Strange Places To Find Open Source 118
itwbennett writes "Open source is about more than code: It's also about tractors, prosthetics, Christmas lights, and the poor old U.S. Postal Service. If you don't believe that open source changes everything, take a gander at Marcin Jakubowski's Global Village Construction Set (GVCS), a set of 50 industrial machines that are required to build and maintain a small, sustainable civilization. The open source aspect covers designs, instructions, schematics, budgets — everything anyone needs to know to build their own machines, and it is all freely available and free to share."
Re:Africa Test Case (Score:4, Informative)
No other metals/materials, no glass, no plastics,
They do have a machine for making plastics, and there is nothing wrong with using wood in a sustainable culture, if you do so at a replaceable rate.
And there is no plan for how to construct that construction kit in the first place.
There doesn't need to be. The goal isn't to bootstrap civilization after it has collapsed. It is to find the smallest set of machines needed to recreate themselves, and thus allow civilization at say 1930's level to be maintained in as small of economy as possible.