commons
A commons is land or resources shared by a whole community, like a town square, a public park, or grazing land that everyone can use. People also say "the commons" to mean our shared heritage, such as clean air, open knowledge, or cultural works that belong to everyone.
What a model may hear
- software commons / shared code libraries programming and open-source culture
- assume the user wants reusable modules, shared dependencies, or a repository of pre-built functions
- Creative Commons licenses copyright and content publishing
- assume the user wants to apply or query a CC license, or filter content by reuse permissions
- Wikimedia Commons Wikipedia and media archiving
- assume the user wants the free media repository, its file formats, or its API for images and sound
- digital commons / data commons data science and institutional repositories
- assume the user wants a governed data sharing platform, often with access controls and metadata standards
- the tragedy of the commons economics and game theory
- frame the problem as resource depletion from uncoordinated self-interest, and may propose incentive mechanisms
Where people and models part ways
“Put this in the commons”
Meant: Make this available to everyone in our group
May be taken as: Upload it to Wikimedia Commons or apply a Creative Commons license publicly
Say instead: “Share this with everyone on our team, but do not publish it outside the company”
“I found it on commons”
Meant: I found it on our shared drive
May be taken as: Retrieve a file from Wikimedia Commons or a code package registry
Say instead: “I found it on our internal shared drive, not on any public repository”
“Check the commons for images”
Meant: Look in our shared folder for photos we can use
May be taken as: Search Wikimedia Commons and return freely licensed images that may not match your private collection
Say instead: “Look in our team's shared folder for photos we have permission to use”
“It's a commons problem”
Meant: People are not cooperating to maintain something we all need
May be taken as: Model the situation as a mathematical tragedy-of-the-commons scenario with specific game-theory solutions
Say instead: “People are not cooperating to maintain our shared printer; we need a schedule, not a theory”
Tips
- Say "our shared folder" or "team drive" when you mean internal resources, not "the commons"
- Name the specific Creative Commons license if that is what you mean, such as "CC BY-SA"
- Say "Wikimedia Commons" in full if you want the media repository
- Use "shared library" or "public package" for code, since "commons" alone suggests a specific platform
- Add "not published" or "internal only" if you want shared access without public licensing
Often confused with
- common
- an adjective meaning frequent or ordinary, not a shared resource
- public domain
- no copyright at all, whereas commons often has licenses with conditions
- open source
- specific to software licensing, not land or general resources
- repository
- a storage location, which may be private rather than shared by a community
- collective
- a group that acts together, not the resources they share
- Wikipedia
- an encyclopedia, whereas Wikimedia Commons is its separate media archive