OSE Specifications
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Open Source Ecology should pursue projects that are -
- Economically significant - The Global Village Construction Set is designed to meet all the core needs of a village of people. Every one of the tools should significantly improve people lives by saving labor or creating material abundance. The GVCS focuses on core needs, rather than specialist goods or luxuries. As a result, there is likely to be a large commercial market for the tools.
- Open-source - All information on the tools should be published openly. This includes bills of materials (with sources and pricing information), 3D drawings and step-by-step instructions for building. Information that might useful to people starting a business using GVCS tools (such as a marketing strategy, or break-even point analysis) should also be published openly.
Keeping the design information open (rather than protecting it as a trade secret or applying for patents) allows people to replicate the machines. It also allows a global community of designers to work together and improve the design over time.
When products are developed in this way, the designer, producer and user are the same person. The incentive is therefore to design high-quality goods; you will have to use them yourself. Ideally, this should lead to a vibrantly creative community of user-makers who feel actively involved in creating goods. - Decentralizing - We promote the economic system that Mahatma Gandhi called swadeshi - one in which production is radically decentralized and most things are available locally. To this end, we favor using local resources. For example, using local wind resources to generate electricity is more in accordance with OSE Specifications that importing oil.
We promote simple, robust designs that anyone can build, operate and repair (using openly-published information). It is best if the tools are easy to take apart so they can be repaired easily.
It should be possible to build and operate OSE tools without relying on a large infrastructure. This facilitates replication of the tools all over the world.
Of course, it is not possible to build things like electronics entirely from the resources locally available on a farm. So after we have developed open-source ways of assembling components to make machines, we aim to develop open-source ways of building the components themselves, then develop open-source ways of extracting the raw materials to make the components. In this way, we aim to move as far up the value-chain as possible and come closer to perfect self-sufficiency. We call this progression productive recursion.
We believe that communities where resources are produced locally, by people you know personally, tend to be more intimate, more loving and happier than communities where resources are shipped in from who-knows-where without human contact or transparency. - Replicable - Anything OSE builds, any other group should be able to build easily. This is enabled by keeping costs to a minimum (so groups with limited finances can build the tools), by openly sharing design information and building instructions, by sharing information on financial assistance for start-up groups, and by favoring tools that can be digitally fabricated. The more the GVCS is replicated, the more designers will contribute to it (remember, every user is also a designer), and the better the designs will become.
- Abundance-creating - The effect of the GVCS should be to create a system that delivers food, technology, transport and all the requirements of life in abundance. There should be no need to struggle to make ends meet. This is possible when we focus on producing actual resources rather than on making money. Money is often scarce but resources (when harvested intelligently using appropriate technology) are abundant.
- Cheap - Tools should be affordable. This is enabled by simple design (which minimizes labor costs), productive recursion (which minimizes material costs) and by open information (which cuts out administrative costs). The experience of most open-source hardware groups so far indicates that open-source tools are typically 8-10 cheaper than their commercially-developed counterparts. The cheaper the GVCS is to build, the more it will be replicated around the world.
- Circular in their use of resources - We favor goods whose inputs can be met by other elements of the GVCS and whose outputs can be reused in other elements of the GVCS. For example, a bicycle built on the torch table, when it is no longer needed, can be melted down in the induction furnace and become the feedstock for another product. Nothing should be considered "waste"; everything should be recycled. This enables local self-sufficiency and allows industry to be ecologically-benign.
- Flexible - Tools should be useful for many tasks. An example is the 3D printer, which can make any plastic object that needs to be made. It is best if tools are flexible across a range of scales: from big projects to small projects. An example would be a wind turbine that can be designed in a small, one kilowatt version, to meet a single person's needs, or in a 200 kilowatt version, to meet the needs of a village or farm. Flexible tools are more likely to be replicated than specialized tools.
The universal rotor is a good example of a flexible tool; it can be used in anything that spins, from a honey extractor to a washing machine. The components of the tools (e.g. motors) should also capable of fulfilling a wide variety of roles. - Ecologically-sound - We are not willing to increase crop yield here if it means poisoning a river a hundred miles over there. We are not willing to promote human good if it means destroying other species. Recognizing that all things are interconnected, we assess our technologies in terms of their effect on the whole system of life.
In practical terms, this means minimizing waste in favor of a recycled and recyclable materials, using energy, water and other resources efficiently, and avoiding toxic substances. - High-quality - The tools should work well enough to create abundance and should be built to last. Their performance should be good enough to fulfill the task, but need not exceed that (for example, the open source car need not have a top speed of 200mph).
- Sustainable - Products should be built for a lifetime of use, with only minimal maintenance (and that maintenance should be easy). This is facilitated by simple design. Looking at the bigger picture, too, the product and its impact should not cause adverse effects, even if used for millenia.
We believe that a society whose wealth and resources are managed in accordance with these specifications will flourish in material wealth. With abundant wealth and community-based production, competition becomes unnecessary, and people have no need to contend with their brothers and sisters, allowing them to experience real connection, community, mutual respect, love, brotherhood and peace. The time and energy that would be taken up by a struggle to survive in impoverished conditions, or by rivalry, mistrust and fear in competitive conditions, can be redirected into lives of passion, creativity and peace.
Questionnaire
Use this list of questions as a guideline to decide if a tool is an appropriate addition to the GVCS -
- Does it fulfill a really important need?
- Does it contribute to making the GVCS a complete economy?
- Is using this technology a significantly better than doing the same task by hand, either in terms of quality of the work, or in time saved? (Obviously, this question doesn't apply to things that cannot be done by hand)
- Will design blueprints be published openly?
- Will step-by step instructions for building the tool be published openly?
- Will the bill of materials, including a list of sources and prices, be published openly?
- Will an analysis of financial costs of a start-up using the tools be published openly?
- Can it be made and used by communities just about anywhere, regardless of local conditions?
- Can it be easily taken apart and put back together?
- Is it sturdy? Can it be repaired easily?
- Will it last a lifetime with minimal, easy maintenance?
- Does it lend itself to digital fabrication, or another replicable fabrication method?
- Does it produce the product or service it provides in abundance, without demanding a great deal of time or effort?
- Is it affordable? Is it disruptively cheaper than commercially-available machines that do the same thing?
- Is the design simple?
- Are its inputs locally available or provided by other GVCS tools?
- Are its outputs usable (or recyclable) by other GVCS tools?
- Does it have bad environmental impacts?
- It it useful in a wide variety of situations?
- Are its components useful for more than one thing?
- Can it be built in larger and smaller versions? Alternatively, can multiple small ones be built to fulfill the task of a large one?
- Does it perform to a high enough standard that the user would be satisfied?