A filmmaker is planning to spend a year living an open source life—with everything from his clothes to his toilet paper strictly adhering to the philosophy.

Sam Muirhead, a New Zealander living in Berlin, will begin his challenge on August 1, 2012 and is raising money on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo to support the ambitious project. Muirhead, who admits he cannot code or solder and is permanently synced to his Mac, will need all the help he can get to answer some of his most pressing open source related questions: "Can I 3D print jeans, can robots cook me breakfast?"

The enthusiasm he has for spreading the word and educating the public on how to translate the philosophy to everyday life looks as though it will fuel him for the full year, however.

"I'll be testing just how far the open source idea can go in real life," he says with palpable excitement on his promotional video, while fixing a penguin sticker over his MacBook's Apple symbol. "I'm excited about exploring the different sides of open source with humor, clarity, and critical thinking, as I untangle myself from a world of consumerism and go from an open source outsider to a total DIYer and Linux nerd."

Muirhead, who has so far raised $2,650 of the target $20,000 with 27 days to go, says he wants to engross himself in the crowd sourcing philosophy and track down alternatives to daily, unconstructive consumerism.

Along the way, he hopes to highlight issues surrounding the time-wasting, unproductive, and anti-innovation copyright issues facing technology today.

"Every week you see Apple, Samsung, and Google throwing million-dollar lawsuits at each other, when technologically they all have shared goals," he told New Zealand News. "Whereas in the open source community there's the adage that competitors stand on each others' shoulders, not on each others' toes."

He will be forgoing Apple's Final Cut Pro software for Lightworks or Novacut to edit the weekly films that will appear on his blog diary, resort to "regular writing" at times, and turn to local hacker community c-base to help him develop a camera of sufficient quality using open source technology. While documenting his project is a great way of getting the word out, it also works to show how open source itself is an ideal format for storytelling—a constant flow of information being updated, rather than perfected over a year spent generating a feature-length film, is a great way to share ideas and experiences as they happen.

Picturing an entire life's worth of "stuff," it almost seems an impossibility that Muirhead can succeed in a total open source life. In his promotional video he uses clothing as an example: he is either going to have to find companies selling open source clothing, or make his own from open source patterns—cut to Muirhead being filmed following a Berlin hipster down the street in toga and flip flops.

"It'll be fun," says the quite possibly masochistic Muirhead. "But they'll be plenty of challenges—I must say I'm not looking forward to open source toilet paper."

Working with the Berliner "producers, hackers, makers, designers, dreamers, engineers, scientists, and artists" who will hopefully answer his call, he will create his own alternative products by engaging in collaborative community projects. The final plans, codes, or diagrams will be published on his blog so that the public can replicate or amend his creations. They will eventually be able to amend the designs live on his site. He will also be turning to open source education to teach himself a thing or two about coding and soldering.

As well as bringing together the Berliner community—which already has the MakerLab promoting innovation, local urban farms sharing in the philosophy, and its very own open source political Pirate Party—to aid him in the challenge, generate enthusiasm for open sourcing, and inspire new ideas, the collaborations will also help Muirhead avoid a year's worth of diary videos depicting him "alone on my coach."

Along the way the public will be able to request help for their own open source projects, and those who contribute to the crowdfunding will get "a tip of the hat, a sly wink, a kiss blown on the wind, a humble bow, and a thank you on the website"—and perhaps some original illustrations. The money they donate will go toward materials for new creations and the production costs of documenting the whole thing.

As much fun as it will be to watch Muirhead tackle the weekly challenge of tracking down open source toilet paper, it will also be exciting to follow the progress of a project that stands to bring together the already open Berliner community in new and interesting feats of design, technology, and innovation.

Listing image by Sam Muirhead