Zach Smith

Thingiverse.com was started on a lazy Saturday afternoon in late October 2008. I was at the local hackerspace, NYC Resistor, with my friend Bre Pettis. As usual, we were tinkering with our RepRap machine and dreaming of the day when 3D printing would be ubiquitous. As we worked, we chatted about what it would be like if you had a 3D printer that could make you anything you wanted. We decided that one of the coolest things would be the ability to download designs from the internet that your 3D printer would then turn into real things.

We then asked ourselves what that would look like. HELLO WORLD We did some quick Googling and found that almost all the 3D model repositories on the internet were behind paywalls. We were shocked and appalled; the future of digital fabrication was supposed to free us from the tyranny of distribution costs as we applied the techniques of free software to hardware. Being people who prefer action to words, we set out to build a site that reflected what we wanted the future to be.

Thingiverse  COMMUNITY was built from the ground up as a place for people to freely share their digital designs for physical objects. We built it to be as inclusive as possible. It will accept almost any digital file, so long as it a design for a real, physical object. In fact, most of the early designs on the site are vector drawings for laser cutters. Later, we branched out with support for 3D models, electronics, and designs intended for CNC machines.

Once the rough framework was in place, we started adding features to encourage open design and collaboration. The first step was a licensing system that allowed users to very explicitly state the licence which the listed files were available under. Designers can choose from a number of licences, including Creative Commons,  CREATIVE COMMONS GPL, LGPL, BSD, and Public Domain. The licensing is even available in a machine-readable format on the page itself. We also wanted to encourage collaboration  CO-CREATION by including a derivatives system that allowed people to upload modifications to a design. This feature was a hit because it allowed modified designs to easily give attribution, as well as creating a nice tree structure of all the derivative works available. This was a victory for both the designers and people who wanted to improve on designs that were already available. The designers got credit for the initial work, and the users were easily able to find the latest designs.

The result of this is that Thingiverse is now home to nearly 4,000 open source   OPEN EVERYTHING objects. It has over 5,000 active users and nearly 1 million downloads across all of the design files. It is home to a huge variety of open source hardware projects. On Thingiverse, you can download open source bottle openers, statues, robots, toys, tools, and even 3D printers.  REPRODUCTION It is the largest repository of open source hardware on the Internet and a wonderful place to share your things with the world.

→ www.thingiverse.com

Enlai Hooi

It is still somehow an unusual thought that open design might be considered a viable, possibly even beneficial, strategy for business. The product design industry has been slow to move on the issue of open intellectual property, despite the fact that intellectual property is one of the safest fields for an open structure. While many people have the facility to copy software and download music, it is somewhat less common for people to have access to rapid manufacturing services, workshops, specific components and materials.

In truth, there should be no reason for preventing people with the resources to produce such objects from doing so. They tend to be the people most invested in how the processes of production relate to the quality of the object. They offer excellent and necessary critical feedback. DesignSmash is a company that produces and sells products based on Creative Commons  CREATIVE COMMONS licences that allow the legal reproduction of designs. The feedback and design changes offered by the community of people invested in our open design project are an essential part of our business plan. Regular events  EVENTS take place where designers come together in a collaborative design session, a charette, and ‘smash out’ products in the middle of a party. The products are laser-cut on the spot and presented to the audience at the end of the night.

While the design objects are not always fully refined after the four-hour design charette, the value of the object becomes clear. Importantly, the release of the design file over the internet allows other designers to comment on and modify the work of the original designer. The development process is user-driven. The potential revenue lost by DIY  DIY is negligible compared to the benefits of the feedback and promotion received from allowing others to get involved in the design work. For a start-up company with limited resources, this interaction is essential.

The events offer the designer exposure and the chance to learn, produce, collaborate and dance within the space of an evening. Some of these designs are picked up as products. If they are produced by DesignSmash, 12.5% of the product’s profits go to the designer. This is significantly more than the industry standard; clearly, the designer will benefit from this arrangement. A further 12.5% of profits are reserved for future open design initiatives and open design education.

Customers decide whether or not to purchase a product based on an assessment of its value. When the cost of a product is below a certain threshold, i.e. low enough to be purchased without interfering with the buyer’s lifestyle, the values of the brand have significantly more influence on whether or not the customer buys the product. Open design, local manufacture, the designer’s story: all these aspects accumulate as mutually beneficial factors in the value equation that accompanies the product. DesignSmash has a clear position on this matter: why not? Why not give the designer a greater portion of the profits? Why not allow people to learn from the objects being produced? Why not re-invest in the design community? Why not? It will certainly be good for business.

→ design-smash.com

Gabrielle Kennedy

There’s always something special about the top crop of Dutch design graduates, but every once in a while one comes along that makes everyone sit up and take notice. In 2003, that was Joris Laarman. His Reinventing Functionality project at the Design Academy of Eindhoven fused function with ornament and was snatched up by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Design must accept some of the responsibility for creating many of the world’s current problems.

Since then, he has earned a reputation for himself as a designer with visionary ideas and a concern for societal issues. His first project out of school, the Bone Furniture range, was exhibited in the Friedman Benda gallery in New York, a limited edition series made from marble, porcelain and resin. While he calls it an “annoying coincidence” that much of his work has spawned major contemporary trends, it also testifies to its relevance to the issues that matter.

Furniture That Can Be Grown

Both those early projects clearly expressed Laarman’s highly specific views on modernism. The Bone range DESIGNERS resulted from a cooperative partnership with car manufacturer Opel, using software to design a series of artworks based on the organic way that bones form. Car parts are designed with the help of topology optimization software to increase strength and maximize the efficient use of materials. Furniture, as it turns out, can also be ‘grown’ by adding and removing material to maximize its strength and functionality.

