OSE FAQ

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How would you describe the work of Open Source Ecology (OSE) in one sentence?

OSE is working on the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS), an advanced, industrial economy-in-a-box that can be replicated inexpensively anywhere in the world.

How would you describe the practical motivation of your work in one sentence?

We aim to end material scarcity as a driving force in human civilization.

Why do you emphasize the importance of materials scarcity in modern civilization so much?

According to The Green History of the World – human history, and in particular ecological history – has been marked by humans encountering lush forests and leaving behind deserts. The point is that humans burn quickly through their natural resource base, multiply rapidly, and then attack their neighbors once their own resources run out. This story has not stopped. Today, empires continue their acquisitive behavior – and leave behind mass destruction. Imagine that now we could transcend this game – by using modern technology to convert sunlight to sustainable energy (solar, wind, biomass, water, others) to process the abundant “dirt and twigs” under our feet into the substance of modern civilization. This will eliminate the need for conflicts over resources. The key to this transformation is open access to the enabling knowledge and know-how - which pushes the frontiers of human technological capacity to the practical use of low-grade, abundant, local resources - creating harmony between man and nature as a result.

What is the most important feature of OSE work?

The most important feature of the GVCS is its nature as an integrated tool-set or ecology of products that fit together like a Lego set or jigsaw puzzle for building real infrastructures of communities. Pieces of the GVCS build upon each other; when you have one tool, then you can move on to the next. For example, once you can produce electricity, you can run an induction furnace, which is in turn can produce metal that can be CNC machined to produce more devices that make electricity.

The scope of the products is not only technology, but permaculture and agroecology – integrated, regenerative, natural ecosystems that provide a wide array of products and raw materials. We aim to push the limits of transformation of materials by creating an industrial landscape in which all elements work together and even advanced materials smelted from rock are either recycled indefinitely or returned back to the earth. We are beginning to demonstrate that this can be done cost-effectively on an unprecedented small scale.

Are you proposing that people limit their activity, downshift, and tread more lightly on the earth?

Our aim is for people to upshift to a high standard of living without the compromises – by doing more with less – by using wisdom and technology – as humans that are more capable, powerful, and responsible than at any other time in history. There is no need to sacrifice, as resources used ever more wisely or cyclically can support everybody on this planet easily – without infringing on the needs of others or on the needs of nature.

If you endorse high technology, does that not imply certain toxic or harmful industrial practices?

Every industrial process can be upgraded to an environmentally benign, open source counterpart. That is the essence of our work. We are pursuing the complete closure of eco-industrial cycles, where there is no waste – like in nature, where there is abundance yet there is no waste. By gaining complete mastery over material transformation via open source knowledge and eco-industrial practice it is possible to produce all the same services of modern economies, but without negative consequences. We are not calling for limiting the activity of people – but we are calling for replacing harmful practices with harmonious ones.

Do you hope to compete with the modern industrial system?

Evidence shows that we can do much better than the wasteful status quo. The question of societal well-being is not a matter of production but a matter of distribution. When open source, distributive economics become widespread, the production of goods will improve in many different ways and their distribution will reach more people.

What makes you so sure that open source economics and products will surpass the performance of existing mainstream production?

For one, Linux has already demonstrated that once an open source project gathers enough developers and supporters – the quality of its product surpasses that of its closed-source counterpart. This is the reason why a number of open source software solutions have taken over the majority market share compared to proprietary counterparts. Other open source hardware projects are beginning to demonstrate the same for physical products. Thus, it is only a matter of time before open hardware becomes the norm. This is inevitable because of the advent of the internet. People can now collaborate over the internet – not only in the design phase, but also in physical prototyping using shared design files with digital fabrication techniques.

What is your end state or vision?

Our vision is a world where every community has access to an open source Fab Lab which can produce all the things that one currently finds at a Walmart cost-effectively, quickly, on-demand from local resources. We envision these Labs being self-replicating and multiplying like rabbits. This would be a giant leap for distributive economics – where resource constraints no longer apply. People would then have a chance to shift a significant portion of their energy to interests beyond mere survival. The end state is super-skilled workers, free of control from remote power centers, as people in communities regain their power to thrive without strings attached to their happiness. The scope of production should include everything from food to fuels and energy to semiconductors and metals.

What is the minimum size of a community that can attain absolute prosperity and autonomy?

