We’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made for a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free. The goal of Open Source Ecology is to create an open source economy. [...]
OSE (Open Source Ecology) is currently developing a set of open source blueprints for the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) – a set of the 50 most important machines that it takes for modern life to exist – everything from a tractor, to an oven, to a circuit maker. In the process of creating the GVCS, OSE intends to develop a modular, scalable platform for documenting and developing open source, libre hardware – including blueprints for both physical artifacts and for related open enterprises.
The current practical implementation of the GVCS is a life size LEGO set of powerful, self-replicating production tools for distributed production. The Set includes fabrication and automated machines that make other machines. Through the GVCS, OSE intends to build not individual machines – but machine construction systems that can be used to build any machine whatsoever. Because new machines can be built from existing machines, the GVCS is intended to be a kernel for building infrastructures of modern civilization.
That's a cool idea, but it suffers from the same problem that OLPC suffers from[1]: it's a lot of dreams and not a lot of substance.
Looking at their Machine Index[2], there are 50 machines.
Some of these are obviously not "important machines that it takes for modern life to exist": a 3D Scanner[3], for example, is still an immature technology at best, and is ultimately useless without a computer, which isn't one of the machines (the same criticism applies to all their CNC machines). Similarly, the design for the car[4] is purely aesthetic without any concern for pragmatics--the exterior is covered in futuristic-looking curves that will make manufacturing more difficult, but it's unclear whether any design time has been spent on the actual, difficult parts of making a car work, things like the differential[5] which will be needed regardless of whether the car is gas-powered or electric (I'll point out that whether the car is gas-powered or electric is unclear from the designs).
Meanwhile, they're missing a lathe: it's boring technology, but I'm not sure how they're planning to make bolts to bolt together their machines without a lathe. Think of a "boring" tool you have in your house and it's probably not there: saws, drills, sanders are all missing. If you can't build a drill or a saw, I question whether you're ready to build a truck[6] or an industrial robot[7] (which again, won't work without a computer).
And if these are actually open source, I certainly can't find the source. All I see are PNGs. Their GitHub[8] contains mostly designs for parts of a 3D printer, which isn't one of the machines listed, and is even less important to modern life existing than any of the machines listed.
I'd be able to forgive everything I've said if there was even one working design on their site, but even simplest things like the Electric Motor/Generator[9] don't even have the descriptions filled out. If you wanted to build an electric motor/generator, you'd find more useful information on Wikipedia or YouTube.
Their most fleshed-out project seems to be the MicroHouse[10] which is, incidentally, not a machine. This means it doesn't require the engineering that the other projects do (which is probably why it's more fleshed out) but it also means that it isn't really useful: people have been figuring out how to build shelters since prehistory, from local materials rather than the super-cool-ultra-modern-eco-sustainable materials they're proposing. And this project suffers from the same problems as their overall projects: it has three sources of electricity but no apparent reference to plumbing.
I hate to be so negative about all this, but I fear that wildly unfocused projects like this take money and expertise away from projects with real potential and direction. Ideas are a dime a dozen: implementation is much more rare.
The essential elements of building civilization involve making stuff by hand. You can't build "machine construction systems that can be used to build any machine whatsoever" unless and until you know how to make those machines. If you can't make a Jacquard loom or an electric motor, your machine sure can't either.
My list of essential machines are the ones I'd need:
Metalworking: before you can make cars and transistors, you have to get your hands dirty, make steel and machine gears.
First, Lathe. kerkeslager is right, it's the foundation tool of machining.
2: Blacksmith's forge. You can make a lot of useful starting tools with one. Just slow.
3: Steam engine. Even a crappy one is a game changer.
4: Bessemer furnace, for larger scale. It was the backbone of the Industrial Revolution.
5: Milling machine. You can make about anything, including basic gears.
Yeah, they have badly linked documentation from there. Most of their plans are on their wiki, ex: https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Power_Cube_v15.6
. The plans assume you have quite a varied set of equipment at hand already, know welding, etc. Youtube searches also help.
Most of what you'd call open source seed are varieties produced through university research programs. Independent seed farmers reproduce and sell the seed in commercial level quantities.
I think this license is potentially important. There are commercial seed companies taking these public varieties, renaming them and selling them as their own product. There is nothing technically wrong with that.
However where it gets sticky is where they place legal demands on the farmer buying and planting the seed. If the open source license prohibited them from doing that it would be a very good thing.
If somewhere on the bag they had to put the public name the university assigned that would help. Farmers sometimes plant seed from two different companies and think they're spreading diversity risk when in fact they're planting the same variety!
