Looking at the internet as a commons — as a shared resource — allows us to understand both its unlimited possibilities and also what threatens it. Let's create protocols that are easy to use, to develop with, and to extend without asking for permission and without paying or having much money at all. Let's create protocols that are driven by the community, built for the public good, and given away for free. If the company or organization dies, the protocols should still be usable. Any blockchains involved should not be tied to a particular for-profit company. We should not be tying our data to any one coin or blockchain for fear of enclosure. The protocols should be optimizing for science (broadly speaking, as in developing knowledge) and mutual collaboration rather than optimizing for profit. Let us not recreate the problem we are trying to solve.
