"Together we know everything, together we have everything"

Welcome to the P2P Foundation Wiki

The P2P Foundation is an international organization focused on studying, researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices in a very broad sense. This wiki is our knowledge commons. Our motto is "Together we know everything, together we have everything", i.e. pooling our resources through commons, creates prosperity for all. We document thousands of initiatives going in that direction on order to create "Hope with evidence".

The central question we address is the following:

* "How can we enable and encourage the formation of Global Cooperative Networks within the existing Global Adversarial Network? How could these bubbles form, grow, merge and eventually shift the whole civilisation towards a more cooperative generative process." (John Ringland [1])

For a quick introduction to the P2P Foundation see our new homepage. For an introduction to our worldview, see the Commons Transition Primer website.

Scroll down to browse through our various sections

"In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called." ~ Buckminster Fuller ~

Watch this 20 min overview of our key proposals and introductory videos.

See our mandala graphic on the Role of the Commons in Civilizational Transitions

Source: With thanks to graphic artist Juliane Höhle ; twitter = @JulianeHoehle; and Leif Ostman, Uppsala University and Katrien Van Poeck, RUG-CDO.

Explore Our Publications

Dive into a world of knowledge on peer-to-peer dynamics, commons-based solutions, and transformative innovations. Visit our Publications Page to access groundbreaking articles, in-depth reports, and pioneering research.

The Foundation

Read':

Prophets and Advocates of Peer Production. By George Dafermos. [2]. Excellent introduction to the role of the P2P Foundation in the context of the re-emergence of a commons movement that is linked to digitally-enabled self-organization.

Digital Commons: Cyber-Commoners, Peer Producers and the Project of a Post-Capitalist Transition. By George Dafermos. [3]: Excellent introduction to the theoretical and strategic work of the P2P Foundation.

For Beginners:

Commons Transition and P2P Primer. Primer: Commons Transition and P2P: A Primer. By Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis, Stacco Troncoso and Ann-Marie Ultratel: An introduction to the commons and peer to peer dynamics.

The P2P Foundation consists of autonomous but internetworked initiatives:

The knowledge commons, such as this wiki, a blog, and a network of half a dozen FB groups where we do a pluralistic curation of p2p/commons developments.
The P2P Foundation Research Network, coordinated by Jose Ramos, which focuses on monitoring and activating research.
An official non-profit, chaired by Evi Swinnen, in Ghent, Belgium. (The original 'Foundation', established in Amsterdam, is in the process of being transferred to our research network)

Thanks to Javier Arturo Rodriguez for the technical help in maintaining this wiki, and for the huge editorial assistance by Simon Grant.

Our Ideas

The theoretical foundations are based on the work of Michel Bauwens and others.

See:

Sources of P2P Theory
What You Should Read To Understand the Commons
See the specialized sections in this wiki:

Find out more about our practice here:

About The P2P Foundation and our Research
Our Understanding of P2P
Our Guiding Principles
P2P and Human Evolution: original manuscript from 2005
Screencast with an Overview of the Transformative Proposals of the P2P Foundation
Four Introductory Videos
The P2P Meme Map
The Best P2P Essays 1 2
Bibliography of Michel Bauwens
Bibliography for the Social Knowledge Economy

Our Key Resources

* new! : check out our Multi-Category Search for Combined Category Searching ! Explanations here!

Join Our Learning Community!

Learning More

Who We Are

Introduction to P2P Theory

This video series was done, with excellent technical conditions, at Lignan University in Hong Kong, at the behest of Prof. Kin Chi Lau and colleagues, during the months of January 2019:

E-Lecture 1: Introduction to peer to peer and the commons, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glRE-J9xFbQ
E-Lecture 2: The interaction between the commons and the market, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtdftpR-7fA
E-Lecture 3: Public-commons cooperation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIXIwdUJ-1E
E-Lecture 4: Distributed ledgers and shared supply chains, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suI7e0aNetg
E-Lecture 5: The spirituality and ethics of peering and commoning, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7t2-xadpCI
Michel Bauwens -- Life and Thought, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgI_TLgqdts

Topics

We are looking for maintainers for our subject pages! Interested?

The P2P Paradigms

Peer Production via Open and Free Input
Peer Governance via Participatory Processes
Peer Property via Commons Output

The Three Aspects of Application in Society

Transitioning to a P2P Society

Hot Topics 'Right Now'

the commons are essential to stay within the carrying capacity of the planet: Thermodynamic Efficiencies
we need to measure positive/negative social and ecological externalities: P2P Accounting
what pricing is to markets and decisions to planning, mutual coordination is to a commons-based economy: Mutual Coordination
Commons-based policies for Urban Commons

The Peer-Driven Collaborative and Ethical Economy

is based on: Collaborative Economic Practices
using new: Open Company Formats
that aim to: Mutualize Infrastructures
and create income through: Open Business Models
and find investments through: Crowdfunding and P2P Finance
based on: new P2P Value Metrics and Open Accounting
that are enabled through new: Legal Infrastructures
and true: P2P Technological Infrastructures.
The above necessitates the construction of Shared Innovation Commons
for Open and Distributed Manufacturing

New P2P Culture

P2P Provisioning Systems

Providing the essential provisions for human life:

