What if you could build your own car for a fraction of the price? That's one of the many things open source ecology wants to help you do.
One of the most exciting new developments in open source anything is a project called Open Source Ecology and their ongoing project for several years now, the Global Village Construction Set.
Open source simply means technology that isn’t copyrighted and is free for everyone to use in any way they desire. This means you can use their designs, blueprints and processes any way you like - even if that involves creating these machines and selling them for money. It's totally fine! They're not copyrighted!
The main difference between most open source products (like Wordpress and Mozilla Firefox) and the Global Village Construction Set is that most open source products are information-only, meaning there is no physical end-product that you can actually touch once all is said and done.
Open Source Water Filtration System:
However, the end goal of the Global Village Construction Set is to provide the blueprints for and help you build an actual series of real-life, community-building tools, that also happen to be currently mass-produced and sold for huge profits by many other companies around the world. They're taking this idea to the next level by giving people the opportunity to manufacture, produce, and even sell these items themselves – by giving them the skills and information necessary – at a fraction of the cost. It's basically legos on steroids, except you just have to go out and get your own lego pieces instead of buying them from the lego company. (However I think you can buy some of the parts from Open Source Ecology, also)
To Build A Village - Open Source Ecology
One of the most exciting goals of this project is that this will enable many more people and communities around the globe to not only have access to these machines, but to make a living producing and selling them in places that they couldn’t have done before this type of technological system was introduced.
They will be able to help themselves and their communities by build actual machines and structures, and well as many, many other things that these machines are capable of manufacturing. Ultimately, these tools will help them produce almost anything they want. They can also have revenue from building these machines for a fraction of the cost of what you would buy them for commercially and then reselling them as well. There are so many possibilities... the potential here will be life-changing for many individuals.
https://www.opensourceecology.org/marcin-jakubowski/#
Open Source Ecology was founded in 2003 by Marcin Jakubowski Ph.D. His goal was (and still is) literally to “create a life size LEGO set of powerful, self-replicating production tools – that can decentralized production – to build modern prosperity in local economies.”
In his own words, he “believes that true freedom – the most essential type of freedom – starts with peoples’ individual ability to use natural resources to free themselves from material constraints – to unleash human potential.”
And so the "Factor E Farm" was born, which develops and tests these concepts from it’s location in rural Mississippi.
So far (as of 2014, according to their website and Wikipedia) “twelve of the fifty machines have been designed, blueprinted, and prototyped, with four of those reaching the documentation stage.”
Here's a video for the 3D Printer Workshop:
There are 50 machines total that they are planning on building, so we are eagerly awaiting to see how it all turns out. Each tool they make in turn helps them make more tools. So eventually, they are building quite complex machines such as 3D printers, CNC Torch Tables, Plasma Cutters, Backhoes and much more. Just take a look at the list below to see some of the projects.
Feel free to visit the site to see the latest progress, and even a breakdown of the costs to build the machines yourself vs what it would cost to buy the regular commercial version:
https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/
Here's a detailed list of all the machines they're building:
https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/gvcs-machine-index/
And if you really like it you can get involved and help out:
https://www.opensourceecology.org/community/