Reviewer: maxigas

1. Is the subject matter relevant?
Yes it is relevant both to the Peer Production journal and the FLOK issue, as one of the policy papers laying out the grounds and plans for “developing a radical alternative to cognitive capitalism” in the area of design and manufacturing.

2. Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?
The array of citations is rather comprehensive.

I would recommend to define what is cognitive capitalism (e.g. Boutang2011a) and spell out how the FLOK model both stems from cognitive capitalism and disrupts it. At the moment the treatment of cognitive capitalism vs. FLOK is quite Manichean. The result is that FLOK appears to have emerged as an untimely phenomena, rather than as a historically conditioned development.

As a result, while the paper sets out plans for the revolution it does not defend proactively against the counter-revolution, so to say. I deem it imperative to warn against the “dark side” of peer production, e.g. that economic and knowledge elites as well as actors in state corruption can easily hijack the resources intended to support community based development. Free licences like the GPL make the appropriation of resources trivial. This last point is even highlighted in official P2P Foundation doctrine, and the PP licence proposed as a remedy.

In conclusion, I advise a little bit more dialectical approach, to show potentials and dangers alike. Once cognitive capitalism is actually defined it will become clear that the distinguishing feature of cognitive capitalism compared to earlier capitalist epochs is to create valorise externalities: the exact same thing which the paper proposes as the alternative to cognitive capitalism. Therefore the paper will have to adopt a more nuanced stance.

3. Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgements?
The critique of the intellectual property regime is the strong part of the article, most reasonably argued and supported by ample evidence.

However in later parts the author uncritically embraces techno-social utopias manufactured in Silicon Valley (replacing startups with community workshops and venture capital with the state) and assumes that the same solutions would work in each country. Small and limited success stories hand picked from millions of failures on the peer production landscape became the basis of marketing materials for a comprehensive vision of the future society. In the narrative, a few successful projects “stand in” for a national economy, without any analysis of the structural differences between these two units of analysis (i.e. project and economy). The claim that 3D printers can manufacture “anything” or “all the objects” necessary for everyday life is so overused and overblown that it doesn’t even register on the radar any more.

Since I see no way of remedying these problems, and they are difficulties which mostly come with the genre, I find these shortcomings acceptable.

4. Is the article well written?
The article is remarkably well written and well structured.

5. Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?
As I wrote above, the discussion of cognitive capitalism and its relationship to the FLOK model needs to happen, possibly in a separate section in the beginning, and reflected in the end. Since the paper hardly reaches 8000 words right now there is enough space left to do this. Otherwise the composition is logical and well balanced.

Comments
The author claimed in personal communication that an alternative patent system have been implemented in Ecuador – a short summary of this experience would better support the claim for GPL-like patents than a Wikipedia reference alone.

The claim that hackerspaces and the like can function as the research, development, education and manufacturing infrastructure of an economy built on the peer production model is widespread even though it has not been realised on the ground as of yet. I find it imperative to distinguish more clearly in the paper techno-utopian ideas and the extent of their implementations today. Especially the manufacturing part requires a profoundly different social structure and machinery than what is available in hackerspaces today, where activities (justifiably) centre around prototyping. It is a hard-earned lesson from the hackerspace experience that the human work in a prototype is only about 10% of the finished product.

Reviewer: Peter Troxler

This paper aims to establish general principles for policy making with regard to industrial manufacturing based on the “FLOK” model for society — a society that is based on Free, Libre and Open Knowledge and to derive specific policy recommendations for Ecuador, in relation to the country’s “Plan for Better Living” (a three-annual policy plan for the development of Ecuador’s economy, covering the years 2013-2017).

The basic assumptions of the paper are,
(a) that a capitalist knowledge economy is blocking access to knowledge and is therefore stifling innovation,
(b) that the FLOK model for society would (by definition) allow open access to knowledge and hence foster innovation,
(c) that Ecuador’s “Plan for Better Living” is aiming to establish / implement the FLOK model of society.

