Open Source Product Development
Introduction
Open Source Product Development (OSPD) is the development of products (goods and services) that leverages open collaboration and clear documentation as a means to involve large numbers of distributed contributors in the development process. One of the main motivations is distribution of production - and 10x reduction of waste by 10x increase in product lifetime. That is, not to mention the flexibility and customizability of distributed design. The promise of lifetime design is created by the ability of users and local repair enterprises to fix and upgrade products - without throwing them out when a small component breaks. Open design is key to such an infrastructure.
The aim is to produce high quality products at low cost - and to make these products competitive on the open market - by involving sufficient collaboratory effort to make these products better, faster, stronger than proprietary competition. The 2 main keys to access lie in Open Design (zero development costs) and design for fabrication via open source micro factories in a scenario of Flexible Fabrication (reduced production costs).
OSE has 4 approaches to this: 1, STEM education (being tested), Autonomous Development, Incentive Challenges, and the OSE Development team.
STEAM Education
Open Source Ecology's approach to mass-scale open source product development includes introducing such work into STEM education, where students learn basic science and apply it to real and useful endeavors. Specifically, the reality creation revolves around creating means of right livelihood towards self-determination. This has the potential to transform global manufacturing towards local production and regenerative development.
The concept here is leveraging the 1/2 billion global student population. It takes no additional energy outside of a shift in direction to utilize useful experiments that have a connection to regenerative development. This would be opposite of content that has no relation to the core requirement for a thriving civilization - namely - the elimination of artificial scarcity. The goal is to deliver the promise of science, for the first time in human history - to make lives better for everyone. By exposing children to their agency in creating a better world, we can create a different world for all future generations.
In practice, this would mean a reconnection of curriculum to applied topics that have regenerative development qualities. This could be done by shifting to a modular, building block approach - where simple components are used to build more complex things. There is no reason why simple components - if made accessible and practical - cannot be the foundation of economic significance in a regenerative economy.
Today, complicated and inappropriate design fills the world, and is part of the reason why individuals participate very little with the artifacts around them. A shift to hacking reality must start with young people - to make that a norm in an enlightened society. Such a shift can begin when young people are involved in design of technology. Young people can handle simple devices. And complex spaceships for exploring the universe are not much more than shafts, bearings, levers, materials - and many other primitive elements that can be understood by someone with basic literacy of physics and math. At stake we have numeracy and scientific literacy, whise gross absence in the world today makes for a highly manipulable public.
Autonomous Development
Provided a vision towards a common goal, the collaborative literacy to work tovether, an understanding of a product development process, and the technical ability to use open source collaboration tools - a complex development process could in principle go on by itself.
Currently, OSE is developing the methodology for such a process, The key ingredients are people - and their training to engage effectively in this process.
Once such a process is well defined, it can be automated in many ways. Ultimately, an artificial intelligence can be created to steward this process in collaboration with human agents.
Thus, a full range of tasks from art, science, writing, computer science, manufacturing, enterprise, and all other sectors can be involved in this process of the incremental development towards an ecosystem of developing and deploying technology for the common good. The first result of this process would be the eradication of artificial scarcity, as this benign AI aims at distributive, rather than Redistributive, economics.
Incentive Challenges
Open Source Product Development Method - Roadmap
This is a high level description of the overall process:
Literature
- Open Source Product Development - Springer Gabler - 2011 - [1]. Table of Contents
- OSPD Current State and Requirements - Bonvoisin and Boujut - File:ICED15.pdf
- Open Design and Crowdsourcing - Thomas J Howard et al - [2] File:Opendesign.pdf
- Seminal paper on new product development (innovation) and Lean Production, as enabled by modularity - From Manufacturing to Design
- Includes Architecture of Participation concepts
- Includes Heavyweight Product Manager concept
- Seminal paper on Open Source Appropriate Technology - Dr. Joshua Pearce - File:Osat.pdf
- Industry Standards -
- Standard waterfall method of development - [3]
- Seminal paper on Concurrent Engineering -
- Seminal book on modular design - Design Rules: The Power of Modularity.
- Seminal work on patterns in architecture - Christopher Alexander - A Pattern Language.
Links
- Red Hat's The Open Source Way
- The Open Talent Economy - [6]