Ostrom’s door: knowledge is a commons too
A field or a fishery runs out when too many people take from it. Knowledge doesn’t — your reading a paper leaves it whole for the next reader. But Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom argued it can still fail as a commons in two ways: it can be enclosed (locked behind patents, paywalls or closed weights), or under-provided (nobody pays to make or maintain the shared part everyone uses).
The communities that keep a commons healthy share a handful of design principles — clear boundaries, rules that fit the place, people watching how the rules are kept. CommonsForge lets you try them on a village pasture.