[Discuss] discuss Digest, Vol 10, Issue 81

[Franz Nahrada]

Matt Maier <blueback09 at gmail.com>  <discuss at lists.oshwa.org> schreibt:

>Yeah, I don't see how strongly capitalized
>enterprises out-competing civic organizations (IE: weakly capitalized
>enterprises) is suddenly a new thing just because the word "open" is now
>popular.  

maybe things are a bit different if we start understanding the term
"out-cooperating" (coined by Stefan Meretz from Berlin)
>
In fact the small size of O(S)H businesses could be a competitive
advantage, lots of dead burden avoided.
This will come through by network effects. Then the cooperative division
of labor (of course maily on partipative resources) might be a leverage.
Would be interesting to calculate these effects.
>
>
>It seems to me the whole point of open source is that everyone gets to do
>whatever they want with things, provided they don't limit anyone else's
>ability to do whatever they want. By definition some people using the
>same thing will be using it for contradictory purposes. That's not a
>problem with openness that's just business as usual.

Right, but one thing they can be used for is increase autonomy and create
decentralized capacities.
I for myself am working on a similar field as OSE (Open Source Ecology),
we are discussing how to bring rural communities to bloom, something that
das been in constant decay for more than decades.
I feel O(S)HW is really good for villages and decentralisation.
>
>
>The benefit that openness brings is that it lowers the barriers to
>participation, which increases diversity. That means everybody gets more
>of what they want. But, that means while you are getting yours, well,
>your perceived enemies are also getting theirs. At least, from a
>technology perspective. The socio-political issues are more zero-sum.

Well, if we are going to build exactly the same technology, why do it
after all?
I think that each piece of proprietary hardware is a poison - loaded trap
nowadays, constructed for creating dependent costomers. (Industry used to
be progressive, but today most technical features are like selling
prosthesis to the amputated. Consider non-modularity, building for
obsolescence etc.
So even from that point there is a difference.
And if you put into perspective the possibilities to decentralize, the
socio-political issues might be staggering....

just a remark.

Franz

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