Laarman’s stance is that functionality and extravagance are not mutually exclusive. Where modernism went wrong, and how its core advantages need to be readdressed, are what drive his research. What he is looking for are design solutions that possess a revolutionary quality. Much of his current research repudiates how things are currently done and patiently pursues a better way not just to manufacture, but also to distribute design.

Seen in this light, design must accept some of the responsibility for creating many of the world’s current problems. More importantly, it can play a key role in fixing them. In 2009, Laarman opened his Amsterdam studio to the public for the first time. His purpose was to share his thinking and his process. He wanted to reveal how design experimentation and research can create answers, not just pretty objects.

“In galleries and in Milan, people only ever see perfect pieces,” he says. “In this exhibition, I wanted people to see the research part of design, what is behind all the pretty shapes, and how they could eventually be of use in the world. I wanted people to understand what the future of design could look like using technological progress.”

Laarman hit a wall when he was researching open source design and digital fabrication. He realized that design had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and was now failing society. “I am not necessarily against how design is now,” he says, “but I do think the internet can provide a more honest way to design, make, distribute and sell things.” Not modernism, then; what’s needed is a new -ism. It takes some audacity for such a young designer to criticize the industry. Laarman has gone beyond theoretical criticism, underlining his opinion with some tangible ideas that he wants to try out – hopefully with the support of his contemporaries.

I do think the internet can provide a more honest way to design, make, distribute and sell things.

“I started to think of my work and of design in general as a sort of laboratory,” Laarman says. He explains it as a place where solutions might be found to the predicament created by over-production in the post-industrial age. “I’m not condemning the whole design industry,” he says, “or even questioning it. There is a lot of very good industrial production, and that will never go away, but I think it will soon be joined by another revolution made possible by the internet.” REVOLUTION

Despite its failures and the role it played in creating over-production, Laarman’s research kept bringing him back to modernism – not as an aesthetic per se, but as a philosophy. In 2010 Laarman was selected by Ingeborg de Roode, curator of industrial design at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, to participate in the Modernism Today series. “I guess she sees me as a sort of contemporary version of Rietveld,”  DESIGNERS says Laarman. “That is an interesting comparison, and I see some connection.” 100 years ago, Gerrit Rietveld experimented with technology and materials; Laarman does the same today. His aesthetic is not in the tradition of De Stijl, but his values most certainly are.

The Modernist Roots (of Open Design)

In line with those values, it made good sense to fuse Rietveld’s world of ideas and experiments with open source design and digital fabrication; both could be argued to have modernist roots. Open source has been revolutionizing the cultural content universes of music and software for almost a decade, so why shouldn’t it also be able to change the way design is both made and distributed?

“I think true modernists wanted open source design one hundred years ago,” says Laarman, “but back then it wasn’t possible. Rietveld published manuals about how to make his chairs, but nobody could really use that information, because there were no networks of skilled artisans. His designs look simple, but are difficult to construct. These days, we can distribute knowledge in a way that can potentially bring craftspeople back to the centre stage of design – not in an idealistic, naïvely romantic way, but in an economically sound way. All we need are the networks, and cheaper and more accessible digital manufacturing technology.” One of modernism’s core flaws was the huge amount of power that ended up in the hands of a few big factories and design firms. The movement was supposed to be about the democratization of design – that was their big idea – but somewhere along the line it became nothing more than an aesthetic. Of course there are some obvious differences between modernism and open source design. Modernism produced an international and generic style. Industrialization led to mass production, which meant production had to be centralized and its products transported across the globe from countries with the lowest wages at great environmental and economic expense. Information and knowledge were kept closed and protected by copyrights; even if they had been accessible, it would have been impossible for an individual to use the design data without access to exorbitantly expensive production tools. The quality of design produced was and continues to be guaranteed by the producer; in turn, the producer and the retailer divide the majority of sales revenues.

I think true modernists wanted open source design one hundred years ago.

Open source design, on the other hand, has the capacity to conserve culture and decoration as well as traditional skills by utilizing new technology.
Digital production makes mass customization possible. Open source makes information and knowledge public; in addition, it has low entry costs, quality control takes place in the form of peer review by the public, and revenues are divided between craft and creativity. Also, because the products of open source design can be produced locally, transportation costs are drastically reduced.

What open source design does is redistribute knowledge  KNOWLEDGE and the means of production. It has the potential to change everything that we know about design, from manufacturing to education. Open source design is anti-elitist insofar as it can create fairer and more honest prices. It is democratic and helps to create self-determination in an individual’s immediate environment. Ultimately, it takes power away from the huge multinationals and from production hubs like China and India and hands it back to craftspeople – those individuals rendered irrelevant by industrialization. In short, open source design could feasibly become this century’s new -ism.

Ultimately, it takes power away from the multinationals and production hubs like China and hands it back to craftspeople – those individuals rendered irrelevant by industrialization.

“This does not mean that anyone can make good design or that more rubbish can be produced,” Laarman says. “Just because everyone has a digital camera doesn’t mean that everyone is a photographer. I am not in favour of amateurism, but the way I envision the system working, the good will eventually be filtered from the bad.”  AMATEURISSIMO

Less Production Is Needed, Not More.

Statistics show that up until the Industrial Revolution, a similar amount of products were being produced every year. With industrialization came increased wealth and prosperity, which lead to massive increases in production. The result was more waste, more environmental damage  TREND: SCARCITY OF RESOURCES and a surge in unemployed artisans. The average Western person today has access to more things than Queen Victoria owned during her reign. “The tragedy is that the vast majority of what is being today made lacks creativity and quality and isn’t really needed,” Laarman says. “The over-production of mediocrity for the middle classes has created a difficult economic situation, and there is nothing that can be done about it within the current system.”

