Introduction

The vision of OSE is collaborative design for a transparent and inclusive economy of abundance.

Open Source Ecology is a proposed paradigm shift to regenerative development of human and natural ecosystems by means of open collaboration, transparency, and democratization of the technosphere. Please see the Roadmap for how to get there. The current main effort (2018-2028) is completion of the Global Village Construction Set, which is 33% complete.

Writing from 2013

Open Source Ecology is developing and testing the Global Village Construction Set

Details

By weaving open source permacultural and technological cycles together, we intend to provide basic human needs while being good stewards of the land, using resources sustainably, and pursuing right livelihood. With the gift of openly shared information, we can produce industrial products locally using open source design and digital fabrication. This frees us from the need to participate in the wasteful resource flows of the larger economy by letting us produce our own materials and components for the technologies we use. We see small, independent, land-based economies as means to transform societies, address pressing world issues, and evolve to freedom.

Factor e Farm is the land-based facility where we are putting this theory into practice. Here we are testing the prototypes of of Global Village Construction Set, working piece by piece towards self sufficiency. Ultimately, our goal is to make this self sufficiency available to all. To this end, the GVCS is designed to be self-replicable. After the first set is complete, it will be used to fabricate copies of itself from raw materials (for the cost of scrap metal). At that point we will shift to begin developing networks of interconnected self-sufficient villages and homes.

Taken literally, open source means that the goods and knowledge for reproducing the complete product (the "source") is freely accessible (open), and ecology is the study of living interactions between organisms and their natural environment. From a human perspective, we seek to push our vision of ecology beyond ecological crisis and into ecological harmony and human productivity.

Meaning of Open Source Ecology - the Concept, not OSE Brand

OSE Legacy Website described what the concept of open source ecology means. The same concept is the name of our organization.

'III. What is Open Source Ecology? We derive our organization's name from a concept which refers to the integration of the natural, societal, and industrial ecologies- Open Source Ecology- aiming at sustainable and regenerative economics. We are convinced that a possibility of a quality life exists, where human needs are guaranteed to the world's entire population- as long as we ask ourselves basic questions on what societal structures and productive activities are truly appropriate to meeting human needs for all. At the end of the day, the goal is to liberate our time to engage in exactly that which each of us wants to be doing- instead of what we need to do to survive. All have the potential to thrive. Today, an increasingly smaller percentage of the world's population is in this position. - MJ 2003

Organization

See Also



