NGI Commons consortium partners OpenForum Europe and Open Future, represented by Nicholas Gates and Aditya Singh respectively, attended the Digital Commons Policy Council 2025 Workshop, which took place on 22nd and 23rd of May in Liverpool, United Kingdom.
The Digital Commons Policy Council (DCPC) is an international think tank established in 2021. It aims to increase the recognition of the benefits of Digital Commons such as Free and Open Source Software and Open Content, and of the volunteer labour which produces these common goods. It does so by producing evidence-based public reports and other resources. As part of producing these resources, their annual workshops bring together members of the community to collaborate on new ideas and projects related to the advance of knowledge around the use of and support for Digital Commons.
By joining the DCPC 2025 workshop, NGI Commons got the chance to embed itself in the wider community advocating for and researching Digital Commons, both in Europe and beyond. It provided the opportunity to build synergies and collaborate with practitioners working on Digital Commons, namely by participating in the development of collaborative “outputs”, including a typology of Digital Commons, government engagement strategies related to Digital Commons, (universal) principles for Digital Commons, and a better understanding of Digital Commons in the health sector.
As part of the two-day workshop, NGI Commons was also given the opportunity to host a ‘workshop within a workshop’, which sought to help brainstorm ideas around the theme of Digital Commons as Infrastructure.
Workshop – Conceptualising ‘Building Blocks’: A Commons-Based Approach for Provisioning Digital Infrastructure?
The Liverpool workshop provided a unique chance for NGI Commons to bring the thinking of a diverse group of thinkers and practitioners to bear on the theme of Digital Commons as Infrastructure, which is a key focus of our policy-related work at NGI Commons. The insights from these discussions will provide direct input into NGI Commons’ policy activities around the Digital Commons and the Open Internet Stack, with additional feedback being solicited through public channels in the coming months.
Broadly, the conversations at the workshop interrogated the idea of whether and how Digital Commons can and should be providers of digital infrastructure, as well as how the understanding of what Digital Commons are and the role they play changes as they reach infrastructure scale. In tackling these ideas, the workshop participants explored the promise, pitfalls, and the nuanced interplay between Digital Communities resource, communities, and governance.
Here are some of the key insights and takeaways that emerged.
Strengths: Breaking Lock-ins and Boosting Autonomy
A clear takeaway from the workshop was the potential of Digital Commons to break the stranglehold of Big Tech lock-in and offer scalable, robust, and cost-effective alternatives. Participants underscored how provisioning Digital Commons-based infrastructure can, when governed well and rooted in the values of Digital Commons communities, provide more freedom of operation in restrictive environments, enabling civic spaces to flourish (perhaps even in authoritarian contexts). They also allow for diverse types of public participation which can increase the transparency and accountability of the infrastructure being provisioned, whether it’s by government, industry, or any other actor.
Digital Commons, the participants noted, can also bolster autonomy, or the choice that different actors have over what infrastructure they use and how they use it. This can have implications for digital sovereignty and the ability to build resilience, both from a cybersecurity perspective and through the lens of top-down government overreach. This level of flexibility was seen as a key attribute and has long-term implications for governments in particular, who can migrate technologies and switch between providers more easily with more open and interoperable options, which many Digital Commons provides.
Weaknesses: Funding, Capacity, and Burnout Risks
Discussions also highlighted structural weaknesses in Digital Commons, which may limit or constrain their ability to function as infrastructure at huge levels of scale.
For example, funding models remain uncertain for many Digital Commons, with many projects and communities often operating on shoestring budgets and volunteer labour. This leads to issues of burnout and limited capacity to challenge the entrenched network effects of Big Tech. Additionally, the lock-in costs associated with switching to Digital Commons models can be significant, particularly at the beginning, potentially dampening adoption. Another challenge is the lack of control that developers of Digital Commons have over how their creations are used when they reach a level of scale and combine competing interests, often from actors with different values.
