effort to open source off-grid technology

[golan]

hey, folks might be interested in openfarmtech.org, (the weblog is at https://www.openfarmtech.org/weblog).

they go down the route of information technology by sharing all they do, especially their plans to build your own tractor to do agriculture, your own equipment to do work with metals, a cnc table, a drill press and even a compressed earth brick press. they also produce these things at a lower price than the competition because of their open business model. one central figure is marcin jakubowski, a former fusion scientist and they follow a sound set of values.

[elnav]

Nice concept. Although the idea has been around for a while somehow the established powers seem to manage to choke it off. Any idea how to overcome that stifling effect?

[golan]

no established powers can stop it because it is a voluntary effort. it only depends on people and small amounts of money.

the thing is that this model is proven already by the free software / open source movement. it’s a little different with hardware because compared to software it takes more time and ressources to build an actual thing, but more and more people license their hardware projects under open source licenses, which will make it possible for others to build upon their work. eventually open source hardware can become as common as open source software is today already.

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