Open source appliances for sustainable development

Open source products are essential to build a more sustainable, fair and circular economy

Take a look at this project by some of the people in our network. If you’d like to support it, please click on this page to contribute.

How does open source creates social and sustainable impact? If we make products open source this will bring benefits in different manners:

  1. Everyone has access to the knowledge and DNA of products, having the four freedoms of free/libre products(freedom of use, freedom to study the technology, distribute and improve).
  2. It creates jobs because it lowers the costs to start a business by providing the necessary know-how to create local economic impact.
  3. It facilitates the recycling and maintenance of products, because the knowledge of how it works and how it breaks is available for everyone (Which also helps to create employment opportunities).
  4. It makes it easier for people to engage in sustainable consumption and in raising awareness of the value of products. The lack of awareness, or lack of knowledge with respect to where our products come from, how they are made, what is the ecological and sustainable impact they have restricts people from taking actions, changing behavior, etc.
  5. It creates resilience and less dependence on fossil fuel value chains, by reducing the shipping of components to what is only necessary. For instance, instead of shipping a whole container of cars, parts can be shipped so that local manufacturers assemble the product.
  6. All in all this brings global impact for the developing and developed world, and helps in creating a sustainable standards of consumption and production.

How you can help and What power do you have to make this possible?

You hold the power of the crowd. The more people join you, the less money each of us have to pay, share the burden and there will be no burden. Become a sponsor and ambassador of Open Source by donating and supporting. The more you donate to the common good the faster and healthier we will create impact.

Pay at least for one development hour and convince your friends to support this movement (9EUR, or 10.70USD). This is an hour for minimum wage in the Netherlands. If you think we deserve more than minimum wage feel free to add more.

Why pay for development hours? And why are we asking for 20000USD?

We have estimated for this project, based on our developer experience, 5760 hours. This is the equivalent of 3 persons fully employed working 40 hours per week for a year. Yo can also look at it as 6 persons working 20 hours a week for a year, or 12 persons for half a year committing 20 hours. This is the beauty of paying development hours, the more a developer works (well) the more he or she will get. To ensure quality of work we also want to open our partial results to the crowd, and have a forum to discuss technical challenges.

What we promise

  • First of all we will give you a very nice perk: an ebook about open source, p2p and sustainable development made by us.
  • We promise to work on this first print and deliver an increment of design and development as a prototype.
  • Reflect on what limitations and opportunities we encounter along the development process with regard to developing and distributing open source designs of products like microwaves, ovens, fridges etc.
  • Document and discuss the economic feasibility and contexts in which the development ,manufacturing, and distribution of open source products is sound and scalable.
  • A channel to give feedback as well regarding the campaign, but also the project.

What we stand for:

  • We want to design and develop open source home appliances, and most probably the next one will be a washing machine, or maybe a fridge. The point is to extend the portfolio of open source appliances.
  • We want to establish as an open cooperative, dedicated to sustainable and social impact. An open cooperative is basically an ethical enterprise centered in solving human needs, and not centered on profit making.
  • We are part of a broader community of open source and sustainability advocates pushing towards the democratization of technology as a driving force in sustainable development.

1 Comment Open source appliances for sustainable development

  1. Avatarcosmobird

    eventhough several communities around the world are already striving to make appliances open not only from s/w pov or pure electronics pov, it is after this article, i hope people will understand what open design and cooperation can bring for a progressive change in economy and in thought process.

    once people laughed at me for saying “why dont we have open day to day appliances ?” open source s/w people go — “duh ! h/w is open …” such a narrow minded pov is not sustainable and biased. atleast this is what i have experienced in my locality. possibly several reasons are responsible for such reactions.

Leave A Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.