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 - and this is a promise not delivered.
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. The time of this promise is yet to come.
We would like to begin moving OSE in that direction - after observing that none of our products have dominated the marketplace yet. We think there are reasons for that - and the bottom line is performance, access, and documentation. We think that we can show a good example with the Brick Press - the most evolved OSE product to date. We will be taking the CEB Press to the finish line this year.
What have we achieved so far?
See the main milestones from 2011-2014 - 2 pages here - https://docs.google.com/a/opensourceecology.org/presentation/d/1iE-kXfVWHk39-Y4iDCpRJX8G-RWGnF5QoSjYGcf1V3E/edit#slide=id.g5d8fba772_228 (Disclaimer: note that this document is work in progress, it is raw thoughts not yet packaged well for public consumption for sake of early feedback, with understanding .that the document is agile and will change. The public facing Strategy document will be published around April, 2015 after it is approved by the OSE Board of Directors.)
Where do we go from here?
Main results are: Realtime documentation. One Day Build, One Day Prototype, 5 Day House Build. Successful Revenue Model. But why is that important?
All point to the promise of open source, accelerated development.
Viral Replicability Criteria
Can these be reached?
An implicit premise of the endpoint of any successful open source hardware project is that the quality of the hardware becomes superior to any proprietary counterpart. This is a strong statement, but it is also a simple natural result of an open, collaborative process attracting more development effort than any proprietary, closed-system effort. In other words, a better product means natural dissemination of that product worldwide. But it does not mean homogenization of options as in the standard mass production model, because the affordances of open technology make open hardware flexible and adaptable to any local setting.
We should explore the claim of open development attracting more effort than proprietary efforts. This in general is true, but if appropriate coordination of effort is not secured, then even if more effort is spent, results are not produced. The internet provided a large measure of coordination to open efforts. However, sophisticated mechanisms of Time-Binding are still missing.
Caveat: The market domination of open source product does assume a rational marketplace. This is not generally available - as special interests and agents of centralization tend to monopolize. Solution: It is theorized here that specific aspects of VRC bypass the irrationality of the marketplace. That critical aspect that allows the bypass is the drastically-reduced barriers to entry. It is theorized here that these reduced barriers to entry override the irrationality of the marketplace.
The irrationality of the marketplace is brought about by deprivation, attachment, scarcity, human psychology, social conditioning, fear and anger, secular ponerological and Soteriological factors, and other phenomena.
These factors indeed are grave issues, and may dictate that many people would choose, for example, Coca Cola over organic freeze-dried fruit juices - or, for example, insist that one manufacturer's automobile is fundamentally different from another's.
However, given that 50% of the world lives at under $1000/year of income, there may be a wide market for viral replication.
This does not address viral replicability in the First World. In the first world, lifecycle assessment and environmental issues, combined with 50x lower lifetime costs, and and open enterprise acceleration, just might contribute to viral uptake.
The last point is critical: open hardware accelerators spreading enterprise with minimum effort.