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:3, Interesting)
Ninjas vs Warlords. Hollywood has probably already stolen the idea.
Seriously though. GVCS takes an interesting approach of building a society. There needs to be some thought behind defending what is created. Take the situations in Mexico and Somalia for examples. Instead of captive populations or towns just hunkering down in scattered huts and praying the tiger comes for your neighbor instead, what designs for communities could successfully defend against warlords/gangs? Would fort designs from the Brits' and US history be updated and prove practical?
Clearly non violent movements won't and can't work in those environments while the populace is scattered and unorganized. Rocks and martial arts are individual defense ideas, not community defense. (I do have a cynic's humor though, so no whoosh here you bastards...)
"Build your own lathe", etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a classic "Build a Complete Metalworking Shop from Scrap" [lindsaybks.com] set of books. This set of books really does describe how to build machine tools starting from scrap and hand tools. The author was originally thinking of recovery after a nuclear war, when there would be plenty of scrap around.