Operator
This role aims in particular at organising and bringing together the contributions. To differentiate the role of the contributors from that of the operator, the list of components can once again serve as a basis for describing the actions carried out by each of these stakeholders.
Source Code
Pull request, peer review.
Gatekeeping (sorting out, feedback, validation, integration).
Terms
Software usage.
Support.
User Data
Software usage.
Promotion (competition…).
Usage Statistics
Software usage.
Analysis and publishing overview.
Communication
Workshop facilitation, content creation, network registrations...
Product management, community management.
Brand
Public promotion (advertising, presentations, articles...).
Setting up contacts, finding promotional spaces, financial support for local initiatives...
Strategy
Feedback on anomalies, suggestions, vote.
Workshop, user research, RFC.
Risks addressed by the role
Inaccessibility
Resource sharing can only be effective if the resources are accessible. Who guarantees the availability of the commons? By what means?
A role of operational responsibility for the commons must be held, with access management and temporary suspension rights to ensure continued access for all members of the community.
Stagnation
The service's general roadmap is based on the needs of the community. However, arbitrations have to be made on the basis of available resources. How can the strategy be arbitrated, or at least facilitated, if the community is not able to do so, without coming to a deadlock?
A role of product ownership must be held, with a right to make final arbitration on implementing functionalities which are incompatible in terms of effects or resource consumption.
Illegality of contributions
In the case of contributory commons, it may happen that content is made available outside of the law. How to handle and extinguish complaints? Who takes the decision to withdraw the contributions? Who bears the legal and potentially criminal responsibility for making the content available?
A role of organising the contributions and legal representation of the commons must be held.
Criticism
Like any service, the digital commons can be criticised. Some criticism can go so far as to jeopardise their reputational capital, particularly when it questions their probity or cost rather than their usefulness. Who addresses these criticisms? How to decide which ones should be addressed?
A role of representation of the commons must be held.
Legal Form
In emerging or small-scale digital commons, this role may be held directly by some contributors. However, mixing roles is tricky and rarely sustainable as it leads contributors with this additional responsibility to an additional workload, often different from the one they usually carry out, and which can put them in situations of difficult arbitration between their own contributions and those of others.
In terms of structure, a good stakeholder for this role has the economic capacity to make expenses and adjust quickly to needs. Matching of management and objectives is supervised by the guardian.
For example, it can take the form of:
Co-op.
Association with commercial activity.
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