shared resources online through digital platforms. These potentially massive affinity networks lack a common identifier and the technological and legal tools to combine economic potential. We will tap into the needs and potential of the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) to bridge value-aligned tech and its implementation within the SSE. Data and experiences will be gathered with the active input of participating communities and returned through Open Data strategies and made publicly available through the CS//DC archive.

Research Goals and Practice

CS//DC was initially prototyped at a DisCO.coop event whose attendees were working on decentralized tech, FLOSS, the Commons and P2P, the Social Solidarity Economy, Intersectional Feminism, Decoloniality and more. Our guiding question was, "What does anticapitalist, decolonial and intersectional feminist technology look like?" Read more about the event and results here.

Regarding research, we draw on existing DisCO material (available at disco.coop). We don't define "commons" in an exclusively Ostronian way; we favor the approach taken by Bollier/Helfrich, considering commons as social processes that transcend resource management. As a decolonial and intersectional feminist framework, we focus on the power imbalances and male/white/first world privileges often present in FLOSS communities and CBPP networks, alongside the pervasive disconnect between similar projects, developers and non-specialist users. We also highlight the separation and contradictions between small-scale commons and cooperatives and Commons Based Peer Production and P2P projects, seeking a clearer, more grounded understanding of the field.

Alongside the economic potential of federated coops mentioned above, we draw on knowledge gained in CSA experiences worldwide and consider how these may be reflected in the digital commons. We seek to visualize how alternative organizing and economic principles are embedded in open data infrastructures by illustrating how they embody the commons-based principles of solidarity organizing in contexts of precarity. Additionally, we will draw from research on the DWeb ecosystem, value-sensitive design for peer production systems, feminist tech, the material footprint of the distributed/appropriate tech digital commons vs. the corporate large data center model, design justice and more.

Target contexts / projects / communities and interventions

Although primarily centered on the "Digital Commons" CS//DC targets the whole ecosystem and production chain of technology, including its material, corporeal and emotional dimensions. This includes those who design and propagate tech and those who use it. This cycle is typically unidirectional and motivated by commercial interests. A Community Supported Digital Commons implies building tech for the communities involved with their activity participation. Our vision also breaks the false dichotomy between those who build and those who use; they are all part of this commons.

To this end, we are contacting groups building tech for social and environmental purposes, as well as end users and co-designers of these technologies. We are specifically targeting communities from the DWeb (see getdweb.net) ecosphere, as well as CBPP networks, and those groups at the intersection of the Social Solidarity Economy and FLOSS. We are also contacting small scale coops that focus on subsistence and creativity, such as media coops, art collectives, food coops, and repair cafes who could benefit from practical, user-friendly FLOSS tools and support. The project also serves as an advocacy vehicle for ethical tech use (paralleling the "ethical food consumption" ethos of CSAs). We want to contrast the increasingly acknowledged dangers inherent in the use of “big tech” products with the potentials of already-existing FLOSS tech solutions, while acknowledging the need to nurture FLOSS in order to mature into more attractive, inclusive and above all, user-friendly solutions. In this way CS//DC can also serve as a tool for progressive political legislation wishing to switch from big tech hegemony towards distributed, ethical alternatives.

Group members are also involved in the World Summit on Information Society 2024 (WSIS) review, actively campaigning for the inclusion of digital justice frameworks. CS//DC will share its research findings and recommendations as part of this process.

Summary of Work and Key Activities

We will co-develop CS//DC as a viable mechanism for radical tech developers and communities needing appropriate tech. The grant would allow us to co-develop the project in concert with participating communities and give it visibility. Our work plan is as follows.

• Map CS//DC tech, divided in a) Existing and ready to use tech, b) Existing tech that needs to be adapted and c) Tech that needs to be created
• Map situated patterns, best practices and strategies to foster CD//DC values (knowledge gathering)
• Map prospective CS//DC stakeholder communities (Tech, SSE etc)

Initial structuring:

• CS//DC economic model (based on DisCO Governance Model and materials)
• CS//DC compatible tech, conceived as a modular ecosystem
• CS//DC communication campaign and long term strategy

Next, the implementation phase of the project, consists of:

• Co-designed workshops with select communities in Europe, North America, South America, Africa and South Asia
• Workshop report, including audiovisual material (short films)
• Archive with all workshop results
• CS//DC Website and public presentation

Federation and horizontal scaling and financing plan for CS//DC mid and long term.

As an intersectional feminist framework, we will prioritize the unseen dimensions of tech development and use, placing special emphasis on carework, human relations and the sociopolitical dimensions of technology. Following the activist adage "Nothing about us without us", CS//DC needs to be developed alongside its potential user communities and their needs, using active listening to gather their experiences and support them in their practice. The scope of the project includes the co-development of economic models to leverage distributed network effects, shared promotion, licensing and digital and hardware composting (Mapping redundancies and maintaining shared resources for digital and material sufficiency)

We will prototype infrastructures, tools and toolkits into viable strategies through co-design and co-creation methods (e.g paper prototyping) while identifying bottlenecks, value clashes, compromises and workarounds. Through select cases, we will analyze the organizational, economic, technological and human landscape to identify needs and value gaps and synergies between ideals and tools.

