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Policies for the Digital Commons
Interventions in Support of the Digital Commons
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The Open Movement

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the internet gave birth to the Open movement. Numerous initiatives placed their bets on the combined power of networked information services and new governance models for the production and sharing of content and data.

The Open Revolution

The open revolution that we imagined did not happen, although the model of open sharing has been proven effective and sustainable. Over the last decade, we have witnessed a wholesale transformation of the networked information ecosystem. The web moved away from the ideals and the open design of the early internet. It became dominated by a small number of platforms.

The Open Mission

Today, the Open movement faces a hard question: what role did the opening up of information resources play in this process? One thing is certain: today, Open is both a challenge to and an enabler of concentrations of power. And the vision of an open internet no longer translates into a vision of a more just and egalitarian digital society.

The New Open

We need to imagine open anew, an open that is resilient against abuse and unintended externalities. For this, we will find shared perspectives between advocates of openness and defenders of privacy and other fundamental rights.

digital public space
Our goal is to advance policies that re-design the internet as a public space. Based on this vision, we can create an online environment that serves societal needs and is not driven purely by commercial logic.
future of open
Our goal is for the Open Movement to develop a new, collective strategy. One that leverages the principle of openness to design and build systems that maximize the societal benefits of digital resources and infrastructures.

You can read The Paradox of Open essay which spells out the problem that is foundational for our organization

The Paradox _of Open

In today’s digital environment, openness serves as both a challenge to concentrations of power and its enabler. Solving this paradox is at the heart of our work, which focuses on three objectives.

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