If digital design went local, imagine what this would mean for small producers. “Right now, most people are just talking about digital fabrication,” says Laarman, “but it is happening, and I think can eventually take over. I am not going to say it will change the world, but it will change the way things are made. 3D printing is still very limited,  AESTHETICS: 3D
especially in terms of materials, but as digital manufacturing technology evolves, anything is possible.”

One possible scenario would be for local communities to invest in technology. “There are already all kinds of initiatives popping up that give individuals the opportunity to start their own small production facilities,” Laarman says. “We are looking into setting up a sort of professional Fab Lab, for instance, where any design based on a digital blueprint could be mass-customized and made.”

It could work. The RepRap machine, for example, is an open-branded DIY 3D printing machine.  HELLO WORLD The RepRap is a machine that you can make yourself (and that can reproduce itself!)  REPRODUCTION that can in turn make other gadgets. “Right now, this sort of thing is the domain of geeks for geeks, but once it becomes more professional, it will be ready for more general usage,” Laarman says.

The average Western person today has access to more things than Queen Victoria owned during her reign.

Open source design and local digital fabrication could also revolutionize education, which has mostly become outdated and irrelevant. “We could tie the platform into trade schools,” Laarman says. “Education has fallen behind and kids are not being taught what is needed. Digital manufacturing should be taught in schools, especially at the vocational school level.”
These developments are slow, however, because open source design remains the great unknown, with many unanswered quandaries. The new, innovative nature of the ideas works both for and against them; instead of inspiring images of a world less controlled by branding and regulations, open source design ends up sounding chaotic, with too much choice and an over-abundance of experimentation and waste. Issues of copyright and profit-sharing scare off many, leaving a lot of the earliest experimental platforms looking unprofessional and insecure.  MANIFESTOS

But the problem for most of the current websites selling open source design is they lack professional participation. What’s needed is more of the best and most visionary design minds debating and devising ways to make it all work. “What is happening so far isn’t really making a difference, but it does show that there is huge potential,” Laarman says.

Creative Commons  CREATIVE COMMONS has made some interesting inroads. It is a new type of copyright that protects a designer (or anyone else) so that they can make licensing agreements with suitable producers or limit use of their ideas to personal use only. “It works in an idealistic sense if everybody plays nice,” says Laarman. It is still limited, though, and resembles a small-scale iTunes dominated by amateur musicians playing a limited number of instruments. What is needed next is a professional digital platform, or a network where people can meet, access and share information about how and where to have design digitally manufactured.

Digital manu­facturing should be taught in schools, especially at the vocational school level.

Make-Me .com

One exciting project already under way, albeit in its nascent stages, is Make-Me.com, a cooperative venture involving Laarman, the Waag Society, Droog Design and some early internet pioneers. For designers, it means uploading their design for general distribution. For consumers, it means being able to access and customize design. For local producers, it means using licensing agreements to make the things that people want. “It reduces our carbon footprints and allows for more customization,” says Laarman.

That is what we do. We take something from the past and shape it into something new.

Make-Me.com plans to operate like an app store. You go there to get what you want. Some of it is free and some of it is paid for; some are designed by amateurs and some by professionals. “The amateurs and the professionals have to compete against one another,” Laarman says. “You find the chair you want online via us and you go to the local Fab Lab to have it produced on the spot. The platform is linking consumers to craftspeople and digital fabrication tools.”

Make-Me.com as an open source platform is not limited to design. “It is for journalists, architects, businesspeople, scientists – even a place you could go to for a new haircut,” says Laarman. Big pharmaceutical companies, for example, don’t want to invest in research on diseases that only affect small numbers of people, because there is no money to be made. An open source platform could open up possibilities for DIY bio-labs where scientists and doctors could access research and make their own medicines. “Anyone can use Make-Me.com to distribute information in a new way.”

Designers, however, fear what all this means for them in terms of copyright. They think production companies protect their intellectual property, the quality of their designs, and guarantee them an income. What that fails to recognize is that copyright is a complicated question. Who really owns an original idea? Is anything truly and completely original? Every creative person pilfers and borrows ideas from everywhere; referencing what came before is a natural part of the creative process. “That is what we do,” says Laarman. “We take something from the past and shape it into something new.”  REMIX Via Creative Commons licensing, it might become possible to profit from someone stealing your idea.

What limits the scope of open source at this point goes beyond legal concerns. For it to work, a whole new economic model would need to be devised and accepted. Under the current system, a designer takes his or her design to a manufacturer, who makes it and then takes it to a shop that sells it. “If he is lucky, the designer gets 3% ex factory,” Laarman says. “The brand adds 300% and the shop doubles that again. It’s ridiculous how little of the cut a designer gets. If we used digital tools and changed the way stores work, the ratio would be able to favour creativity and the craftsman.”

However, test-driving a new model will require a platform like Make-Me.com. It has to be large scale, and it will need to attract big-name designers and brands so that people can see it working. It’s a tough chicken-and-egg situation: unless designers feel that their financial income and copyright dues are guaranteed, they are not going to take the risk – and without enough designers taking the risk, it will be virtually impossible to erect the solid infrastructure to ensure smooth, safe and legal operations. It will take a coordinated leap of faith from educational facilities, designers and craftspeople for anything like this to work.
None of these obstacles are insurmountable. What Laarman wants is to be a part of the experiment and to be a contributing member of that generation who will be defining the parameters and creating the way forward. It is that vision which distinguishes him from a lot of his contemporaries – he has the commitment and the patience. He knows that this is something big and wants to do whatever it takes to make it work. “Right now, I am making very expensive, limited-edition designs,” he says. “That is a good way to fund the experiments and start a business, but eventually what I’d like to be able to do is provide open source versions of my work for everyone. That is my goal.”

