Our occasional contributor Zbigniew Lukasiak announces a new project he will be working on using a new page on our wiki, available here.

Here is an explanation of the problem he wants to address:

“According to “The Wealth of Networks” Open Source as an example of Peer Production is governed by an economy of self-identification significantly different from the traditional money market economy with it’s own quirks and inefficiencies:

“the self-identification that is central to the relative information efficiency of peer production is not always perfect” (http://www.congo-education.net/wealth-of-networks/ch-04.htm#4-3)

As a practictioneer of Open Source I can attest that this is true and I want to research the ways in which it is inefficient and how to prevent it. The first phase of my research is to gather evidence about the main modes of failure – this is what this wiki page is for.

Note 1. This can be widen to cover all Peer Production – but I am mostly familiar with Open Source and also I believe that most of the practical evidence will come from this narrow perspective.”