Video About Open Source

Goal: to increase collaborative literacy by clarifying what Open Source really looks like. Possible Q and A interview format?

Some initial ideas of topics to cover

How does human knowledge accumulate?

• a trans-generational recursive process
• mass trial and error
• standing on the shoulders of giants

How is human knowledge preserved?

• the knowledge commons
• wide diffusion of information
• cultures of intent (eg monks, scientists, farmers)

Open Source is the basic modus operandi of humanity. The whole panoply of 'common sense' knowledge in any culture is formed and preserved in this way.

Historical examples

• pre-industrial technologies
• agricultural techniques
• plant genetics
• building processes
• food preservation technologies
• folk songs
• epic poetry
• mythologies and frameworks for interpreting the world

But...

The history of knowledge enclosure

• religion: the priestly caste and secret knowledge
• medieval guilds, expertisation?
• capitalism and competitive innovation
• property and intellectual property

Open Source to the rescue.

• brief history of modern OS
• the spirit of OS: not just open, but intentionally shared
• the key features
  • source is actually available
  • useful source
  • the four freedoms (including commercial)
  • rapid collaborative development

How to be Open Source in three easy steps:

• Document everything - specifically for replication and further development
• Publish everything - early and often, share alike licensing
• Proactively collaborate - reach out to peers in your field, create synergies not divisions

About OSE

• reverse engineering 200 years of proprietary technology to liberate it for everyone
• rapid diffusion of tools for urgent ecological and economic regeneration
• re-energizing humans as creators and producers, ending the consumer paradigm
• using the potential of the internet to mobilize and coordinate human talent and energy on a global scale
• setting new standards for industrial design:
  • lifetime
  • modular
  • easily built
  • easily disassembled
  • ecologies of technology (not isolated products)
  • regenerative, not extractive
  • liberating, not alienating

Economic models for Open Source hardware:

• production using open designs
• the software model: design open source, charge for consultancy
• community manufacturing centers
• education Help us develop and refine these.

OSE is part of a broader cultural development that includes things like

• permaculture
• permissionless, horizontally organized political and solidarity movements
• peer-to-peer education (eg farmer-to-farmer in global south)
• revitalization of the commons concept
• land trusts

OSE (and this broader project of liberation) will fail if:

• methodologies of collaboration are not intentionally developed and pursued by all who share the regenerative vision
• potential users and contributors 'wait and see'. No person or organization can build this on their own, your participation is required.
• the growing ranks of visionaries and world-changers do not commit to opening their source. Knowledge that isn't actively placed in the commons slows down everyone's efforts and will ultimately wither on the vine.

OSE has developed a set of specifications that allows anyone to contribute to design. Currently developing business and organizational models to help people and groups to join the effort. Pathways for collaboration with OSE:

• remote design and development: either join a team or start a team
• replication and testing
• forming chapters

(include 'First Step' for each of these, eg "Email us at collaborate@opensourceecology.org", or "set up a development spreadsheet using this template…")

Questions

Most of us know Open Source in relation to computer programs, where the source is the code behind a piece of software. You seem to be talking about a broader application of the term, so what do you mean by 'source'? What is it that's being opened?

And what exactly do you mean by open? Does it just mean that there's no patent?

So what problem is this meant to address, why do we need this concept?

How did we arrive at this situation? Haven't we always guarded information to gain a competitive edge?

But won't that stifle innovation if people can't protect the work they've put in to developing something?

Can you give us a brief history of Open Source?

Why should someone share their work? What will they gain from it?

What are the key indicators that something is really Open Source?

So how do we make our work Open Source? What is your advise to people who admire the idea but are worried about the implications?

OK, that will work for software, where the cost of replication is negligible, but what about hardware? Or architecture, or anything else? What kind of economic models can provide a living to people in other fields who want to be Open Source?

Talk about the Open Source aspect of OSE's work? How are you managing it in your organization? How are you trying to change the wider economy?

Why isn't this taking off, and what could prevent it from becoming the mainstream way of doing things?

What will make it take off and succeed?

How can people join OSE in creating an Open Source World?

OR…

It seems to me that the key question about Open Source is: how does human knowledge really accumulate? The dominant economic model at the moment would have us think that individual people or organizations, motivated by a calculating self-interest, develop completely new advances, basically in isolation from each other, and therefore they deserve to restrict everyone else from accessing these advances. Is that how things really works?