Governance of Massive Multiauthor Collaboration - Linux, Wikipedia, and Other Networks: Governed by Bilateral Contracts, Partnerships, or Something in Between?

• Author: Dan Wielsch
• Position: Dr. iur., LL. M. (Berkeley), Professor of Law at the University of Cologne, Chair of Private Law and Legal Theory, Germany
• Pages: 96-108

2010

Dan Wielsch

96

1

Abstract: Open collaborative projects are

moving to the foreground of knowledge production.

Some online user communities develop into long-

term projects that generate a highly valuable and at

the same time freely accessible output. Traditional

copyright law that is organized around the idea of a

single creative entity is not well equipped to accom-

modate the needs of these forms of collaboration. In

order to enable a peculiar network-type of interaction

participants instead draw on public licensing models

that determine the freedoms to use individual con-

tributions. With the help of these access rules the

operational logic of the project can be implemented

successfully. However, as the case of the Wikipedia

GFDL-CC license transition demonstrates, the ad-

aptation of access rules in networks to new circum-

stances raises collective action problems and suffers

from pitfalls caused by the fact that public licensing is

grounded in individual copyright.

Legal governance of open collaboration projects is a

largely unexplored field. The article argues that the li-

cense steward of a public license assumes the posi-

tion of a fiduciary of the knowledge commons gen-

erated under the license regime. Ultimately, the

governance of decentralized networks translates

into a composite of organizational and contractual el-

ements. It is concluded that the production of global

knowledge commons relies on rules of transnational

private law.

Governance of Massive

Multiauthor Collaboration

Linux, Wikipedia, and Other Networks: Governed by Bilateral

Contracts, Partnerships, or Something in Between?*

by Dan Wielsch, Cologne

Dr. iur., LL. M. (Berkeley), Professor of Law at the University of Cologne, Chair of Private Law and Legal Theory,

Germany

© 2010 Dan Wielsch

Everbody may disseminate this article by electronic means and make it available for download under the terms and

conditions of the Digit al Peer Publishing Licence (DPPL). A copy of the license tex t may be obtained at http://nbn-resolving.

de/urn:nbn:de:00 09-dppl-v3-en8 .

This article may also be used under the Creati ve Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License, availabl e at http://

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.

Recommended citation: Dan Wi elsch, Governance of Massive Multiauthor Collabor ation - Linux, Wikipedia, and Other

Networks: Gove rned by Bilateral Contracts, Par tnerships, or Something in Between?, 1 (2010) JIPITEC 9 6, para. 1.

Keywords: Governance, Collaboration, Multi-Author, Open Content, Open Source, Commons, Wikipedia, Net-

works, Access, Licensing, GPL

A. Open collaborative production

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