Open Source Ecology Community
An Open Source Ecology Community (OSEC) is any community that follows the principles of Open Source Ecology. An OSE community may be described best as an enterprise community of economically-interdependent stakeholders, specialized in their respective areas of production, and combining to a complete or nearly complete package of local, resilient production ability.
The baseline for such production is complete production capacity for these infrastructures based on local resources:
- Food
- Energy
- Housing
- Fuel
- Land transportation vehicles
- Fabrication capacity
- Significant portion of raw materials production, including rubber, ceramics, glass, metal, plastics, fiber, and cementitious building materials
The above list does not necessarily include VLSI clean room facilities for semiconductor production, but may in the future, depending on progress after the above basics are provided.
The OSE concept of a Resilient Community attempts to explore the creation of a small community (village scale) with shared values that leverage the principles of open source, distributed economy/shared wealth, and the productivity advantages of being able to self-fabricate almost anything using the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS).
Note that the discussion above does not address the much deeper issues of human interaction. It only addresses the physical basis upon which human interaction is grounded. We are not blind to this fact, but unless we can address the material issues, we feel that there's little point to address human issues - in a world that is still founded on resource conflicts in which almost everyone participates based on their consumptive behavior. We are fully intent on addressing the human issues, but not before the material security issues are addressed: these issues are simply in the way. If you like to help us address the human issues, we encourage that you join the project to help address the material issues first. This is my heart-felt conviction that comes from a deep concern for the inner well-being of people. - Marcin Jakubowski, 4/23/11
Other projects are attempting similar communities, such as The Venus Project.
Contents
Alied Communities and Discussions
- Open Source Ecology search on Hackaday has 12k results - [1]
- Open Source Ecology Workshops Group has active discussion on ongoing development.
- OSE FB Page has main announcements to the world.
- OSEmail is our monthly newsletter on our self-hosted phpList server that comes out at least once a year
- The OSE Development Team has weekly meetings and engages in ongoing development.
- People can participate at OSE Workshops and training events held at the OSE facility in Kansas City, USA.
- There is a Reddit Subreddit - and an open source hardware group - https://www.reddit.com/r/opensourcehardware/
- Tag your Twitter @OSE or @opensourceecology or #OSE and #opensourceecology for engaging https://twitter.com/OSEcology
Resources
Success and growth of an OSE community will depend on the resources available to it. Fortunately, we are surrounded by resources - both natural and man-made. The challenge to an OSE community will be to discover these resources and use them in an appropriate way.
Two resources need to be singled out for special consideration: land and water. Sadly, the days are long past when a group of like minded people can head out west (or where ever) to seek unclaimed land for their own use. Selection of land for the creation of a planned community is of critical importance. See OSEC Land Selection Criteria. While selected land will likely have many different kinds of resources, the importance of water cannot be over-emphasized. Water is essential for life.
- Land
- 1 acre per person seems to be the rule
- Ideally secured by ownership (could be shared, corporate, etc)
- Climate and micro-climates
- Water
- Year round source
- Potable or cleanable
- Head and flow volume desirable
- Natural pressure desirable (artisian springs)
- Raw Materials
- Organic
- Trees
- Earth
- Sand
- Top Soil
- Cementitious Earth
- Minerals
- These will vary considerably with location.
- Scrap
- Local dumps, etc.
- Local industry refuse, etc.
- Pollution is a yet to be used resource
- Organic
Shelter
- Housing
- Work shops
- Farm buildings (barn, shed, etc)
- Food storage
Food
- Production
- Hunt/Gather
- Preservation
- Storage
Clothing
- Raw Materials
- Intermediate Production
- Spinning thread and yarn
- Tanning leather
- Production
Energy
- Sources of Energy
- Solar
- Water
- Wind
- Bio-mass
- Geo-thermal
- By-products of other processes
- Storage
Transportation
- Personal
- Work
Tools
- Hand Tools
- Fabrication
- Digital Fabrication, RepLab
- Manual Fabrication
- Global Village Construction Set
- Vehicular Tools
- LifeTrac
- MiniTrac
- Information
- Books
- Internet
- Videos
Governance
Notes
Wanted: clean up the text below (from the old page) and improve its incorporation with the information above
This is beyond the Current Scope of this work, however, this discussion is not too early to be initiated.
Standards need to be developed for 'what constitutes an OSE community.' At present, the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is not yet complete - so nobody really knows what a community that uses the GVCS will really look like. However, we can discuss what it means to be an Ambassador of OSE/Sister Communmity/ Branch of OSE/ Open Franchise of OSE - and so forth. These requirements should be that
- A community actively endorses the OSE Values
- A community is undertaking active development of the GVCS tools.
- A community is using GVCS tools actively.
- A community has attained a complete open source economy and local currency
- A community is actively contributing to open culture - and in particular open source economic development which results in quantifiable levels of post-scarcity economic production
- A community is contributing to cultural creation - via cultural and scientific advancement.
To this end, a third-party rating system could be set up to rate the level to which a community adheres to the OSE Values for post-scarcity economics.