Our analysis indicates that about 200 people would suffice to produce all the items present in modern civilization, including semiconductor and microelectronics fabrication up to the level of 1990s technology. The analysis involves assessing the range of the various material and product needs of civilization, along with the labor/machine/skill requirements for each product.

OSE is talking about ecological integrity and prosperity, but why do we hear so much about inevitable environmental destruction and die-off?

Without question, humans have caused much destruction to the planet and to each other. However, we don't believe that public discourse is the solution. If it was, then the problems would have been fixed a long time ago.

Instead, we call for people to take personal control of the industries they participate in. Empowered by personal control of the means of production, and inspired by the emerging awareness and responsibility for their global footprint, we can break out of this cycle.

We don't like to use scare tactics. If humans disappeared from the face of the earth, nature would swallow up and overgrow the human presence within years and things would be just fine. Or, if humans just wised up a bit everything would also be fine. Our message is for everybody to take responsibility for the world around them. Energy is abundant. Technology can be created readily. We are nowhere near the earth's carrying capacity. Therefore we call on you to take personal responsibility to transition to sound living, a way of living where we not acting destructively, nor facilitating and funding others to act destructively.

We are simply promoting open source ecology. We urge you to take full accountability for your global footprint, to take full advantage of open knowledge and distributive economics and learn to thrive in a modern lifestyle founded on abundant, local resources.

How can we hope for future prosperity if we are currently in an energy crisis?

The energy crisis may be best described best as lack of awareness or commitment. Did you know that if we used commercially-proven techniques of generating electricity from the sun via solar concentrators with mirrors – then only 0.3% of the land mass of the United States would be required to provide all of the electricity needs of the United States? Anyone with technological literacy and a small amount of business sense will notice that this fact renders any notions of energy scarcity obsolete.

Companies such as Ausra can implement solar concentrator electric systems cost-effectively in the Southwest of the US, on the scale of a power plant. By open-sourcing technology, we can typically reduce cost 5- to 10-fold. If we reduce the cost of solar concentrator technology by just a factor of 2, most of North America (which is not particularly sunny) could use this method to generate cheaper energy than any existing technology. Furthermore, oOpen-sourcing solar concentrators would make them feasible not only for power plants, but also for much smaller, decentralized production. This is one of our goals at OSE.

Are you suggesting drastic cost reduction as a result of open-sourcing of hardware technologies?

Drastic cost reduction is a well-known feature of open source products, where collaborative development eliminates various inefficiencies for the benefit of both the user and producer. We have demonstrated about a 5-fold reduction of cost over the competition with The Liberator – sale price of $8k vs $45k for the competition. The RepRap open source printer project has demonstrated a factor of at least 10, where prior to RepRap, one would have to pay $10k for a 3D printer. Similar trends are observed for many other open source variants of proprietary technologies.

Why did you select 40 particular technologies, and is this list fixed?

Forty tools are enough to build a civilization, yet a small enough number for us to achieve. With forty well-chosen tools, we can meet people's needs of food, energy, housing, and technology. The tools are all proven technologies; no new inventions are required. This set is the simplest possible way of that building resilient communities with abundant resources.

We have selected these tools according to OSE Specifications.

The list is not fixed. As we experiment with the tools in-field and learn from these experiments, we may change the list. The services provided by the tools are relatively fixed, while the implementation may vary, if we find that a different tool matches the [[OSE Specifications] more closely.

Are your technologies open source, and what does that mean according to OSE standards?

Our technologies are open source in the traditional sense of open access to published blueprints (“source code”) for the technologies. The OSE definition also includes an open business model – namely, that we share the business model openly by documenting fabrication economics and ergonomics, sourcing information, economic analysis, and other details which help others to replicate a profitable enterprise.

Are you not afraid of others stealing your ideas and business models?

We believe that the more people who use and produce goods according to OSE Specifications, the better the world will be, and we want to help them succeed. The more people building and testing the tools, the healthier the project will be. Even the work of those who acquire patents after building on our work are overall a positive contribution – since patents expire after some time.

Regarding patents, we publish openly – so that it is not possible for someone else to prevent us from using our own designs. Patents require originality and once our designs are published openly, no one else can patent them.

If you publish your business models openly and give your information away freely, how do you still maintain competitive advantage?

