Vigyan Ashram
Q: Who else is doing something similar and how is your idea different? (From Shuttleworth Fellowship Application)
Closest from overall mission perspective is Vigyan Ashram (see also Incite Focus) – an education/digital fabrication/open source-friendly, practical-training institution in India which promotes community-based enterprise. In general, enterprises based on open hardware are similar to our work, but they are limited in scope (such as Makerbot) compared to our scope of a 'civilization starter kit' or 'kernel for the open source economy.' Moreover, Ubuntu is similar in that it is doing for software what we are trying to do for hardware. The unique feature setting us apart from all of these enterprises is that we are a Distributive Enterprise – please read our definition – where I have not heard anyone else (I would love to be corrected) use this term in reference to their work. We are explicit in that distributive enterprise is the core of our work.