He knows he doesn’t have all the answers, but Laarman is working through all these problems one by one. “I don’t want to say that this idea could take over the entire production world,” he says, “but it can certainly help craftspeople to make things that are not standardized or mass produced. If a world-wide network of craftspeople grows, then this could potentially really change things.”

Closed Societies Fail

Whichever way you look at this, design cannot continue as is. Design reveals a lot about society, and closed societies fail; like organisms that shut themselves off from their environment, a society that shuns reality will eventually die. Likewise, closed design is outdated. Open source, whether it can be what designers want or even understand at this point, is one way for design to play a real role in building a new, more honest economy. A world with less mass production, less waste, less transportation and less standardized design  STANDARDS can only be interpreted as a win-win situation for all concerned.

Another decade of discussion is needed before open source design will ever be able to make a tangible difference. Interestingly, the same arguments being used against the phenomenon now are the very same arguments that were once used against the introduction of democracy. The ruling elite will always feel threatened by the idea of giving power to the people.

What I’d like to be able to do is provide open source versions of my work for everyone.

Joos Smiers

It was in 1993 that I started to realize that intellectual property rights – such as copyrights and patents – are steadily privatizing most of the public knowledge and creativity that our communities have developed and cultivated over centuries. Around the same time, I heard that farmers in India were staging massive protests. They faced the threat that seeds they had used for years to plant their crops would be slightly modified (or ‘improved’) by multinational agricultural companies like Monsanto, and that this tiny change would make those companies the owners of this ‘new’ knowledge.  KNOWLEDGE What those farmers and their grandparents, and generations before them, had developed in their communities over the course of centuries could, with a single stroke of the pen, become the sole and exclusive property of a major corporation. These are the selfsame corporations, most of which are based in Western countries, that dominate agricultural markets all over the world.

Is this what IP rights are really doing? Privatizing knowledge and creativity on a massive scale?

I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of cynicism. Is this what intellectual property rights are really doing? Privatizing knowledge and creativity on a massive and unprecedented scale? What could possibly justify such a bold move? It was a small step for me to extrapolate these principles from the seeds of Indian farmers to copyrights on works of art and design, which is another form of privatization. Certainly, it could be argued that every new contributor – every person who modifies or adapts seeds, words, music, design, or chemical processes – adds something to what has been developed by his predecessors. But is this a valid reason to hand over absolute ownership to the latest producer, keeping in mind that we will need this knowledge and creativity for further developments? Privatization in this context means that the product can no longer be used for common purposes, unless the ‘owner’ of this knowledge and creativity grants permission – and we pay the price that ‘owner’ sets for it. Never before in recorded history, in any culture, has intellectual misappropriation taken place on such a grand scale as what we have seen in the Western world over the past century, expanding exponentially since the 1990s.

It soon became clear to me — long before Napster and the increasing popularity of open source software — that we have to seriously question whether or not we really need to have intellectual property rights. My main concern, in the context of copyright for artists, entertainers and designers, was that they should have the chance to make a living. There can be no doubt that the present copyright system is extremely beneficial for a few best-selling artists, and fails almost entirely to benefit the majority of creative professionals. How can the market be improved to include a better financial situation for most of the artists and designers? Moreover, can we achieve that goal by keeping the sources of our knowledge and creativity in common hands instead of privatizing them?

During the 1990s, more people started to feel uneasy with our current copyright system, partly due to the opportunities offered by digitization. Concepts like free culture, open source and Creative Commons became fashionable.  ACTIVISM However, these concepts and the practices associated with them are less than helpful when it comes to creating a fairer market for creative professionals. With such a strong emphasis on ‘free’ access and sharing, how can this be the right answer for artists and designers seeking to earn a living from their work? In addition, these developments do nothing to reform current structures and power relations, in which a few huge enterprises dominate cultural markets. Aside from issues of democratic process, such companies artificially exclude from public view all artists who are not big stars, essentially pushing them out of the limelight. To assure a reasonable income for many artists and to stop the privatization of our common knowledge and creativity, a more fundamental answer must be found for the challenges we face.

What if We Would Abandon Copyright?

Suppose we were to leave copyright law behind us. Would it then be possible to structure a market in such a way that protection by copyright law would become unnecessary? The first question that springs to mind is what we would want to achieve in that cultural market. The answers follow from imbalances in the current structure.

→ Many more artists should be able to earn a reasonable income from their work.

→ The resources of production, distribution and promotion should have numerous owners, and access should be given more liberally.

→ An extensive database of knowledge and artistic creativity should exist in the public domain, freely available to all.

→ Audiences should not be overwhelmed by PR efforts aimed at marketing a small number of top stars. Instead, people should be freely exposed to a wide variety of cultural expressions, from which they can make their own choices.

How might all this be achieved? My starting point, which may come as a surprise, is the cultural entrepreneur. This individual could be the artist or designer himself, or someone who represents him or her, or a producer, publisher or commissioning client. The major characteristic of an entrepreneur is that he or she takes a risk in a chosen field, which in itself presents its own specific opportunities and threats. In this case, our field could be defined as ‘cultural activity’, a sweeping title which could also refer to the entertainment industry or to various forms of content production. The field in which the cultural entrepreneur operates bears some similarities to any other business; the cultural entrepreneur should think and act pro-actively. This individual should, in other words, be capable of staying one step ahead of the competition, try to stay on top of potential threats and opportunities, and be acutely aware of what is happening, both in his or her immediate surroundings and in the wider world.

However, a factor seldom mentioned in the context of entrepreneurship is the conditions that facilitate or obstruct risk-taking behaviour. How could such a market be constructed? How should the balance of power be organized, and what kind of regulations should set the limits and offer opportunities for the scope of entrepreneurship?

