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, Insightful)
I like how the GVCS has all these computer controlled tools.... and nowhere in the list is a computer.
Re:Africa Test Case (Score:3, Insightful)
You can watch Marcin's TED speech to get an idea of his motivations and experience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIsHKrP-66s [youtube.com]
But the short answer is, yes, he is building and testing some of them at least. And the point is that it doesn't need to be "industrial scale".