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# iCommons - Dwelling or Database
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/icommons-dwelling-or-database/
- Published: 2007-06-16T20:06:41.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:36:27.000Z
- Author: openDemocracy Supporters
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:23

**by Tony Curzon Price at the iCommons summit 2007**  

**June 13 2007**

The philosophy panelists - Tom Chance, Dave Berry and Benjamin Mako Hill - brought to the open some of the rumblings set off by Lessig's keynote definition of what iC and CC are for.

Dave Berry set up the opposition of the *dwelling* that the Free Software movement has created against the *database* that Creative Commons has created. Can iC/CC aspire to be a movement like Free Software, with its passionate sense of belonging and its spectacular impact on the world? Or is it - at the opposite extreme as characterised by David Berry - a way of supplying free labour to Web 2.0 capitalism?

There were as many desires to express opinion as people in the room, so the debate continues on the [iCommons site node](http://icommons.org/nodes/commons-philosophy?ref=opendemocracy.net).

This morphed during the day into the organisational question: iCommons movememnt or cadre organisation? Does iCommons have Stallman envy?

Yes and no. Larry Lessig responded in a realistic tone at the philosophy session: cultural production is not like software production, because it does not have a single purpose. Free Software has a purpose and unity that is created by compilers that run cross-processors.

Where is the dwelling of \`\`free culture''? It is in each specific act of cultural production: from every local band to the writers' groups to the biennale or Covent Garden. Is there any reason to unite the Free Culture parts of production under one purpose - to make Free Culture itserlf a cultural product, not an object of study?

That is what iCommons wants to do. I started [these posts](https://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/icommons%5F2006) with the question: \`\`What is iSummit for''? It is here to support Free Culture, but also to unite Free Culture by giving it an identity. This purpose is being physically realised in its [ambitious new web site](http://icommons.org/?ref=opendemocracy.net), which aims to be a sort of cross between Sourceforge and Slashdot. It aims to bring under one domain representations of free culture production, while also distributing the goods of community - like visibility in the Free Culture world - according to a karmic currency.

We look forward, at openDemocracy, to being an active part of this.

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tony curzon price 2007-06-16