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 low-grade, abundant local resources. 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 a 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 help them become careful stewards of the land. This way of life may change the game for human survival on this planet.

Isn't this just revisiting the back to the land movement of the 1970s?

It's more than that. 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 and toxic?

Why use machines? Time. Subsistence farming is exceptionally labor intensive. Modern tools bring the power to lessen labor burdens and increases quality of life substantially.

An integral part of our work is creating industrial processes that are fully in harmony with ecologically responsible living. We are pursuing completely closed ecological industrial cycles, with which there is no waste. Right now we are building tools and machines to get us to this point. We are working on Level 1 of the Global Village Construction Set, which does require some industrial inputs from outside, along with their negative impacts. This a preliminary step needed to take us deeper into the process of creating a truly ecological approach to technologically modern self-sufficient living.

Isn't mass production more efficient/better?

Mass production can be far more efficient, and much of this efficiency is gained through the externalization of costs. There are a number of negative externalities usually produced by business-as-usual production that are not factored into market cost:

• Transportation: Taxpayers paying for roads are subsidizing distribution costs.
• Pollution: Water, soil, air, and noise pollution cost everyone, most intensely the economically disadvantaged. It is often the case that when industrial pollution is tolerated, products cost less. It can be more efficient to avoid environmental remediation.
• Worker alienation: Treating workers as valued contributors often runs counter to goals of efficiency.
• Aggregation of wealth: Centralized production is especially conducive to centralization of wealth.

Certainly, some industries gain more efficiency through externalization of costs than others. It may be that mass production of some things will continue to be preferable, but what those things are remains to be seen. Open Source Ecology seeks to create technologies that do not rely on these negative externalities for efficiency.

Further, greater efficiency can be undesirable. Efficient systems can become very reliant on a certain set of external conditions to allow them to function. In the rare event that a major shift were to occur, much of business-as-usual production could suddenly lose its ability to operate and would have to transform rapidly at great cost or perish. OSE is working to allow people to build resilient communities that are tied only to the land, allowing them to weather external changes.

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.

The plan for the GVCS has 3 levels, each taking the project a step farther away from reliance on outside inputs:

• Level 1: Building a set of machines as complete products using off-the-shelf components.
• Level 2: Building tools to build components for the machines of level 1.
• Level 3: Building machines and processes to introduce raw materials into an ecological industrial cycle to serve as materials for the components of level 2.

We are currently working on Level 1 of the project. See a summary of our current progress.

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

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 results in low accountability. While higher quality, cheaper machines would fare better in a pure market system, the market system we're working our way out of is far from pure. This results in higher prices. Drastic cost reduction is a well-known feature of open source products. See an estimated price comparison (searching for link).

• Reasons proprietary technologies are more costly:
  1. Planned obsolescence: Companies routinely sell products with a limited useful life in order to maximize profits. When products wear out quickly, sales go up. The overall cost is much higher than the cost of buying one quality product.
  2. Competition through advertising: 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. The consumer loses.
  3. Regulated repair: Proprietary technologies require keeping users in the dark about machines' design and inner workings. Warranties discourage tinkering by requiring repair by licensed repair technicians. This repair can be very costly, and add greatly to the overall cost of the machine.
• Advantages of OSE technologies:
  1. Lifetime design: The technologies of the GVCS are designed to be easily taken apart and fixed. These simpler machines are built to last a lifetime.
  2. Collaborative development: We are also documenting our plans with open source licenses so that anyone may replicate our designs. Open source development can reduce design inefficiencies. More minds and hands devoted to a problem can lead to solutions for building at a lower cost, in less time, and with fewer resources.
  3. Design as a set: The GVCS is being developed with a modular design that greatly reduces waste. For example, one power source can be switched from machine to machine, saving the resources one would need to have a separate power source for each.
  4. Modification: Because the plans are open, the tools and machines can be remixed, tweaked, and built upon. They can be disassembled and combined into new creations, modified to function better in specific environments and for particular purposes, or added to for additional utility.
  5. Self-replication: The GVCS, once fully developed, is designed to be self-replicating. Buying into the development of this set could mean never having to buy a new implement again.

Why didn't you choose (a different technology) for the GVCS?

The Global Village Construction Set is designed to be sufficient to provide the food, energy, housing, and technology needs of advanced civilization. We are choosing elements for the set that are:

• Proven technologies, requiring no new inventions
• The simplest possible that serve our goals
• In line with the OSE Specifications

Our choices are not set in stone. Along with developing and testing these tools and machines, we are beginning to use them to support ourselves. This is a tough test of their true effectiveness. If it becomes clear that a different technology would be better for achieving our goals, it will be included.

Where can I find plans?

RepRap

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

See the LifeTrac plans under development.

Plans seem to be lacking. Is it 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?

What kind of license are you using?

OSE has chosen a license built on the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (cc by-sa). You may remix, tweak, and build upon the work of OSE, even for commercial reasons, as long as you credit OSE and your new creations are licensed under identical terms. Some additional concerns apply: please review the OSE License.

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

The first level of the GVCS does take some investment capital to build, and this excludes a great number of people from being able to produce them. However, the second and third levels of the GVCS, once achieved, The first set is far more expensive to create than subsequent sets because it is designed to be self-replicable. Once complete, a GVCS could be used to copy itself using low-grade, abundant natural resources at a cost of the value of those resources to a community.

Skill sets would need to be developed.

Could I build a business around this?

Yes, but it might not look like the businesses you are used to. The licensing we are using would require the development of an open source business model. When people say Open Business Model, typically, people mean that the subject matter of the business model is open source. OSE goes a step further. It is critical to make the distinction that the business model itself open source - and not only the subject matter of that business model. Read more in the OSE License

This means giving up advantages gained through proprietary information. A prospective business owner would have to accept total free enterprise, as open source plans eliminate barriers to entry for other players. In exchange, the prospective owner would gain the advantages of having a team of volunteer developers. We believe a proprietary effort can never be as effective as an open source effort because once a certain number of open source contributors are found, product quality begins to surpass anything possible with limited proprietary funding.

Open source businesses generally create revenue by offering services related to an open source project. For example, you might create a revenue stream through offering supplementary services around the GVCS, such as building the machines for others or using the machines to offer services to others. Open source business models for software can be seen in action, but these models have not been well explored in the realm of hardware development. The viability of such a project has yet to be proven.

How can I help the project?

We are looking for many kinds of help from people of all types, places, and skill sets. We're seeking donations of time, money, expertise and materials. We're also searching out contractors for some project development and grant writing tasks. See How can I help? to find out what you can do to keep this project moving forward.

• 1. Demonstrated cost reduction: We have demonstrated about a 5-fold reduction of cost over the competition with The Liberator compressed earth-brick press: $8k vs $45k. 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.

Factor E

Aren't cities more efficient?

urbanization is ongoing. Do we really have to decentralize?

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.