The paper references ample evidence to support assumption (a) in the section “A critique of cognitive capitalism” and argues that in a capitalist knowledge economy “intellectual property” rights and particularly patents are not used as instruments to make knowledge public (as the name originally suggests) but to control competition (as they indeed were used from their very outset).

The paper then goes on to sketch “Alternatives to capitalist models” — or rather one particular alternative, namely the FLOK model. This section is relatively short and weak insofar as the title promises several alternatives, and in economic history and theory there are indeed several alternative models to be found (pre- and early industrial, socialist, communist, …). These would then need to be compared to the FLOK model and the paper would have to argue why the FLOK model is actually the best alternative to capitalist models.

In the next section, the paper describes two case-studies of “open knowledge commons in the secondary economy sector”. These two case studies are both referring to products, the RepRap 3D printer and the Wikispeed car. Both products are open source hardware in the sense that design information such as blueprints, bills of material, assembly and operating instructions as well as related software are freely available.

This section is problematic in several respects. First, compared to the ample evidence reported in the section on critique, a sample of only two case studies looks meagre and I doubt if evidence from such a small sample can convincingly support assumption (b). Second, the case studies only use secondary sources (which is unfortunately not uncommon in policy research), and only a very few secondary sources (de Bruijn in the case of the RepRap, Tincq in the case of the Wikispeed car).

I did not take the effort to check all the sources used, but I found that the claim that the Rep Rap project “managed to improve RepRap’s design and performance and slash the production cost of 3D printers down to about $500” is not to be found in the three sources mentioned (managed to improve RepRap’s design and performance and slash the production cost of 3D printers down to about $500 (Banwatt 2013a, 2013b, 2013c). The Tincq article appeared not in a peer-reviewed journal, but is to be found in the online magazine of Ouishare (a “think and do-tank” with the mission “to build and nurture a collaborative society”).

There is a few more issues with the case study section, which I’ll summarize in bullet points
– The implications of the Rep Rap are more general implications of 3D printing as a technology, yet they are presented as if they were an actual result of the open source Rep Rap.
– 3D printing is presented as a paradigm shift for environmental sustainability. So far, to my knowledge, this is a myth of the type and dimension of “patents stimulate innovation”. Tellingly, the source supporting the claim is a CNN tech special.
– The caption of figure 2 contrasts (patent-based) Stratasys with (formally open source) Makerbot — without mentioning the fact that Makerbot in acutal fact stopped being open source and was bought up by Stratasys in 2013.
– The claim that people would be able to manufacture whatever they need in the comfort of their homes lacks any substantiation and is only part of the current 3D printing hype meme.
– I haven’t analysed the Wikispeed car case in same detail, yet I’m surprised to read that an internal-combustion engine powered car could possibly be “well suited to a post-fossil fuel economy” (p. 13).
– And certainly the idea of modularity in car manufacturing (p. 11) is not exactly something the car industry would not be practicing already.

The next section is listing “preliminary general principles for policy making”. It is unclear from the article how the author has “come to identify a set of enabling conditions, from which we can draw several general principles to guide policy making efforts” (p. 13). Rather the list looks like a declination of the FLOK model. The points do not follow logically from the case studies. The last point, “importance of access to credit …”, is even contradicted by both case studies, as Rep Rap and Wikispeed car were financed by the communities themselves. And while I’m a fervent supporter of hackerspaces and similar places as an important infrastructure, the text is not sufficiently clear on why they are not just an instance of “distributed technological infrastructures” and as such are already mentioned as a principle.

The most difficult parts of the paper are the sections on the “Ecuadorian policy framework” and the “Ecuadorian policy recommendations”. I feel that the former presents a rather peculiar reading of the Ecuadorian “Plan for Better Living”. There are no sources referenced in the text nor are there any sources at my disposal or available through a well known search engine that would corroborate that reading outside and independently of the circles of “floksociety.org”. This is worrying, as it cannot be determined if assumption (c) is a belief held by the author and colleagues from floksociety or if it indeed corresponds to the policy plans of the Ecuadorian government. If the paper is relevant beyond a rather abstract, academic thought exercise.