Many noted the sometimes diffuse and conceptually vague connections between Digital Commons and digital infrastructure. Participants pointed to a need for nuanced approaches, balancing the promise of Digital Commons with the realities of developing, maintaining, and governing values-driven, public interest technologies. Without adequate governance, which can be difficult to scale quickly, this raises important questions of community health, transparency, and accountability.
Open Questions
While many broadly agreed that the obligations to Digital Commons can change as the use of the resource, size of the community, or participation in the governance expands, they did not always agree on the diagnosis that Digital Commons were alternatives to commercial options. In the view of some, the principles of Digital Commons necessitated new types of social arrangements. In this way of thinking, simply thinking about Digital Commons as open alternatives, in the way that sometimes happens in policy discussions (for example around open source software), was unlikely to achieve desired results.
Therefore, it became clear that there are trade-offs to thinking of Digital Commons as Infrastructure, particularly if scale is thought of as a substitute for the intentional, values-driven approach which led to the emergence of many of those commons in the first place. So, while many saw Digital Commons as a way to reclaim digital sovereignty, there were questions over the solution-driven framing. There were also concerns expressed around adoption, security, and data protection, as were questions around how Digital Commons can facilitate meaningful interoperability and connections between systems at scale.
Technical and Governance Building Blocks: Laying Foundations for Change
The workshop also touched on a broad set of Building Blocks, which were positioned by the organisers as “fundamental digital capabilities that power digital infrastructure and advance the Digital and Internet Commons agenda at scale”. Participants were asked to provide feedback on the idea and to help give input into areas of digital infrastructure where the use of Digital Commons might be most strategic.
Participants largely bought into the notion that Building Blocks can be a way of thinking about cross-cutting capabilities that can be supported by Digital Commons projects and communities. But they also found the concept of Building Blocks to be too technical. If Building Blocks are to be actionable for policymakers and others looking to invest in and support infrastructure projects, must be both technical and governance-related.
On the technical side, participants identified areas like public registers, health records, and data portability as critical to making digital commons viable and user-friendly. Meanwhile, governance innovations like local government consortia, skills training, legal infrastructure, and better IP protections were seen as essential to sustaining Digital Commons in the long term.
More broadly, the conversation turned to deeper philosophical questions related to areas such as community participation dynamics and support modalities, which are critical but can be abandoned as projects scale to a level of participation and usage. One suggestion was to embed Digital Commons within broader social arrangements – like universal basic income or reduced working hours – so that these systems don’t simply replicate extractive models in new forms. Another suggestion was for a “Luddite clause” to allow communities to opt out or redefine control over (for example) data infrastructure, preserving autonomy and democratic choice.
While the specifics weren’t the point, the idea that Digital Commons must not just be treated as free sources and recreate old paradigms was a critical takeaway of the conversation. Participants continually re-emphasised that Digital Commons are not a panacea. They may work better at some layers of the digital stack, while other areas might still benefit from more centralised or commercial/hybrid models. But throughout, there was a shared commitment to grounding digital commons in principles of fairness, collaboration, and respect for human rights, as well as making sure those principles are upheld even with different levels of scale and investment.
Looking Forward: Digital Commons and the European Digital Infrastructure Agenda
The workshop closed on a hopeful note, with a call to see Digital Commons not just as technical solutions for European digital sovereignty or Internet Stack objectives, but as vehicles for a more collaborative democracy. In a world where Big Tech and government power loom large – especially given heightened levels of geopolitical competitions – these conversations are vital to charting a path that respects people, communities, and the promise of shared digital infrastructure. We look forward to working together with the community and the European Commission to help embed these considerations into the policy agenda for Digital Commons in the weeks and months ahead.
If you would like to join the conversation on Digital Commons and the Open Internet Stack, please make sure to join the NGI Forum on 19 and 20 July in Brussels. You can sign up and learn more on the NGI Forum website here.