Open Source Product Development Pipeline

Introduction

This is the general Open Source Product Development strategy for rapid synthesis of knowledge and expertise required to deploy the Global Village Construction Set within a time frame of under 2 years.

Problem Statement

To date, we have been engaging a rather ineffective development process for open source product development, from the standpoint of scalability. Essentially, Marcin was the main developer on the CEB press and LifeTrac. While excellent prototype results came out of this process, it was essentially a one-man show utilizing in-house resources. We did tap Crowd Funding at the $2k/month level in September and October, 2008.

While it is possible for one person to carry on the above program with relative success, based on one's capacity to provide the necessary due diligence - the process is limited in that it cannot be scaled. The limit to scalability is the lack of resources required to pay for other developers or more knowledgeable professionals. These are the limits of volunteer labor. We're dealing with limited funding and limited time in a day.

The main barriers to rapid development that we have faced so far at Factor e Farm is the lack of integrated information that helps one deploy all the technologies for the GVCS. It is our experience that while the internet contains lots of information, it is largely disorganized, low quality content. It is especially difficult to find economically-significant information - ie, that information which would help people become effective producers. So, while there's tons of crappy, incomplete, disintegrated, and biased information exists - rational information that can help one assess technological design, and therefore gain technological literacy towards the goals of effective production - is missing.

This means that in practice, ecologically-integrated product and production systems, such as we're proposing with the GVCS, are literally nonexistent. On top of this, there is much vanity production - stuff that is built not to satisfy essential needs but rather individual egos. "Look how cool I am because I built this." This is essentially the Maker community. Another maker community, Instructables, is full of inferior design, and is largely non-replicable because it's lacking in meaning.

To summarize, we have to date been unable to spawn a massive, open source product development process. The missing link is lack of ready access to expertise and useful information, for reasons stated above. Because of a lack of resources, we are to date unable to attract the team (30 people) who could organize the effective deployment of the GVCS. While we are recruiting people slowly but surely, an accelerated process of development is needed that would assure delivery of the entire GVCS in 2 years. The level of support will determine the quality of the 40 product package.

The Solution

Solution to the above dilemma lies in two main general development points.

1. Being able to transition readily from generalist design specifications of GVCS technologies to peer-reviewed, expert-verified designs and predictions of cost, performance, and schedule
2. Being able to fund the above expert-verified material for on-demand deployment, assuring deployment in a timely fashion of 2 years for the ~ 40 empowerment technologies of the GVCS

These two development points are grounded upon the comprehensive description of the entire GVCS, as found primarily in the Distillations. The Distillations, while generalist in detail, define the scope of the project - in terms of providing a sufficient, though incomplete, technology base for ecotechnologically advanced civilization.

These two development points also assume the presence of a physical laboratory - Factor e Farm - for carrying out the building of the world's first, replicable, open source, global village. Moreover, we have under our command the building techniques, utilizing both standard and CEB construction methods - for housing any collaborators on-demand.

Tactical Approach

1. Lack of technical review to validate

The basic working assumption of this process is that large external support can be generated bey