FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Open Source Ecology

Our vision is very ambitious. We are hacking society.

We are building a set of machines for creating a self-sufficient modern life from the resources of a small amount of land. Further, we hope to build the infrastructure to allow people to share the information needed to redesign, repair and re-imagine this set, to develop networks for sharing skills and raw materials, and to help each other perfect our vision of self-sufficient living.

We hope that having survival needs taken care of outside of the current order will give people the freedom to become deeper, more thoughtful, more creative human beings. By giving people a means to live a modern life that is closely connected to the land that sustains them, we hope to allow them to become careful stewards of the land. This way of life may change the game for human survival on this planet.

How is this different from the back to the land movement of the 1970s?

How farms operate has changed dramatically since the 1970s. On most commercial farms, mechanization has increased steadily, while new seed, fertilizer, and irrigation technologies have increased production dramatically. There has also been significant research and development in both biointensive agricultural techniques and permaculture. These techniques helped make intensive food production that improves soils and requires little to no ongoing input of resources possible for many small farms and communities. Some mechanization and technology is synergistic with these techniques in ways that maintain their ethos of ecological responsibility. Given this, there are many new possibilities for what a self-sufficient community can be.

The internet has also changed what a self-sufficient community can be. The internet makes it easy to share knowledge and collaborate on problems with people who are far away. This makes bazaar-style open-source software development possible, and it’s starting to have the same effect on hardware. Automated fabrication — computer numerical control — could make it possible to do a lot of machinery design and construction with less labor and less capital investment than was needed back in the 1970s.

Biointensive agriculture and permaculture are powered by design. It is now possible to share design development and improvement of agricultural systems in ways not possible before interconnectivity through the internet. We can develop a truly open source permaculture. OSE is also working to create RepLab, a digital fabrication workshop. A functioning workshop could allow people to instantly share plans across the internet and produce machines and machine parts on a small scale in a short time frame.

Response adapted from a comment by Kragen Javier Sitaker on [| hackaday.com]

Why use machines? Aren't traditional farming methods less wasteful?

Why use machines? Time.

Subsistence farming is exceptionally labor intensive. Using modern tools lessens the labor burden and increases quality of life while using the same resources plus scrap metal.

Global Village Construction Set

We are building new machines by recombining existing technologies. The Global Village Construction Set is designed to become a fully integrated set of machines for creating a self-sufficient modern life from the resources of a small amount of land.

Why not buy these tools and machines at my local store?

We aim to replace similar machines currently made by companies for profit. Farm and construction implements bought in the current market are limited because their designs are the intellectual property of the companies that produce them. This means that there can be little accountability. While better machines will fare better in the market system, that market system is far from pure. Companies may build their products with the intention of planned obsolescence, selling a product with a limited useful life in order to maximize profits. When plans are proprietary, prices also run much higher. Rather than competing by reducing prices or increasing product quality, entire industries may set uniformly high prices while companies in that industry compete with each other through advertising only. For a consumer to keep warranties, machines with proprietary plans may also need to be fixed by licensed repair technicians, which can greatly increase the cost of repair.

We are redesigning the technologies of the GVCS to be easily taken apart and fixed. These simpler machines are built to last a lifetime. We are also documenting our plans with open source licenses so that anyone may replicate our designs. By creating these machines as a set, we eliminate redundancy of function, and therefore waste.

Where can I find plans?

RepRap

Plans being developed for the CEB press: [CEB plans on openpario]

See the LifeTrac plans under development.

Perhaps if the plans are lacking, it is because the focus has been on building rather than documentation. The documentation is key! Need more people to help bring the documentation up to a higher standard?

Do I have to build the tools myself? What if it breaks? Warranty?

Offer to produce machines for materials + labor cost? Because the plans are open source, there are no walls put up to sharing knowledge about the machines. Troubleshooting can be crowd-sourced. Warranties are promises that the product and its design are reliable. With these plans, only the testimonies and experiences of others can act to give this assurance.

Do these machines have any relevance in the third world? Aren't they too costly?

It seems like these machines are limited to those who have the thousands of dollars of investment capital to build them in the first place.

This set is designed to be self-replicable. This means that the first set is far more expensive to create than subsequent sets because

How can I help?

We are looking for many kinds of help from people of all types, places, and skill sets. Check out How can I help? for a summary of things you might be able to do to further the project.

Product Development

How long does it take to develop and produce a product?

Obvious answer here: It depends on the product!

Here are some of the products under development.

Will a company that joins the support of OSE product development efforts have any business advantage over any other local company in utilizing the technology when available (faster access, access to other knowledge, etc.), or does that go against your philosophy?

That's a good question. The existence of a business advantage depends on what type of business you are operating. If you are an open source-type business, that means that you invest in development of things that you are interested in offering as products. It also means that you are tapping collective intelligence. In this scenario, you accept the concept of free enterprise - a Jeffersonian concept that means that barrier-free access exists for anyone who wants to go into business. This is not the current mainstream model, which typically operates as monopoly capitalism.

On the other hand, if you are interested in a business advantage via barriers to entry of other players, such as non-disclosure or delayed disclosure of the development results - then the answer is that we do not engage in such practice. This is simply because such secrecy does not promote the highest level of flexibility or innovation. The benefits of the energy created by openness outweigh the advantages of immediate funding. The immediate funding will not address the long-term needs of open source economic development.

Supporters of 'monopoly capitalism' - as distinguished from open source 'capitalism' - may argue that protection of proprietary interest promotes invention. We assert that collective intelligence, now available in the internet age, has much more potent creation potential than proprietary development. When collective intelligence is active in product development, the gap between the producer and consumer can now be narrowed - with the emergence of personal fabrication. We believe that this is trend is increasing, and that needs can be satisfied more efficiently using this method.

So to answer the question more explicitly - yes, you will get faster access - in so far as the results are produced more quickly when additional support materializes. Yes, there will be access to other knowledge - in so far as additional funding can produce more practical improvements. The only trick is - everyone will have access to these results, because we will be working towards these goals efficiently - ie., by utlizing full openness in our research program. We have learned from our experience that the more open you are, the more collective intelligence you are able to tap. Indeed, we don't believe a proprietary effort can ever be as effective - because once a certain number of open source contributors are found - products begin to surpass the quality of limited proprietary funding. We are far along in demonstrating this with our Factor 10 engineering results. Granted, this does require an open source business model, which may not be consistent with your company's current model.

If there is a way that your company can attain competitive advantage without requiring the limiting of any disclosure, then it should invest in our developments. If not, your company may want to consider further evaluation of the open source business model to determine its relevance to future corporate strategy.

Fans

What is a True Fan?

Generating and maintaining True Fans is a way for individual and small groups of artists, producers, inventors and makers to crowd fund the resources they need to continue creating new work. Open Source Ecology is looking for people to fund its projects by donating a fixed amount per month. The Standard Subscription is $10 per month. As of September, 2010, there have been requests for larger donation options. In response, we created Gold, Gold Extra, Platinum, and Angel subscriptions at $20, $30, $50, and $100 per month, respectively.

We have shown consistently that we spend nearly 100% of donations directly on prototyping and product release work surrounding the 40 items of the Global Village Construction Set.