We maintain collaborative advantage by our ethics, integrity, primacy and zero-waste policy. We use the tools to provide for our own needs, which cuts operating costs. We prefer DIY solutions to hiring others, which cuts costs further. And community-based, voluntary labour ensures near-zero labour costs and constantly improving products.

We believe simply that the energy that our commercial competitors spend on protectionism, and therefore their limited ability to collaborate openly, is a huge waste and liability. We, on the other hand, are free to contribute all of our energy to creative development. For this reason, we are not overly concerned about license violations against us or about policing – because we'd rather spend our time creating. Protectionism, policing, excessive structuring, and bureaucracy are forms of waste that we tend to avoid – based on our zero-waste policy of promoting post-scarcity economics.

What are the basic productivity specifications for your tools?

The open source tools must be competitive in productivity with their commercial counterparts. We aim to provide the same service as existing machines, with a high productivity-to-labor ratio. To give some round numbers, a one or two person operation producing lumber, fuel, metal, foodstuffs, or any other product should produce a minimum of $1k worth of product per day.

If you are to compete with mainstream industry, wouldn't you have to make millions of dollars per day from a given operation?

Large corporations have to make millions each day because their costs are also millions of dollars per day. Their net gain is much smaller. We do not have the same constraint if we build everything ourselves - from dirt to product.

Our capital costs are replaced by the cost of labor used to produce goods from free natural resources. With negligible material costs, the value that our labours produce is all profit. Thus, earnings of $1k from a micro-production enterprise translate to $50-100 per hour per person – which is a healthy wage for a skilled worker.

Rather than use expensive, specialized materials, we use labour to turn free resources into the materials we need. Of course, this requires the technical capacity to convert raw feedstocks like wood and dirt to the high-value products – which is one of the basic goals of our experiment. We are in the initial stages of testing this hypothesis.

Unlike commercial competitors, we have no sales and marketing overheads.

You must be kidding. If you make all of your feedstocks from scratch, you will never be profitable, because that takes too much time and complexity, no?

We calculate that if we produce our own materials it will cost us about 30% less compared to buying those materials off-the-shelf. We've done this for the case of an induction furnace producing our own virgin steel from scrap rather than buying steel from a vendor. See Technological Recursion. This is a good start, but we hope to go one level deeper and extract metals from minerals. This should lead to further cost reduction over off-the-shelf purchasing. The economics are even more favorable when we use our own products in production.

Are you suggesting that it is more efficient for communities to produce their own goods than to work for someone else in order to be able to purchase the same goods from outside sources?

Yes. Initial evidence suggests that it is more efficient by a factor of 5-10. The implications of this for liberation are profound.

Are you suggesting that every person in the community must do a wide array of tasks in order to provide such an economy?

While the individuals in the community will not be specialists – they will be general specialists who participate in division of labor. If a community has a minimum of 200 people, there are many hands to divide the necessary tasks for thriving.

What are the labor requirements for handling all the productivity of the initial GVCS 40 technology set?

Assume a 20 person prototype community, prior to the creation of a 200 member one. One custom fabricator can produce for the community and still have ample time for market production of all the mechanical tools (that is 18 of the 40, including cars and bulldozers). Assume each machine takes about 40 man-hours of labour to build. Thus, one person could make all heavy equipment for agriculture and construction and utility tools from open source plans. The total number of items may have to be 22 – say 5 cars, or one car per 4 people. One builder/architect would cover construction needs. One engineer could run the solar turbine, steam engine, heat exchanger, gasifier, and pellet production with the pelletizer. This would require only about a month of labour per year. That accounts for 23 of the tools. One farmer can run an orchard, garden, nursery, field crop, dairy, chicken, and a bakery. That accounts for 27 technologies, with 20 people each working 50% of the time.

The next person is the digital craftsman – running the CNC torch table, lathe, mill, drill, ironworker, oxy-hydrogen cutter, 3D printer, and welder. (Up to 35 technologies now.) This person could make, from raw metal, hydraulic motors (36 tools now) and steam engines, and replicate the tools. This would require working about 1/6th of the time, or two months a year. The last person is the digital metalsmith – with the capacity to run an induction furnace, hot rolling of steel, moldless robotic arm casting, wire extrusion – the last of the set for a total of 40 tools – that enable production of virgin metal from scrap.