The last section on “Ecuadorian policy recommendations with institutional participation”, suffers from two problems. First, it completely lacks an analysis of the current situation in Ecuador that would identify the policy areas needing attention with regard to the implementation of the “Plan for Better Living” (whether or not this means implementing a FLOK model of society). Second, the recommendations only follows weakly from the empirical material presented earlier … in fact, it reads more like the result of an associative brainstorming session. The list below highlights a few points, without trying to be complete:
– It is unclear, why the “implementation of a legal framework based on free/open licenses” is necessary, assuming that Ecuador adheres to international harmonized copyright on which the mentioned GNU GPL license is based.
– The suggestion of a “de facto abolition of the patent system” should certainly be reflected in the context of international agreements (e.g. TRIPS) of which Ecuador is a party.
– Empirical evidence from the two case studies does not support the need for “special economic incentives” for commons-oriented projects
– I am surprised that Ecuador would need a legal framework for co-ops and collectivist organisations to operate.
– The paper would need to argue why a community-managed investment fund would need to be established via government policy.
– Without more detailed knowledge of the Ecuadorian economy, it is impossible to understand if the groups singled out for “the transformation of the productive matrix” (p. 18) — the guilds of San Joce del Chimborazo, the agricultural in Sigchos, the Quichua Institute of Technology — would give the programme meaningful leverage to develop its effects for the whole country. The paper neither asserts or provides pertaining evidence.
– It is unclear on what empirical evidence the suggestion of “special zones of economic development” are based or how it relates otherwise to the case studies presented (p. 19).
– The recommendations on the educational and academic system loosely follow from a general thurst to foster open source; yet again, the relation to the presented empirical evidence is rather weak.
– I am surprised to read the recommendation that “publications distributed under free licenses” need to be included in academic evaluation and assessment — as this suggests that this would not be current practice (which would need to be supported by evidence).
– Lastly, when proposing the “National Observatory”, this is the only part in the paper where the “economic viability and fitness of free technologies to meet existing needs” is mentioned as a potential issue.

Reviewing this overall assessment, I cannot recommend the paper for publication in its current form. Major additional work is needed to mature the paper:
– a broader discussion of alternatives to capitalist models
– more empirical evidence of open knowledge commons in manufacturing
– refined argumentation to arrive at general policy recommendations based on empirical evidence
– more differentiation regarding the reading of Ecuador’s policy framework
– background evidence of the current situation in Ecuador
– stringent argumentation to arrive at policy recommendations that builds on the general recommendations and takes into account the policy framework and the current situation in Ecuador

Regarding the specific review questions:

1. Is the subject matter relevant?
The subject matter is relevant. Regarding open source as one of the options to deal with industrial inventions is currently not exactly part of industrial/manufacturing policy.

2. Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?
The idea to exemplify industrial policy recommendations for one specific country is interesting, particularly if there is the notion that policy makers might be inclined to adopt such policy. The weaknesses this paper has with regard to actually carry out this idea have been discussed above, the main being the possibly idiosyncratic reading of Ecuador’s policies and the lack of evidence on the situation in Ecuador.

Regarding gaps in literature, it strikes me that none of the work of Elinor Ostrom and colleagues on knowledge as a commons is used. I am wondering if the author does not know of it or disapproves of it, the latter would certainly need explication.

3. Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgements?
There are two noticeable problems in the paper:
1. The “FLOK” interpretation of Ecuador’s policy plans appears unsubstantiated beyond the FLOK Society Project.
2. The policies are not sufficiently supported by evidence, both why they are needed and why they are supposed to work.

4. Is the article well written?
In terms of language and structure, the article appears OK.

5. Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?
I’ve already highlighted what additional work would be needed to mature the paper. However, as the article is already close to 8000 words, to arrive at a suitable text for the JoPP, the author would be well advised to select one particular aspect of industrial policy making — e.g. how to deal with industrial inventions, or technical infrastructure, etc. — to remain within the expected word-count.