Open Source Ecology Continued

OSE Mission

The mission of Open Source Ecology is to create an open source economy - an economy that optimizes both production and distribution, while providing environmental regeneration and social justice.

Open Source Ecology, like many “big ideas” DIY projects, seeks nothing less than an eventual paradigm shift in the modern means of production– away from the wasteful, global trade-dependent consumerism of today to the locally productive and self-reliant “open source economy” for tomorrow. And like with practically every other one of these projects, this goal will seem a little ambitious for a young organization working on a still shoestring budget. However, in my opinion, OSE has a greater opportunity for accomplishing some real economic changes than most of its coequals.

The main platform by which OSE seeks to accomplish this paradigm shift is its Global Village Construction Set, which I described last week as an “entire system of production and machines [that] has to be modular, DIY, low-cost, high performance, user-servicable, heirloom design, flexible in fabrication, and, of course, completely open source.” The production side of the system is dependent upon  “open source fabrication labs” made up of the machines needed for the creation of other machines– a laser cutter, surface grinder, CNC circuit mill, wire and rod mill, CNC multimachine, stuff like that. Starting with relatively small amounts of capital and little original manufacturing capacity, OSE believes that gradually more advanced and expansionary devices can be built through the evolutionary use of each of these machines. Such a style of production creates a complex web of necessary interlocking components, and it will be some time before this organic method can be perfected.

From this foundation of fab lab machines production can then be extended to the devices that actually make a community possible– tractors, soil pulverizers, plows, reapers, etc. OSE, taking a practical view of this development, has chosen to focus on a combination of both fab lab and community machines, making the simpler ones first as they gradually increase their membership and support.





Currently, OSE relies heavily on private donators, faithful followers, and project foundations for funding. But this is starting to change. Lately, the organization has received increasing numbers of orders for several of their finished machines from the smaller, localized businesses that they claim to support. These businesses have ordered tractors and CEB brick makers– and even more have started making use of the open source design and have built them themselves. OSE might just be beginning to catch.  And it is in this way that they may gain the lasting power that they will need to truly promote their vision long-term. Soon, they may manage to start creating some waves in the world of small-scale manufacturing, contracting, and agriculture– the localized businesses in which OSE shows the most grassroots value right now.

OSE’s current method has not been without criticism however. One of the more interesting views I saw was this:

I strongly believe that the plan is not conceived with efficiency in mind. There are very few people who can afford to start new villages and to re-create the civilization from scratch. But there are billions of people who need right now machines like: washing machine, refrigerator, dryer, stove, oven, microwave, coffeemaker, dust buster, and other essential machines like these. And they won't have the energy, time, money, freedom from their families, motivation, to buy land in a village and to start to make civilization from scratch, thinking that one day they will produce washing machines on their own. That would take way too long for them so it would be totally impractical for them to do it.

But the market is huge for home appliances. If we create just three or five such home appliances, they would be adopted around the world with light speed, it would generate tons of cash, and also would make everyone in the world know who OSE and Marcin are. Creating just a few home appliances would bring even more cash and publicity to the OSE project than it needs. Having such resources would only accelerate the creation of the GVCS machines.

Perhaps OSE should look more closely into this. Reinventing the washing machine may not be as sexy as reinventing the tractor, but it could be more useful, at least in the short term.