January 2015

OSE's goal is to create the open source economy. To get there, OSE is designing and building critical production machines - the Global Village Construction Set. As of January 2015, the OSE community has built a total of about 100 machines around the world. See Replication.

The dust has settled as of the 2011 TED Talk.

At this time, viral replication has not yet happened within the Global Village Construction Set. It may perhaps be said that in the overall world of open source hardware, no single project has shown a transformation of some sector of the economy. The closest is the open source 3D printer, RepRap. However, the biggest producer of consumer 3D printers, Makerbot - has turned proprietary in 2013. This showed to the world a notion that as an open source company 'matures,' it has to go proprietary. Unfortunately, the world does not yet know a great example of a significant open source hardware tool that has dominated a marketplace, outside of electronics.

Why is this important to stop and consider this? Because the whole promise of open source is that open source products become superior to their proprietary counterparts. Sadly, we can't point to a good example for any significant open source product.

3D printing is interesting in this point. While open source has spawned the largest manufacturer of 3D printers - that industry is dominated by proprietary product.

The true promise is that open wins hands down.

I'd like to begin moving OSE in that direction - after observing that none of our products have dominated the marketplace yet.