[Discuss] Economic value of OSH work

[Harris Kyriakou]

Hello all,

I agree that Joshua's question is very interesting and one that has been at
the back of many heads.

Shane Greenstein and Frank Nagle recently published a paper on the economic
contribution of Apache, which would probably be a good start (attached).

They also discuss about measuring attribution. If I was writing a paper on
the economic value OSH work (or just trying to calculate it), I would
probably start by building upon this model and perhaps incorporating some
of the differences that hardware may have. Emilio had some really
interesting points and the links by Matt, Andrew and Gerrit might help in
finding some common ground.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Harris




On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 1:55 PM, Gerrit Niezen <gerrit.niezen at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> This reminds me of the Fairphone project - not open source hardware - but
> very open in their costs and supply chain for building a smartphone using
> conflict-free materials. For example, here is a .pdf (
> http://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Fairphone_Cost_Breakdown_and_Key_Sept2013.pdf)
> detailing the complete cost breakdown of the first Fairphone.
>
> Kind regards,
> Gerrit Niezen
>
> On 3 Sep 2014, at 18:26, Cameron Adamez <cameron at suspectdevices.com>
> wrote:
>
> I feel this is treading at the debate FLOSS types had years back, which is
> free of cost versus freely available (free or libre).
>
> There are other costs that aren't included but should be if we want to
> look at this holistically: shipping costs, costs to assembly workers, costs
> to mine and reclaim materials, costs to ecosystems from those materials,
> costs to those who are using the finished product (or being used by the
> finish product). These have real monitary impact in local economies.
>
> If we're talking about design only, for the purpose of funding designers,
> I would get data on market rates, as long as it's at or above the living
> wage in your area.
>
> Cameron Adamez
>
> On September 2, 2014 6:13:53 AM PDT, Joshua Pearce <
> professor.pearce at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I know that many of you has been thinking about how to determine the
>> value of OSH work. Are you aware of any methods to calculate absolute value
>> in real economic terms?
>>
>> For example if you spend an hour of your time making an OpenSCAD file for
>> a parametric test tube rack and put it in the public domain - and then for
>> the rest of time anyone can download the file, customize the rack for their
>> needs and print it for the cost of materials and a tiny amount of
>> electricity. How much is that gift worth?
>>
>> Clearly it is more than your opportunity cost or wage for one hour...but
>> how much more is the value to humanity?
>>
>> Is it:
>> (cost to purchase - cost to print) x (number of people downloading it)?
>>
>> or
>>
>> (hourly wage of person needing a test tube rack) x (number of people
>> using it)?
>>
>> or
>>
>> total value of the test tube market - (cost to print)x (number of racks
>> in the market) ....summed for N years?
>>
>> or
>>
>> As the cost of test tube racks has now decreased it is the total value of
>> the current market + a bonus for expanding future use because of lower
>> costs + some kind of educational bonus because more schools can afford them
>> + some fraction of future discoveries made possible because now part of the
>> expense of doing science was decreased.....
>>
>> or
>>
>> Is there a better way to do this - and get to quantification?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Joshua
>> Joshua M. Pearce, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor
>> The Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology Lab
>> <http://www.appropedia.org/Category:MOST>
>> Department of Materials Science & Engineering
>> Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
>> Michigan Technological University
>> 601 M&M Building
>> 1400 Townsend Drive
>> Houghton, MI 49931-1295
>> 906-487-1466
>>
>> Open Source Lab <http://store.elsevier.com/coArticle.jsp?pageid=18200010>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> discuss mailing list
>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
>> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>
> discuss mailing list
> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> discuss mailing list
> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20140903/5dd761cb/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ddm.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 512383 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20140903/5dd761cb/attachment-0001.pdf>