>However where it gets sticky is where they place legal demands on the farmer buying and planting the seed. If the open source license prohibited them from doing that it would be a very good thing.
I’m a hemp farmer. I definitely believe we need some kind of system like this to prevent corporations from monopolizing certain phenotypes. Sadly, I can’t see this working very well in practice for our industry. Cultivars already go to great lengths to protect their unique strains. Which is unfortunate for a lot of research on the endocannibinoid system.
I'm not sure 'open source' is a very good qualifier to use in the name of this project. I read the license, and I'm not seeing anything analogous to 'source'. It doesn't appear that any details about the development of the seed has to be shared along with the rights to use the seed.
If I'm not mistaken here, this just looks like a copyleft license, which is a totally separate concern from 'open source'.
I agree. I think they used the term 'open source' in reference to the freedoms that open source licenses often afford. I'm sure RMS doesn't like the inclusion of this sentence.
> The rules of open source were first introduced by computer scientists in the GNU Manifesto and lead to development of the General Public Licence (GPL) and Creative Commons Licence, which are often used instead of copyright.
The problem with this is that there's no legal mechanism to enforce it besides (perhaps!) contract law.
If an entity receives the seeds without the contract attached, it can hardly be considered to have agreed to the terms. The providing party may be in breach of contract, but there's no way to bind the receiving entity. A single 'rogue' link in the chain makes it all meaningless.
Of course, a variety would have to be truly spectacular for any company to take the effort and PR risk to get involved in that kind of shenanigans, so this approach may have some practical, if not legal, efficacy.
Ironically, a potentially stronger way to enforce the license terms would be to... patent the varieties. It's a quagmire of varying rules internationally, though, and there are some exemptions for the use of protected varieties in further breeding of varieties that could then be protected and subject to less 'free' terms. Plants won't ever be subject to the GPL.
I'm very sympathetic to the project's aims, but even on a purely ethical basis there is room for argument. If we want more plant varieties to be produced to tackle humanity's next challenges (and... we do), should we not be encouraging companies to make very significant, long-term investments in breeding efforts? It's hard to see how that can happen without some kind of time- and scope-limited intellectual property rights, even if the systems we have now aren't ideal.
It's only enforcable against the parties to the contract. If a party receiving the seeds then passes them (against the terms of the contract) to another entity without the contract attached, that ultimately-receiving entity has not accepted the contract and therefore isn't bound by it.
An action can be taken against the initial party for breach of contract, of course, for whatever good that does, but that the seeds are now free of the contractual obligations.
* GMO that don't produce viable seeds so I have to buy seeds from you every season.
* GMO that only works with some other supply available only from the same provider (think of a car that only works with gas from Ford).
* Patents on living organisms: a farmer should be allowed to plant the seeds they grew in their own farm, produce hybrids and so on, without paying royalties.
* If GMO strains get accidentally cross-pollinated from a neighbor farm you should not be on the hook for it.
Strongly agreed. GM proponents try to confuse the issue with what's natural vs unnatural, that kind of thing, but for me (and you) it's never about that; GM is a tool, like a knife, neither got nor bad but for how you wield it. Monsanto want it as a form of IP and lockin.
Wendell Berry once said that agriculture is the "way we enact our dependence on the land."
Monsanto et. al. are the visible symptom of a psychological malady and spiritual poverty. Greed over the sacred bond between ourselves and the life that sustains us.
Both their GMO products and their attempts to enclose and sequester the genetic commons are part and parcel of their underlying epistemological problems.
> "You can't own land, man."
> I can because I'm not a penniless dirty hippie."
It's bizarre there is a need to come up with "open source" seeds, to counteract the insanity of "patented" seeds. But I guess until patents on genes will be forbidden for good, it's necessary.
Is this related to the OpenAg thing that was discussed on HN earlier? Because as I recall, there were quite a few doubts about how that sort of thing would work.
From their About page:
We’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made for a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free. The goal of Open Source Ecology is to create an open source economy. [...]
OSE (Open Source Ecology) is currently developing a set of open source blueprints for the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) – a set of the 50 most important machines that it takes for modern life to exist – everything from a tractor, to an oven, to a circuit maker. In the process of creating the GVCS, OSE intends to develop a modular, scalable platform for documenting and developing open source, libre hardware – including blueprints for both physical artifacts and for related open enterprises.
The current practical implementation of the GVCS is a life size LEGO set of powerful, self-replicating production tools for distributed production. The Set includes fabrication and automated machines that make other machines. Through the GVCS, OSE intends to build not individual machines – but machine construction systems that can be used to build any machine whatsoever. Because new machines can be built from existing machines, the GVCS is intended to be a kernel for building infrastructures of modern civilization.