Veganism

Advantages

• Avoid unnecessary killing of sentient being.
• Environmentally friendly. Less CO2 and Methane emissions. Less destruction for meadows.
• More energy efficient. Shorter food chain. Instead (Plants+Fungi+Bacteria)->Animals->(...Animals...)-> Human use a shorter food chain (Plants+Fungi+Bacteria)-> Human.
• Some health benefits. (Attention, as for any diet, there are too many non-scientific claims.)

Veganism and OSE

I noticed that there are parallels between the vegan and OSE communities. Both are ethically motivated, they try to create a better world and are considered to be weird by the mainstream. Statistically, at least in OSE Germany, vegetarianism is over represented compared to the Germany average.

We can learn a lot from vegan movement, especially from its the pragmatic branch. A very good book is "How to create a vegan world" by Tobias Leenaert. There you will find many practical advises which can be applied also to OSE. It also contains an important critical part which helps to better understand ourselves and the "other side". This helps to lower frustration when talking with others and to develop efficient strategies.

Interesting parallels

Not "True Open source"

There is some tensions between vegans and vegetarians, former vegans and non 100%-time vegans. The vegans are subset of vegetarians who are more consistent. For example a vegan will not eat eggs and dairy products. This tensions can be much higher compared to non-vegetarians. This behavior has a psychological explanation but is irrational. The problem here is, that we lose our allies. Can we have similar problems in Open Source? I think - yes: These are CC-BY-NC licenses, companies which publish their sources with time delay, former Open Source projects.

In this topic it is very important to distinguish between product and the person. For a product we must be rigorous: if it has "Open Source" label, it must be open source. But if a company or a person is not more open source or not open source enough we can be just thankful for their contribution, keep good relationship and move on.

Differences

OSE is human-centric. Some OSE projects are less compatible with vegan moment:

• OSEG milking robot. Not vegan because kills cows. Canceled.

• Eco Flow for horses. Gray area. Non-vegan because of animal exploitation but could be considered as a symbiotic relationship.

• Aquaponics Non-vegan if you eat or exploit the fish.

Veganism is not-only-human-centric

It is possible to be vegan without open source technology.

Questions =

Vitamin B12 (Cobalamin). It is usually produced by Bacteria. Is there an easy to produce it?