Outputs from the research and co-development process will be shared with a strong audiovisual emphasis. Ultimately we aim to present CS//DC as a highly identifiable dynamic brand capable of sustaining attention and gathering groups to leverage large-scale network effects. This proposal represents a first step into a much longer cycle of work which we've committed to care for and sustain in the coming years.

Programs and Partnerships

We are leveraging our existing partnerships with compatible initiatives. For CS//DC in particular, we will leverage our long standing contacts within the DWeb ecosystem (including Enspiral, hypha.coop, One Project, Metagov, Distributed Press, amoved, Telekommunisten, Sutty.coop) and complementary critical tech collectives working with the Design Justice Network, Chaos Computer Club. We regularly attend events organized by these groups and would present CS//DC there and at other events.

Complementary to our tech colleagues, we are committed to building bridges with non-tech actors, especially in the Majority World, and to involving the wisdom of groups and movements working with the commons, land back, decoloniality, mutual aid, artivism, degrowth, ecological and feminist economics, municipalism and P2P politics, trade unionism, permaculture and more. We have long-established contacts in all of these fields who closely follow our work on DisCO.coop, DWeb and more, and have shown a strong interest in the community- and ecologically-minded approach promoted by CS//DC. Specifically, we will involve our partners in IT for Change, Cooperation Jackson, Greenpeace, Post Growth Institute, Shareable, the Transnational Institute, One Project, Commons Network, Moral Imaginations, RIPESS and Culture Hack Labs in the co-organizations of events and workshops, as well as the diffusion of the CS//DC brand and outputs.

CS//DC's public presentation and website will be co-created with members from the network, including amoved, Autonomous Design Group and Makea, with whom we've worked extensively with in the past.

Project Impact

Our vision is to turn CS//DC into an identifiable brand where groups can build shared infrastructure to provide for each other's needs. We believe essential socio-ecological work, in tech or other areas, must be sustainable and not based solely on the volunteer labor of the time privileged. For this, and to normalize compensation for digital or commons-creating labor, we need to create governance and funding tools to support stewards and compensate contributors.

Success for CS//DC would be leveraging the brand as a way to gain financial and other forms of support from potential users, clients, communities, foundations and other contributing partners. The economic success of CS//DC should be predicated on notions of tech sufficiency and doing more with less through modularity, interoperability and knowledge sharing, with research to justify its economic and ecological savings versusBig Tech.

We aim to redefine how and why we build tech, aligning it with ethical and environmental principles unseen in Silicon Valley monocultures. Through CS//DC we want to create a strong demand for FLOSS uptake in public provision as well as the mainstreaming of FLOSS as "ethical digital consumption", paralleling similar movements working with food and seed justice. This project could be a stepping stone to define small/medium scale digital commons as a way of sharing digital infrastructure, and helping alternative economics in general to have appropriate, specialized tools with quality front-end design and usability on par with or superior to corporate tools.

To quote ecologist David Fleming: “Large-scale problems do not require large-scale solutions; they require small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework.” The individual collectives, and modular technologies are the small-scale solutions. CS//DC can be the inclusive, care-oriented, CBPP, large-scale network that respects the individuality of partner initiatives and strengthens the ecosystem through federated power.

Initial Project Team

The coordinating team are the participants in the DisCO Remastered event mentioned above:

• Stacco Troncoso teaches and writes on the Commons, P2P politics and economics, open culture, post-growth futures, decentralized governance and more. He is the co-founder of DisCO.coop and co-founder of the P2P translation collective Guerrilla Translation. ** Website
• Ann Marie Utratel is the co-founder of DisCO.coop (2018) and Guerrilla Media Collective (2013) and a facilitation group member of Leap Collective, working to disrupt philanthropy. A native New Yorker transplanted to Spain, she is honored to be walking among people dedicated to restoration of balance on the planet.
• brandon king, based in NYC, is an MFA candidate at Queens College. A founding member of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson Mississippi, he currently serves as Executive of Resonate Coop, an international, open source, music streaming platform cooperative. brandon's practice generates pathways to acknowledge and alchemize harms committed to disrupt despair, to equip and strengthen past, present, and future generations.
• Cindy Kohtala (PhD) is Professor in Design for Sustainability at the Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden. In her research, she examines grassroots eco-oriented communities, including materially engaged makers and hackers. She has expertise in ethnographic methods, co-design and values-in-design processes.
• Luis H. Porras is a digital craftsperson and hacker from Madrid who advocates for digital commons and autonomous and feminist digital landscapes . He co-founded amoved in 2019 a “digital workshop” for the Solidarity Economy. He has also participated at the P2PModels ERC project and is actively involved in the Spanish hacker movement as well as agroecology networks.
• mai ishikawa sutton (they/them) has been a Senior Organizer with the Decentralized Web (DWeb) since spring 2019, and were one of the original stewards of the DWeb Principles. They are a co-founder and lead editor of COMPOST, an online magazine about the digital commons. mai is a contributor to Hypha Worker Co-operative and is a Digital Commons Fellow with Commons Network. Their former projects and employers include the Oakland Public Library, Public Citizen, Shareable, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Other main collaborators are part of the DisCO Pink Board.

Image Credits

• Photography by Julio Albarrán