[nkmnz]

No, the word and its meaning both point to the fact that there’s no exclusive ownership of a commons. This is importantl, since ownership is associated with bearing the cost of usage (i.e., deprecation) which would lead an owner to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Ownership is regularly the solution to the tragedy (socialism didn’t work).

The behavior that you warn against is that of a free rider that make use of a positive externality of GitHub’s offering.

[dahart]

That is one meaning of “commons”, but not all of them, and you might be mistaking which one the phrase ‘tragedy of the commons’ is using.

“Commons can also be defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons

The actual mechanism by which ownership resolves tragedy of the commons scenarios is by making the resource non-free, by either charging, regulating, or limiting access. The effect still occurs when something is owned but free, and its name is still ‘tragedy of the commons’, even when the resource in question is owned by private interests.

[bawolff]

How does that differ from what the person you are arguing against is saying?

[dahart]

Ownership, I guess. The 2 parent comments are claiming that “tragedy of the commons” doesn’t apply to privately owned things. I’m suggesting that it does.

Edit: oh, I do see what you mean, and yes I misunderstood the quote I pulled from WP - it’s talking about non-ownership. I could pick a better example, but I think that’s distracting from the fact that ‘tragedy of the commons’ is a term that today doesn’t depend on the definition of the word ‘commons’. It’s my mistake to have gotten into any debate about what “commons” means, I’m only saying today’s usage and meaning of the phrase doesn’t depend on that definition, it’s a broader economic concept.

[nkmnz]

No, it’s not.

[dahart]

What’s not what? Care to back up your argument with any links? I already pointed out that examples in the WP article for ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ use private property. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Digital... Are you contradicting the Wikipedia article? Why, and on what basis?

[nkmnz]

I'm contradicting your interpretation of the Wikipedia article. It does not support your initial statement that a) Github's (or any other company's) free tier constitutes a commons and/or b) the "overuse" of said free tiers by free riders could be the base of a tragedy of the commons (ToC). The idea is absurd, since there is no commons and also no tragedy. To the contrary. Commons have an external or natural limit to how much they can provide in a given time without incurring cost in the form of depreciation. But there is no external or natural limit to the free tier. The free tier is the result of the incentives under which the Github management operates and it is fully at their discretion, so the limits are purely internal. Other than in the case of commons, more usage can actually increase the amount of resources provided by the company for the users of the free tier, because a) network effects and b) economies of scale (more users bring more other users; more users cost less per user).

If Github realizes that the free tier is too generous, they can cut it anytime without it being in any way a "tragedy" for anybody involved - having to pay for stuff or service you want to consume is not the "T" in ToC! The T is that there are no incentives to pay (or use less) without increasing the incentives for everyone else to just increase their relative use! You not using the github free tier doesn't increase the usage of Github for anybody else - if it has any effect at all, it might actually decrease the usage of Github because you might not publish something that might in turn attract other users to interact.

[bawolff]

I'm not sure i agree that the Wikipedia article supports your position.

Certainly private property is involved in tragedy of the commons. In the classic shared cattle ranching example, the individual cattle are private property, only the field is held in common.

I generally think that tragedy of the commons requires the commons, to, well, be held in common. If someone owns the thing that is the commons, its not a commons but just a bad product. (With of course some nit picking about how things can be de jure private property while being defacto common property)

In the microsoft example, windows becoming shitty software is not a tragedy of the commons, its just MS making a business decision because windows is not a commons. On the other hand, computing in general becoming shitty, because each individual app does attention grabbing dark patterns, as it helps the induvidual apps bottom line while hurting the ecosystem as a whole, would be a tragedy of the commons, as user attention is something all apps hold in common and none of them own.