Open Source Ecology

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Open Source Ecology ( OSE ) is a network of farmers, engineers, and other supporters who manufacture agricultural machinery that conforms to the terms of free hardware . The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) developed by OSE should make it possible to manufacture 50 different land devices in a modular manner. Several groups across the US and in other countries are developing blueprints. The devices themselves are built and tested on the Factor-e farm in rural Missouri .

history

Particle physicist Marcin Jakubowski founded Open Source Ecology in 2003. In the final year of his doctoral thesis at the University of Wisconsin , he became convinced that science was too far removed from the real problems in the world, and he decided to take a different path . After completing his doctorate, he devoted himself entirely to open source ecology. There are now OSE groups in Oberlin (Ohio) , Pennsylvania , New York and California that develop construction plans and pass them on to Missouri.

2011 brought the public breakthrough for OSE. The internet magazines Gizmodo and Grist brought extensive features . Jakubowski was a 2011 TED Fellow. In the same year, the GVCS won the Make magazine's Green Project Contest . At the beginning of 2011, several hundred donors were already supporting the project, with the numbers rising sharply, especially after Jakubowski's appearance at TED.

Although the basic idea is for the devices to be used worldwide, both The Atlantic magazine and the National Young Farmers Coalition in the USA see a possible area of ​​application for smallholders and new farms, for whose needs there is hardly any agricultural technology available in the USA.

Projects

Global Village Construction Set

The GVCS should make it possible, with the help of open source plans, to easily and inexpensively build the 50 machines from tractors to laser cutters that are required to enable a group of around 200 people to live a "sustainable life with the comfort of modern civilization" . According to the makers, the construction principle corresponds to "life-size Lego", as the individual parts can be interchanged and used many times over. The materials used should be as easy to obtain as possible and available on site.

The devices are created in e-collaboration from the description to the CAD drawings. The prototypes are assembled and tested on the Missouri farm. In particular, the fact that individual parts have to work together in different constellations creates problems. In the end, the devices should cost around an eighth of the price for comparable products. The plans are available under open licenses . Anyone who has access to the appropriate tools should be able to recreate the machines on their own or use them as a basis for their own plans and develop them further.

In May 2011, six of the 50 planned machines had reached prototype maturity , including the Life Trac tractor, a mini tractor, a generator , a welding table , a blast furnace and a steam engine . In July 2013, 13 machines had reached the prototype stage. OSE originally planned to release all 50 machines by the end of 2012 at a development cost of $ 2.4 million, but the plan was abandoned in May 2012. The multi-function brick press has already been released and sold. It allows the building site to be cleared for house construction, the overburden to be pulverized and the material obtained to be pressed into bricks.

Factor-e-Farm

The site on which the devices will be built and tested is the five-acre Factor-e farm in Missouri. The site was previously a soybean farm, since 2007 OSE has been generating all the electricity it needs there, as well as most of the food it needs.

Situation in Germany

OSE is represented in Germany as Open Source Ecology Germany eV and has been recognized as a non-profit organization since 2017. The equivalent of the Factor-e-Farm is externally known as OpenEcoLab and has been in Blievenstorf since 2015 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Open Source Ecology: Marcin Jakubowski , organizational website, accessed 2014
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Goli Mohammadi: Open Source Ecology: Interview with Founder Marcin Jakubowski ( Memento of the original from December 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blog.makezine.com archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Make :, February 11, 2011
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Leah Messinger: A Mad Scientist's 50 Tools for Sustainable Communities , The Atlantic, March 23, 2011
  4. ↑ a b Anya Kamenskaya and Ben Shute: DIY industrial-scale tools: Open Source Ecology's Global Village Construction Set ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.youngfarmers.org archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , National Young Farmers Coalition
  5. ↑ Sami Grover: How Open Source Ecology Created a "Civilization Starter Kit" , Treehugger, April 15, 2011
  6. ↑ Open Source Ecology: Global Village Construction Set  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / openfarmtech.org  As of May 20, 2011
  7. ↑ Global Village Construction Set , as of July 22, 2013
  8. ↑ May 28 Update ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Open Source Ecology Blog, May 28, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blog.opensourceecology.org
  9. ↑ Bonnie Azab Powell Farmer-scientist group wants to 'hack society' through open-source technology . Grist, December 29, 2010
  10. ↑ Open Source Ecology Germany eV Accessed on May 25, 2018 .
  11. ↑ OSE Germany in VR 35009 of the Berlin District Court (Charlottenburg). In: Common index portal of the countries. Retrieved May 25, 2018 .
  12. ^ Timm Wille: Job advertisement for public relations and association work. In: Open Source Ecology Germany - Blog. February 9, 2018, accessed May 25, 2018 .
  13. ↑ OpenEcoLabs in DE. Oliver Schlueter, accessed on August 31, 2018 .

Web links

Commons : Open Source Ecology  - collection of images, videos and audio files