Here we have covered:

• Custom fabrication of industrial machines
• Agriculture – providing a varied, complete, diet all year round
• Fuel and energy – biomass pellets, evolving to solar turbine over 2 years
• Construction – this requires a few months the first year to establish the community and only occasional expansion after that
• Metal production – to provide the raw materials for digital fabrication
• Digital fabrication – precision engineered tools

It is surprising to say it, but just six people working on a cushy schedule can provide food, energy, housing, fuel, and technology for a community. We could still handle 14 more people in other trades, as all needs are already covered.

This entire package may be assessed in more detail by breaking it down into phases: the startup phase requires the most work, the above covers an intermediate running phase where the community is beginning to stabilize. At the final stage, where the community is fully established, more labour-saving should be possible with more skills and more automation.

The limiting factor in using tools is not human labour, but engine horsepower. This is determined by the amount of land available. An acre yields pelletized biomass equivalent to about 500 gallon of diesel and a gallon of diesel yields about 20hp hors, so every acre brings in about 10,000 hp hours. This is like getting 100,000 slaves for one hour, or about 100 slaves for 125 work days. The point is that one acre growing biomass provides substantial energy.

Is OSE interested in generating economic surplus by centralized production?

We are interested in economic surplus not via centralization, but via decentralized production that uses digital fabrication to produce a wide variety of tools for the local community, whatever size that community may be. Centralization has to date been accompanied by poor distribution of wealth, and our work aims to address this point.

What is scale are the production operations that you are proposing?

E.F. Schumacher has explained clearly in his seminal book Small Is Beautiful that human enterprises beyond a certain size simply break down and economies become dysfunctional. We see many examples of this today: instabilities in megacorporations, burgeoning governments and inflated financial institutions.

We know that two workable solutions are reducing the scale or getting better at management. OSE is focusing on designing and building functional communities beginning at the smallest scale of feasibility – as the simplest, practical experiment for proving our hypothesis. We believe that a modern, resilient community may be built with as few as 200 well-rounded, general specialists. Our prototype community experiment aims to demonstrate this point, and other implementations at other scales are encouraged in parallel.

How far along are you in your work?

We are mere babies, given that only one of the 40 technologies of the GVCS - The Liberator - has so far reached Full Product Release status. We have several other first and second prototypes built, with LifeTrac scheduled for Full Product Release on May 1, 2010. Other prototypes include Power Cube I, II; Soil Pulverizer I and II, MicroTrac I, a heavy duty drill press I, a 150-ton hole puncher I, RepTab I, the CNC torch table and Hexahatch I, II, the open source chicken incubator. The steam engine, heat exchanger, and burner prototypes I are forthcoming by January, 2011. We have already demonstrated that machines such as tractors can be builtcost-effectively by a small facility with basic tools. Digital fabrication is the next step; this will reduce costs further. Examples include using the CNC torch table to cut tractor parts or a CNC mill for making hydraulic motors. In later phase, we hope to produce electronics, design a desktop semiconductor foundry, and build a 2000 sq foot silicate foundry to producing metal.

Is the GVCS the final product of OSE work?

There are 3 levels of the GVCS, each with progressively more complex technologies and more independence.

The first level is building the 40 tools above. These are essentially complete products, produced from off-the-shelf components bought from elsewhere.

GVCS II focuses on producing components.

GVCS III focuses on producing raw materials to produce the components.

Each level does more of the production with local materials until ultimately we end up being able to make metals and semiconductors - the basic ingredients of a high-tech civilization - from local minerals.

Do you believe there is a technological fix for everything?

We like to see ourselves more as humanitarians who have recognized simply that material well-being is the foundation of any civilization, including that of a spiritually-advanced civilization. Our work aims to eliminate material scarcity as the dominant driving force of civilization dynamics. With full bellies and warm bodies, people will be free to pursue their passions. Technology is merely a tool to help accomplish these goals.

What do you foresee as the deeper political effects of your work?

Governments as we know them become obsolete with the advent of open source ecology, as do all structures for collecting and redistributing resources with significant collateral damage.

Distributive, collaborative production with universal access to advanced, appropriate tools will be so productive it will outcompete existing businesses. We foresee an equal playing field of competent, well-organized, small-scale, decentralized republics after the borders of empires dissolve through a natural progress of evolution. This is true whether one lives in the first, second, third, or fourth worlds; these distinctions likewise dissolve with open source ecology.

