The economic and environmental sustainability of digital commons: Lessons from the 2023 Debian project survey

Digital commons are shared information and knowledge resources such as data, software and cultural content. They are produced and managed for collective use, and to be modified and redistributed as needed. Using results from a 2023 survey of the Debian community, this new DCPC report addresses question such as: Is the free, libre and open source software or FLOSS development model economically sustainable? What role can FLOSS play in the transition to more environmentally sustainable production and consumption? With the benefit of hindsight, the first survey of the Debian community, carried out in 2016, whose preliminary results were published in 2017 in the Journal of Peer Production, represented the first manifestation of a core DCPC program of work: to empirically map which categories of workers (e.g., firm employees, foundation employees, researchers, volunteers, etc) were performing which duties in the digital commons production process, with a view to increasing the recognition of these commons and these voluntary workers by industry and society.
The 2023 edition had a more clearly militant intent than its predecessor, as it also sought to investigate community opinion about the predatory practices and environmental sustainability of large IT firms as well as about alternative models. A key finding is the rejection by the community of the use of restrictive licences to incentivise environmental action (e.g., preventing entities that engage in unsustainable environmental practices from using Debian). Other interesting findings can be drawn from comments responding to the question ‘Are the main obstacles to reducing environmental impacts in your workplace economic (for example, their cost), organisational (for example, lack of support from management), technical (for example, difficulty of implementation)?’ These detailed responses allow us to understand the extent and ramifications of the obstacles.