The Two Controlling Markets

The present cultural markets exhibit two forms of negative dominance. The first is copyright law. Copyright in its current form gives the owner control over the use of a work, with all the consequences that this entails. As an investment protection, it works well for best-sellers, pop stars and cinematic blockbusters, but at the same disrupts the diversity in cultural markets in ways that are harmful for cultural democracy. The second form of market control, monopolization, is often inadvertently overlooked in debates on this topic. Simply put, a limited number of conglomerates worldwide have a strong grip on the production, distribution, promotion and creation of films, music, books, design, visual arts, shows and musicals, as well as the conditions for how these creative expressions are received. Their influence also extends – even more than expected – into the digital domain.

These two forms of market domination go hand in hand. The exciting challenge is to find out whether eliminating both forms of market domination would create a more normal level playing field – whether it would be possible to achieve an environment in which no single party is able to control or influence the market or the market behaviour of others to any substantial degree. In this context, I feel that it is crucial for many cultural entrepreneurs – creative professionals, their representatives, agents, producers, publishers and so on – to actually be able to fully take part in the market.

What is currently keeping them from this level of participation? There is no single answer to that question. Yes, there are thousands and thousands of artists and designers producing work and therefore theoretically taking part in the market. However, they are often pushed out of public view by the omnipresence of the major cultural conglomerates. They do not have a fair chance to trade. Under these circumstances, it is made extremely difficult, to say the least, to bear the risk inherent in entrepreneurship. In essence, access to the cultural market – and therefore to audiences, clients and the opportunity to earn money – is severely limited for the vast majority of cultural entrepreneurs, but wide open for a few cultural giants, which continue to grow through mergers.

The Power of the Giants

These huge enterprises also hold the copyright to a vast number of the products that they market. As copyright holders, they have an even greater stranglehold on the market, as they are the only ones that can determine whether, how and where a vast quantity of work is used. They decide which cultural products are available in the market; they dictate which kinds of content are considered acceptable and appealing, and can determine the atmosphere in which they are enjoyed, consumed or used. Their works may not be changed or undermined, either, and alternative narratives would be banned.

The majority of cultural entrepreneurs have minimal access. Many, even the mid-level ones, enter a market – if they succeed – where a few giants determine the atmosphere and appeal of what they themselves have on offer, often having to compete against big stars and ‘famous’ designers.  DESIGNERS In this doubly dicey position, where a few major players not only dominate the market but also determine the atmosphere of the cultural playing field, it is not entirely impossible to succeed, but it is very difficult for many smaller and mid-level entrepreneurs to achieve any kind of profitable position in which they can survive.

A Proposal for a New Market

To achieve a level playing field in this cultural market, I see no other alternative than to undertake two simultaneous courses of action: first scrap copyright, and then make sure that no market domination of any kind exists with regard to production, distribution and marketing. So how does this work?

Abolishing copyright means it is no longer attractive for entrepreneurs to invest lavishly in blockbuster films, best-selling books or rising pop stars. After all, there is no longer any protection making those works exclusive. If this system were to be implemented, anyone could, in principle, change or exploit the works the next day. So why make such exorbitant investments any longer? Naturally, it is not forbidden. Anyone who wants to can go ahead, but the investment protection that copyright offered – that privileged exclusivity – is no longer available.

There should be many different players in all markets, and society should be responsible for imposing the conditions.

Does that mean, for example, that there will be no more epic films made? Who knows? Perhaps in an animated form. Is that a loss? Maybe, maybe not. It would not be the first time in history that a genre had disappeared due to changing production circumstances. Historically, as genres have vanished, others have appeared to replace them and become incredibly popular. It is not unthinkable that people will get used to the change very quickly. Moreover, there is no reason to offer investment protection to large-scale productions supported by excessive marketing that, in fact, pushes true cultural diversity to the outermost fringes of the market.

The second course of action I propose is to normalize market conditions. This may be even more drastic than abolishing copyright, a proposition which has become increasingly feasible over the past few years. As stated previously, no one party should control prices, quality, range, employment conditions, market access for other parties, or anything else, in any market. Similarly, no one party should be able to act with impunity, without regard for any other social considerations. In other words, there should be many different players in all markets, and society should be responsible for imposing the conditions under which they operate.

What applies to the economy in general surely applies even more to our human communication through artistic media. What we see, hear and read contributes extensively to the forming of our identities, in the plural. It cannot be stressed enough that there should therefore be many, many enterprises in the cultural field; instead of being pushed away from public attention by excessively strong forces, they should be able to offer their cultural wares from totally different perspective. I view that point as non-negotiable.

The Consequences

If such a dramatic restructuring took place, what would the result look like? There would no longer be any conglomerates dominating the production, distribution, promotion and creation of creative work or dictating the conditions for how artistic works were received. The scale of such enterprises would be reduced considerably, ranging somewhere between medium-sized and small. How could this landslide of change be brought about? Most countries have regulatory tools at their disposal in the form of competition or anti-trust laws, which are intended to level the playing field in every market – including the cultural market.

What should be happening is a fundamental investigation of anything that hints at an excessively dominant position in cultural markets, including design. That investigation should, perhaps, be one of the primary aspects of cultural policy. Imagine that large combinations of capital, assets, market positions, and production and distribution facilities were to be divided into many smaller pieces. After all, this is what we have been discussing for the cultural and media sectors in our societies. It may come as a surprise that this is even more necessary in the highly networked digital world, where it tends to be ‘winner-take-all’.

