http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=OSE_Specifications

Dear Michel, dear all!

this (the p2p-people page) is a great idea and “thank you for the flowers”
for including me allthough I could not yet congtribute much to our wiki.
Yet I feel its allready an invaluable tool for me, the richest collection
of free modes available anywhere in the net and on the planet. And I feel
proud to be a member of this group which does exactly what I thought
Oekonux would be good for.

I am still in the rehabilitation center and I met quite a lot of
interesting people here, the advantage is that all these people had heart
attacks or surgeries and they now take their time and listen. So I was
fortunate to have some good talks, among them with a representative of a
foundation for global cooperation in Bulgaria. I just want to urge us to
take a quick mental note of the cooperative sector with its incredible
possibilities. We can show them new ways!

But what I want to report here is rather the one talk with the owner of a
very ordinary medical tech business with 20 employees or so, selling stuff
to doctors and hospitals. I told him about models for open source business
and he was really taken away by the idea – so I suggested him to do an
instant research on the web, especially for medicine and health care and
the way such business models could work for him.

In the course of this talk I had to come up with quick proofs and
compelling examples and facts, which was not easy at all, there was no
medical hardware stuff in sight, so I showed him the pages of twibright /
ronja that I also had demonstrated to Marcin as the first example of a
complete high tech open source hardware business cycle. The advantage is
that they put not only the design online, but really are keen to describe
the whole manufacturing process from bottom up, They provide part lists,
sources, not leaving anything out (including transparently the donors). I
showed him the new roles and opportunities, especially in distribution and
support, that he could take over in a hypothetical Open Hardware business
cycle.

Its exactly this need that I want to highlight now: how can we proove the
concept when talking to people from all walks of life that can make
business decisions? There is so much crap online like theoscarproject, and
we need to help each other recognize the quality of endavours, maybe even
provide some guidelines and keypoints that we expect from an open project
or free modes. Also we must separate the theoretical speculation from the
working examples.

One of the major points is complete documentation, and i imagine that we
introduce a rating process in the not too distant future to make it easier
for us to evangelize p2p production by living examples. Maybe this should
already be taken into consideration when we think about design issues now.
Openbusiness.cc has become a complete failure in this respect after nice
beginnings.

I think this group and especially Marcins invaluable work could be a much
better starting point to get to serious business, but that also means that
there is a lot required from us.

Maybe – if you agree in the general direction – we also should start
thinking about a proposal to business associations, the cooperative
sector, progressive governments and others to support this immense work
ahead of us. This can by no means be done one the base of hobbyism any
more, even if some Oekonux people hold this as a holy grale.

What do you think?