Other Domains of Application

How P2P Influences Society

P2P Perspectives

Resources

Case Studies

Companies with P2P business models

Conferences on P2P topics

Courses: P2P Curricula

Encyclopedia : New! Mini-version

Events Calendar P2P Foundation Calendar

Individuals, Who's Who in P2P

Licences: open and free licenses

Maps

Movements, P2P and commons-oriented org's

Reference

Research on P2P

Resources and tools

Standards

Statistics on P2P trends

Media Resources

Articles on P2P topics

Books on P2P topics

Fiction with P2P themes

Graphics

Podcasts and Audio

Webcasts and Video

Special Projects

Civilizational Analysis and the Pulsation of the Commons

A ongoing study of what macrohistorians have learned about the overall evolution of humanity, life, and the cosmos, in order to understand the role of the commons in human history:

Here is our resource base:

Annotated Bibliography on Civilizational Analysis

Cycles

Patterns

Scenarios for the Future

Civilizational and Ecological Collapse

Biophysical Basis of Human Civilization

Theory Projects

P2P Foundation Theory Project

Our eBooks

Bauwens, M., Kostakis, V., & Pazaitis, A. (2019). Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto (Book), London: Westminster University Press. Available as free e-book at: https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/books/10.16997/book33.
The Commons Transition project]: ebook and site
Future Scenarios for the Collaborative Economy

Our Printed Books

English: Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy. By Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens. Palgrave, 2014.

English: Bauwens, M., Kostakis, V., & Pazaitis, A. (2019). Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto (Book), London: Westminster University Press.

Available as low-cost paperback at: https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/books/10.16997/book33.

French: Sauver le monde. Vers une société post-capitaliste avec le peer-to-peer. Par Michel Bauwens et Jean Lievens. Les Liens qui Liberent, 2015.

Dutch: De wereld redden. Met peer-to-peer naar een postkapitalistische samenleving. Van Michel Bauwens en Jean Lievens. Houtekiet, 2013.

Overview of P2P Transition Proposals

This is a summary of our key structural arguments for commons/p2p-centric social change:

in capitalism there is a specific articulation of market/community (nation)/command (state) in which the market is dominant.
a commons-centric economy has a different articulation in which the communal mechanisms of pooling shared resources are dominant.
the commons-based processes are increasing in importance within capitalism facing systemic crises
It is possible to develop a strategy for deepening and expanding the weight of the commons-based processes (transvestment, etc.).
If sustained, such a strategy could ultimate erode the dominance of capitalism and create a new post-capitalist and commons-centric society.

A good introductory video: Michel Bauwens Explains the Great Value-Shift of Our Time
Las Indias summarizes recent p2p thinking from the period 2012-2013 [4]
a good summary of the triarchical proposal to simultaneously transform civil society, the market and the state [5]
the key institutional concepts of the Partner State and Public-Commons_Partnership
Transition proposals towards a Commons-oriented economy and society (part of a Bauwens' & Kostakis' forthcoming book)
political organizing:
- 1) local change through civic Alliances of the Commons and Chamber of the Commons producing social charters to recreate local political majorities [6] ;
- 2) the global alliance of the commons at nation-state level and beyond [7]

Our aims

We function as a clearinghouse for open/free, participatory/p2p and commons-oriented initiatives.

We aim to be a pluralist network to document, research, and promote peer to peer alternatives. Our political aims could be summarized under the following maxims:

ending the destruction of the biosphere by abandoning the dangerous conceptions of pseudo-abundance in the natural world (i.e. based on the assumption that natural resources are infinite);
promoting free cultural exchange by abandoning the innovation-inhibiting conceptions of pseudo-scarcity in the cultural world (i.e. based on the assumption that the free flow of culture needs to be restricted through excessive copyrights etc...).

How to support us?

.....Our three current strategic priorities are:

stream 1: co-creating and catalyzing the alternative eco-system for open and cooperative peer production and reconstruction and economic and social power around the commons (this includes work on our Commons-Based Reciprocity License, Open Cooperativism and Phyles, and ethical enterpreneurial coalitions that co-produce commons)

stream 2: recreating political voice and power, through bottom up Assemblies of the Commons and Chamber of the Commons that put forward social charters, AND through "top-down" progressive coalitions (through existing politics and parties) coalitions around the commons , i.e. 'the politics and policies of the commons', that continue our efforts to implement Commons Transition Plans.

stream 3: creating synergies between cooperative peer production and sustainability, i.e. showing how a transition to the new mode of production, governance and ownership, can solve the ecological / climate crisis

P2P Around The World

Here is a list of Country Categories. These categories list all pages that contain country relevant tags for example will list all pages with the tag in the wiki text. Categories and Pages are different. Categories are directory listings so we use country Pages for general information and discussion for example Brazil. For a listing of all country Categories AND Pages and a quick guide on how you can help build a directory of P2P activities around the world see Country Category.

P2P Wiki By Language Category

* Page d'accueil francophone pour le wiki

* Materiaux Francophones

Catalan-Language ; Chinese-Language - Croation-Language - Dutch-Language - French-Language - German-Language - Greek-Language - Hungarian-Language - Italian-Language - Latvian-Language - Malayalam-Language - Mongolian-Language - Polish-Language - Portuguese-Language - Romanian-Language - Russian-Language - Serbian-Language - Spanish-Language - Swedish-Language - Thai-Language

Partners

More friends and partners: Appropedia ; Global Village Network ; Platoniq ; United Diversity; Ethical Markets TV;

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