not be used for citation purposes. A
paginated version of the selection may be
purchased from The Yale Law Journal.
Notwithstanding any designation to the
contrary in any printed version, copyright
is held by the author.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license, visit
or send a letter to Creative Commons,
559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford,
California 94305, USA.
I. PEERPRODUCTIONALLAROUND............................................................ A.Content............................................................................................... B.Relevance/Accreditation.................................................................... C.Value-Added Distribution.................................................................. D.Summary............................................................................................
\u2020 Professor of Law, New York University School of Law. Research for this Article was partly supported by a grant from the Filomen D\u2019Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Research Fund at the New York University School of Law. I owe thanks to many for comments on this and earlier drafts, including: Bruce Ackerman, Ed Baker, Elazar Barkan, Jamie Boyle, Dan Burk, Ben Damstedt, Bob Ellickson, Terry Fisher, Natalie Jeremijenko, David Johnson, Dan Kahan, Niva Elkin Koren, Tara Lemmey, Larry Lessig, Doug Lichtman, Jerry Mashaw, Eben Moglen, Mark Nadel, Helen Nissenbaum, George Priest, Peggy Radin, Carol Rose, Chuck Sabel, Alan Schwartz, Clay Shirky, Richard Stallman, and Kenji Yoshino. I owe special thanks to Steve Snyder for his invaluable research assistance on the peer production enterprises described here.
I have gotten many questions about the \u201cCoase\u2019s Penguin\u201d portion of the title. It turns out that the geek culture that easily recognizes \u201cCoase\u201d doesn\u2019t recognize the \u201cPenguin,\u201d and vice versa. \u201cCoase\u201d refers to Ronald Coase, who originated the transaction costs theory of the firm that provides the methodological template for the positive analysis of peer production that I offer here. The penguin refers to the fact that the Linux kernel development community has adopted the image of a paunchy penguin as its mascot/trademark. One result of this cross-cultural conversation is that I will occasionally explain in some detail concepts that are well known in one community but not in the other.
1.Abstracting the Effect of Diverse Motivations.............................
2.Diverse Motivations and Large-Scale Collaborations................
B.Integration: Problem and Opportunity..............................................
1.Threats to Motivation..................................................................
2.Provisioning Integration.............................................................
Imagine that back in the days when what was good for GM was good for the country, an advisory committee of economists had recommended to the President of the United States that the federal government should support the efforts of volunteer communities to design and build cars, either for sale or for free distribution to automobile drivers. The committee members would probably have been locked up in a psychiatric ward\u2014if Senator McCarthy or the House Un-American Activities Committee did not get them first. Yet, in September 2000, something like this actually happened. The President\u2019s Information Technology Advisory Committee recommended that the federal government support open source software as a strategic national choice to sustain the U.S. lead in critical software development.1
At the heart of the economic engine of the world\u2019s most advanced economies, and in particular that of the United States, we are beginning to take notice of a hardy, persistent, and quite amazing phenomenon. A new model of production has taken root, one that should not be there, at least
1. PRESIDENT\u2019S INFO. TECH. ADVISORY COMM., DEVELOPING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE TO ADVANCE HIGH END COMPUTING (2000),at http://www.ccic.gov/pubs/pitac/pres-oss- 11sep00.pdf.