Suppose that the cultural market could be normalized, that a level playing field could be attained. Can the objectives I formulated earlier be achieved there? I think so. There are no longer any obstacles to many cultural entrepreneurs taking the plunge and accepting the risks. Enterprise always entails risk; it goes with the territory. There have always been some artists and entrepreneurs who have dared to brave those risks. In this new market, many of these cultural entrepreneurs can take risks with more confidence. Irrepressibly, those entrepreneurs will evolve in every corner of the cultural universe, serving audiences with a varied range of artistic creations and performances. What used to be niche markets can begin drawing larger audiences than had ever been deemed possible.

If the cultural conglomerates’ overkill marketing is no longer being dumped onto the populace en masse, then current and potential audiences are more than likely to develop interests in a wider variety of trends. Why not? Man is essentially a curious creature and has individual preferences on how he would like to be entertained or accompanied, as evidenced by the varied expressions of culture that people seek out as comfort in moments of grief. If those preferences are no longer being drowned out by a dominant few, then more room is created for far more individual choice.

Despite that individuality, man is also something of a pack animal.  TREND: GLOBALIZATION People will therefore in all probability cluster more around one particular artist than around others. That artist then becomes a ‘well-seller’. In our imagined scenario, the artist can never take that supreme step up to become a best-seller, since the market conditions that made that possible are simply no longer there. A normalized market for the public domain of artistic creativity and knowledge has turned out to be extraordinarily beneficial in our example. After all, artistic material and knowledge can no longer be privatized, and therefore remain the property of us all. There is not a single company left that can monopolize production, processing and distribution, either.
Now it gets interesting: how well does this thought experiment translate into practice? Could a real, functioning market conceivably be created under the conditions that I have formulated, in which devious thieves will be unable to seize their opportunity before taking to their heels? In other words, can numerous artists, their representatives, intermediaries, commissioning parties or producers earn a good living in that market? Are the risks of enterprise acceptable? Do they also have reason to believe that their work will be treated with the appropriate respect?

Let’s start with the question as to whether it is likely that creative work will be used by others without payment. Is there any reason to assume that another cultural entrepreneur will pop up and exploit it immediately after release? In principle, that would indeed be possible without copyright law. Nevertheless, there are several reasons why this is unlikely. First of all, there is the ‘prime mover’ effect. The original publisher or producer is the first in the market, which gives him an advantage. Naturally, with digitization, that prime mover effect can diminish to a few minutes, but that’s not an insurmountable problem in itself. Most artistic work is not famous enough for free-riders to fall on it like hawks. Moreover, an increasingly important factor is that artists and related entrepreneurs add a specific value to their work that no one else can imitate. Building up a reputation may not be half the work, but it is a significant factor. Remember, we are assuming that there are no longer any dominant parties in the market. There are no longer any big companies to think they could easily ‘steal’ a recently published and well-received work because, for example, they control the distribution and promotion channels. In this scenario, they simply no longer exist.

As a normal market emerges, many artists and designers will be earning better than ever before.

In the absence of copyright, there can now be no question of theft; still, free-rider behaviour is an undesirable occurrence. In fact, there are twenty, thirty, forty, or innumerable other companies that could come up with the same idea. With this reality in mind, it becomes less likely, even very unlikely, that another company will put the money and effort into remarketing a work that has already been released. Should one be concerned that someone other than the initiator and risk bearer merrily walks off with a work that belongs to the public domain? It won’t come to that. Investments go hopelessly up in smoke when numerous parties are willing to take a free-rider gamble. In that case, the first creator almost certainly remains the only one to continue exploiting the work; no one benefits from trying to take it over.

Let me remind you that the two courses of action I proposed earlier have to be taken simultaneously. Abolishing copyright should not be an isolated action. It has to be accompanied by the application of competition or anti-trust law and market regulation in favour of diversity of cultural ownership and content. Only then there will be a market structure that discourages free-rider behaviour.

It can happen that a specific work does really well. In that case, another entrepreneur could include it in his repertoire, make ‘legal’ copies, or promote it in his own circles. Is that a problem? Not really, since he or she will not be the only one able to do so. Moreover, if the first entrepreneur has gauged the market accurately and remains alert, then he will have a good head start on all others. The first entrepreneur can also offer the work in a less expensive version, for example, which doesn’t encourage competition. Nevertheless, successful works will certainly be exploited by others. That does not pose a serious problem, as the work has obviously already generated a lot of money for the author and the first producer or publisher. A legal copy or new presentation then only serves to enhance the author’s fame, which he or she can capitalize on  CREATIVE COMMONS in many different ways.

The Power to the Masses

I already mentioned briefly above that, if the market is structured as I propose, the phenomenon of best-sellers will be a thing of the past. That would be culturally beneficial, as real room is created in the artists tastes of people world-wide, encouraging a far greater diversity in forms of artistic expression. The economic consequence is that a tremendous amount of cultural entrepreneurs, including designers, can operate profitably in the market without being pushed out of the limelight by the big stars. At the same time, it has been established that some artists and designers often succeed in attracting more publicity than others. This will not make them best-sellers, as there are no longer any mechanisms for boosting them to worldwide fame. They become well-sellers. Besides being a nice position to be in as an artist, it would also be economically beneficial for the artists and for their producers, publishers and other intermediaries.

Another appealing effect is that the income gap between artists would take on more normal proportions. Before, the difference between rising stars and the rank and file was astronomical. In my scenario, the well-sellers may earn more than many other artists, but the differences are more socially acceptable. At the same time, another change is taking place, which is perhaps even more drastic. As a normal market emerges, many artists, designers and related intermediaries will be earning better than ever before. In the past, these people generally had a hard life, hovering around break-even point and often ending up in the red. Now, a substantially greater number will sell quite a bit better. This will allow them to scramble up above break-even point. They might not become well-sellers, but they don’t have to.

