Bootstrapping

Introduction

The term "bootstrapping" comes from the phrase "lifting yourself by your bootstraps", which is not actually possible but gets the idea across of a closed loop process. In the context of Open Source Ecology it means starting from a minimal set of people, skills, money, and tools, and using them to make progressively better tools until the full range of Global Village hardware is available. Along with an expanding tool set comes an expanding community organization. There is no point in having 50 people working when you only have a few hand tools to work with. The design problem is what is the optimal bootstrapping path, and how would it vary according to location, available resources and skills, funding, etc.

Concepts

Make vs Buy - Unless you want to truly start from nothing but a rock and a stick to make a stone axe, there will always be some level of bought items. To decide whether to make or buy a given item, the following are relevant:

• Productivity - This is how much you save by making the item divided by the time to make it. If you save $100 by making an item and it takes you ten hours to make it, then your productivity is $10/hr. If you can be doing something else with a higher productivity, such as a paid job, then you are better off just buying the item.

• Service Life - Once you have it, how long will it last?

Tool Grades - For discussion purposes, it is convenient to use existing descriptions of how capable a tool is. These are portable, stationary, and industrial. The different grades are distinguished by features such as weight, rigidity, accuracy, power level, and maximum work dimension. An example is portable electric drill, stationary drill press, and industrial drill press. Ideally you want to use one grade of tools to make the next higher grade. In some cases, a tool can be modified and upgraded to a higher grade.

Tool Functions - A functional category such as "making holes in things" may be accomplished by numerous tools (drill, punch, plasma torch, laser). You can map out the function according to parameters like: output rate (holes per hour), how big a hole, how thick a material, what kind of material, how accurate a hole, side effects on the work piece (such as heating from a plasma torch). A given tool will cover some range of parameters. When planning a bootstrap path, consider how a new tool will extend the range of parameters or overlap with other tools.