What is your greatest challenge in completing the GVCS?

We're basing our entire design on economically-proven technologies, so the challenge is not the technology itself. The challenge is the lack of awareness of the bright futures that are possible. This limits the amount of support for our work. Most people are overspecialized and generally technologically-illiterate. The era of the integrated human and generalist has not yet arrived, but this is likely to change due to increasing access to rapid, integrated learning opportunities.

Does open source ecology provide any solutions to the various conflict hot-spots scattered throughout the globe?

While armed conflicts are complex in their origin, they typically have at least some origin in the material security of the parties in question. On many occasions, population issues exacerbate such struggles.

Our solution is to build solid means of production in afflicted areas, accessible to all. The wealth and abundance these create will chase out the material scarcity that feeds conflict.

When communities rely on local resources for their survival, regenerative use of resources keeps populations in balance with the capacity of the environment. When supply and demand are balance, no one feels the sting of scarcity.

Thus, we believe that open source ecology can start to chip away at war – and at best, can put a stop to it altogether.

What do you suggest as a progressive legal structure for OSE communities?

We propose registering OSE communities as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), specifically as private-contract, full-liability enterprise communities.

We suggest that land holdings be organized as permanently evolving preservation sites of human heritage.

The purpose of these communities should be to serve as 1000 points of light across the globe that show a positive example of sound and fulfilling living.

As such, we propose that these communities function as development facilities for helping their surrounding economies to transition to resilience. We further propose that as NGOs, OSE communities should act with full responsibility for their actions and should not seek limited liability or other means of outsourcing accountability to third parties.

What are these 40 technologies in particular?

The current list contains multipurpose machinery:

1. LifeTrac, the open source, multipurpose, 4 wheel drive hydraulic tractor
2. MicroTrac, a smaller version of the above
3. The Liberator – the automated, Compressed Earth Brick press that can press up to 16 bricks per minute
4. The automated dimensional sawmill for high-throughput cutting of wood
5. Soil Pulverizer (flexible rototiller) for digging-pulverizing-loading soil for CEB construction, and for tilling soil
6. Cement Mixer with automatic loading
7. Well-Drilling Rig
8. Universal auger – for drilling holes for posts, planting trees, and powering other rotors
9. Agricultural Combine for harvesting and threshing crops
10. Agricultural Spader for preparing soil
11. Universal Seed Drill for planting seeds of all sizes
12. poultry – intensive grazed poultry with chicken incubator
13. Bakery – open source gasifier brick oven
14. dairy – milker and intensive grazing strategy, with butter and cheese production
15. Plant nursery – propagation of fruits, nuts, berries, other perennials.
16. Backhoe for digging
17. Bulldozer for earthworks
18. Baler for hay and straw crop
19. Mower for clearing brush
20. Trencher for laying underground wire
21. Hammer Mill for shredding solids
    For transport:
22. Open Source Car
    For energy:
23. Hydraulic motors and pumps
24. Solar Turbine concentrator electric system
25. Steam Engine for stationary and mobile power
26. Heat Exchanger – for generating steam for the steam engine
27. Gasifier Burner – for fuel pellets and other solid fuel
28. Pelletizer – for producing fuel and food pellets from hay, wood, or any other solid fuel.
    For fabrication
29. MIG Welder for welding
30. Oxy-hydrogen cutter – steel cutting with hydrogen generated from water
31. CNC Mill for milling metal
32. CNC lathe for lathing
33. Drill Press – heavy duty
34. CNC torch table
35. 3D printer – printing in plastic and metal (for circuits)
36. moldless casting with robotic arm
37. hot rolling of metal
38. ironworker machine – 150 ton hole punch and metal shear
39. Induction Furnace for producing metal from scrap
40. wire extrusion

What is Open Source Ecology?

OSE is a movement for healthy interaction of human and natural ecosystems, based on land stewardship, regenerative use of resources, open access to information, and distributive economics. These guarantee well-being to all the planet's denizens. “Open source” comes from the open source software and hardware movements, and ecology refers to the harmonious interaction of natural and human elements to the benefit of all.

Do you have a physical facility?

We have a physical facility – Factor e Farm – a dedicated 30 acre research lab for testing all the concepts, in the Kansas City area, Missouri – where the experiment began in 2006.