In the scenario we have explored here, a significant improvement has already been achieved, because their activities have become profitable. That is a giant step forward for the income of the artist and, at the same time, an enormous improvement for the risk-bearing entrepreneur (who may also be the artist or designer). The business is no longer in a permanent state of insecurity, barely making ends meet. Moreover, as the investment becomes more profitable, it becomes possible to build up capital to finance for further activities. It also becomes easier to take a risk on artists who deserve a chance – who should be published, who should have the opportunity to perform and so forth – but have not yet had the chance.

One surprising aspect of the economic and financial crisis that swept the world in 2008 is that, for the first time in decades, the idea of markets being organized in such a way that the structure does not solely serve the interests of shareholders and investors has entered the debate. A high price has been paid for the idea that they knew what they were doing and would automatically work to serve the common good. The neo-liberal notion that markets regulate themselves should be abandoned; it simply isn’t true. Every market, anywhere in the world, is organized in one way or another that serves certain interests more than others. Once this realization dawns, it will be a weight off our shoulders. We can then start constructively considering how we can organize markets – including cultural markets – to enable them to serve a broader spectrum of interests. There are exciting times ahead, not without their potential pitfalls, but with ample opportunity for these ideas to take hold and flourish.

Peter Troxler

In today’s society, individuals often collaborate in producing cultural content, knowledge, and other information, as well as physical goods. In some cases, these individuals share the results and products, the means, methods and experience gained from this collaboration as a resource for further development; CO-CREATION this phenomenon is referred to as commons-based peer production.

Commons-based peer production is most widely practiced in the area of software development: open source software. The most prominent examples of open source software are the Linux operating system and the Apache web server. Open source is not the exclusive domain of software, however; it has spread into other domains, from culture and education to knowledge discovery  KNOWLEDGE and sharing. Examples include the many people who use Creative Commons licences, CREATIVE COMMONS the Blender movies, VEB Film Leipzig, the countless initiatives in open education, the SETI@home project, Wikipedia, Open Street Map, or Slashdot. Commons-based peer production is generally attributed to digital revolutions: the widespread availability of new, digital information technologies. ¹

While its origins can indeed be traced back to digital development, commons-based peer production goes beyond the purely digital domain. A number of open source hardware projects currently aim to produce tangible goods through a peer-production approach, not to mention ‘fabbing’ initiatives (abbreviated from fabrication) that seek to make it possible for anyone to manufacture their own goods.

Perhaps these initiatives are emerging because many “physical activities are becoming so data-centric that the physical aspects are simply executional steps at the end of a chain of digital manipulation”, as Shirky suggests. ² Then again, perhaps the commons-based peer production model “provides opportunities for virtuous behavior” and so “is more conducive to virtuous individuals”. ³

Yochai Benkler argues that “in the networked information economy – an economy of information, knowledge, and culture that flow through society over a ubiquitous, decentralized network – productivity and growth can be sustained in a pattern that differs fundamentally from the industrial information economy of the twentieth century in two crucial characteristics. First, non-market production (…) can play a much more important role than it could in the physical economy. Second, radically decentralized production and distribution, whether market-based or not, can similarly play a much more important role”. ⁴ TREND: NETWORK SOCIETY

The business, or rather, the benefits of commons-based peer-production are not uniquely monetary. ⁵ The rewards include indirect mechanisms, such as the positive effects of learning on future earnings or enhanced reputation, which in turn can lead to future (paid) contracts for consultancy, customization, maintenance or other services. The business also includes what economists call hedonic rewards: not consumption, but the act of creation gives pleasure to the prosumers. Peer recognition is another physiological reward, involving ego gratification. This part of the business is an exchange of production for consumption that does not rely on monetary means.

Open Source Hardware

Since 2006, Philip Torrone and Limor ‘Ladyada’ Fried have been curating Make Magazine’s definitive guide to open source hardware projects MANIFESTOS that started out as a holiday season spending guide to ‘gifts that give back’. ⁶ Under the heading Million Dollar Baby – probably alluding to the underdog nature of open source hardware – they presented fifteen examples of companies at O’Reilly’s Foo Camp East in May 2010:

Adafruit Industries, makers of educational electronic kits; Arduino, the open source computing platform; Beagle Board, a manufacturer of open development boards for computers; Bug Labs, known for their modular Lego-type computer hardware; Chumby, standalone Internet content viewers; Dangerous Prototypes, Dutch hackers turned entrepreneurs who sell an open source reverse engineering tool; DIY Drones, for open source unmanned aerial vehicles (autopilot drones); Evil Mad Scientist Labs and their fun educational projects; Liquidware, who make Arduino accessories; Makerbot Industries, the company behind MakerBot 3D printers and the sharing platform Thingiverse.com; Maker Shed, the shop behind Make Magazine and Maker Fair; Parallax, education in microcontroller programming and interfacing; Seed Studios, for Chinese Arduino derivatives; Solarbotics, for solar kits, robot kits and BEAM robotics; Spark Fun Electronics, for education and prototyping electronics products.

All these companies are selling open source hardware and creating some kind of community around them. Together, they generate a turnover of about US$ 50m, or so Torrone and Limor estimate. They reckon that there are currently about 200 open source hardware projects of a similar kind. The open source hardware community will reach a turnover of US$ 1b by 2015, according to the forecasts made by Torrone and Limor. Some of these communities have seen exponential growth recently, such as the RepRap community. ⁷

Kerstin Balka, Christina Raasch and Cornelius Herstatt went to great lengths to collect examples of open source hardware projects through Open-Innovation-Projects.org. In 2009, their database consisted of 106 entries, 76 of which were truly open development of physical products, or open design. Open design as defined on that site is characterized by revealing information on a new design free of charge, with the intention of collaborative development of a single design or a limited number of related designs for market exploitation. Among others, their database includes community projects such as Openmoko, Fab@home, OpenEEG, One Laptop Per Child, SOCIAL DESIGN Mikrokopter, or RepRap.

it is naïve to believe that open source software practices could be copied to and applied in the open design realm without any alteration, ignoring the constraints and opportunities of materiality.

