Open Source Economy’s New Home in Osborne MO Pioneers Neo-Subsistence
Open Source Economy or OSE is project now located in Osborne MO about an hour north of Kansa City Missouri. Marcin Jakubowski the founder of the project has obtained 40 acres and is now building a modest project on a shoestring, but he already has achieved some major milestones including the installation of satellite broadband, wind power and the planting of an orchard. One of the goals of the project is to open source various technologies so that are easily available for replication within the grassroots community.
Critics of the current obsession with intellectual property rights such as Creative Commons has typical noted that the IP threatens creative and intellectual freedoms. This might explain why groups like the Open Society Institute which seeks to promote open and free societies globally has grown increasing supportive of the open source movement.
However one point that Marcin makes is that products designed under the existing capitalist system are actually designed to malfunction and break prematurely. They are also designed to be more complex so that they need to be so that they are not easy to replicate. Indeed this is common problem in academia where people tend to make something more complex than it appears so that people will be intimidated by it and will not seek to attempt it.
For the above reasons Marcin has sought to promote Do It Yourself technologies that can easily be replicated in the grassroots. For example
(1)Open source windpower development, with a deliverable of a flexibly-manufacturable, modular windmill, electronic controls, balance of system, on scales from 50 W- 1 MW. Utilizing flexible manufacturing, open source design, and advanced electronics available today, we are in a position to develop affordable windpower that is at anyone’s fingertips, from individuals to community enterprise. Marcin says all the tools are out there for affordable windpower, but that he has not seen rigorous development that is replicable at the grassroots or commercial level.
(2) Solar concentrator technology: developing Fresnel lens solar
concentrator systems for heat and power. This would include casting of the lens on thermoplastic sheets and developing electrical generators via steam engines or bladeless turbines, with vegi- oil burners for backup power.