Balka, Raasch and Herstatt used this database of open design projects for statistical studies to identify similarities and differences in open source software projects. ⁸ They found that, “in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source”. ⁹ However, they also find that “open parts strategies in open design are crafted at the component level, rather than the level of the entire design” ¹⁰ and that “the degree of openness differs significantly between software and hardware components, in the sense that software is more transparent, accessible, and replicable than hardware”. ¹¹ WYS ≠ WYG Indeed, despite the many academic discussions that support such a view, it is naïve to believe that open source software practices could be copied to and applied in the open design realm without any alteration, ignoring the constraints and opportunities that the materiality of design entails.

Fabbing

Besides these single-aim or single-product projects, there are other initiatives promoting commons-based peer production primarily by sharing designs and encouraging people to ‘make things’. Some are about making things for the fun of it;  GRASSROOTS INVENTION the Maker Faire in the USA, Make Magazine and Craft Magazine are all good examples. Some initiatives are about easy sharing, distribution and promotion, such as Ponoko, Shapeways and Thingiverse. Others involve more serious or more ambitious social experiments, such as the Open Source Ecology with their experimental facility, Factor E Farm. ¹²

And there are initiatives of commons-based peer production that could be summarized under the heading of ‘shared machine shops’. ¹³  These initiatives are typically centred around workshops equipped with hand tools and relatively inexpensive fabrication machines (e.g. laser cutters, routers, 3D mills). Users produce two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects that once could have only been made using equipment costing hundreds of thousands of euros. They use digital drawings and open source software to control the machines, and they build electronic circuits and gadgets.

100k-Garages is “a community of workshops with digital fabrication tools for precisely cutting, machining, drilling, or sculpting the parts for your project or product, in all kinds of materials, in a shop or garage near you”. ¹⁴ Most of these workshops are located in the USA and Canada (about 180), with five shops in Europe and two in Australia. 100k-Garages are essentially establishing a network of distributed manufacturing shops that produce their users’ designs for a fee. They are providing a professional manufacturing service, rather than offering shop access for makers to make their own things themselves. Through quality of workmanship and standardization of equipment – the network is sponsored by ShopBot Industries, a maker of CNC routers – they are establishing a platform which guarantees the making end of it and frees users to focus on design. Ponoko, one of the preferred sharing platforms, enables further exchange.

TechShop is a group of workshops that are equipped with typical machine shop tools (welding stations, laser cutters, milling machines) and corresponding design software. TechShops are mainly based on the ‘gym model’: a monthly subscription buys users access to tools, machines, design software, and other professional equipment. Courses on how to use the tools are offered, too, for a fee. Located in Menlo Park, San Francisco and San Jose, CA, Raleigh, NC, Portland, OR, and Detroit, MI, they cater to a US-based clientele. ¹⁵ Chris Anderson describes them as an “incubator for the atom age”; ¹⁶ according to his account, the facilities are mainly used by entrepreneurs who come to a TechShop for prototyping and small batch production. The online member project gallery, however, shows such diverse projects as a 3D scan of an alligator skeleton, custom-made sports equipment, movie props, a laser-cut gauge for bamboo needles, a laser-etched laptop and an infrared heater for an arthritic dog.

Hackerspaces are another venue where peer production takes place, self-defined “as community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects”. ¹⁷ Emerging from the counterculture movement, ¹⁸ they are “place[s] where people can learn about technology and science outside the confines of work or school”. ¹⁹ Equipment and funding are collective endeavours.

A hackerspace might use a combination of membership contributions, course fees, donations and subsidies to sustain itself. Activities in hackerspaces evolve around computers and technology, and digital or electronic art. Hackerspaces are founded as local initiatives following a common pattern. The Hackerspaces ecosystem comprises several hundred member locations world-wide, of which roughly half are either dormant or under construction. ²⁰ Becoming a hackerspace is essentially a matter of self-declaration – an entry on the hackerspaces.org wiki is sufficient – which lowers the barrier to entry enormously, at least for advanced computer users. However, this low barrier to entry is probably also the reason for the relatively large number of ‘registered’ but dormant hackerspaces. Collaboration  CO-CREATION between Hackerspaces has recently begun in the form of ‘hackathons’; these marathon sessions currently do not seem to extend beyond displaying the activities happening at the spaces taking part. ²¹

the open source label confers a certain coolness in some circles of a gadget-crazy world.

Fab Lab, short for fabrication laboratory, is another global initiative with a growing number of locations around the world. Fab Labs have a more conceptual foundation, as they emerged from an MIT course entitled ‘How To Make (almost) Anything’. ²² While there is no formal procedure on how to become a Fab Lab, the process is monitored by MIT, and MIT maintains a list of all Fab Labs worldwide. At the moment of writing, the Fab Lab community COMMUNITY comprises about sixty labs, with another fifty to open in the not-too-distant future. There are a few collaborative projects within the community, and a number of initiatives to exchange designs and experience between the labs. Similar to the hackathons, but occurring more regularly and systematically, all the labs around the world can get in contact with each other through a common video conferencing system hosted at the MIT which is used for ad-hoc meetings, scheduled conferences and the delivery of the Fab Academy training programme.

Academic publications note a number of examples of Fab Lab projects. Mikhak and colleagues report on projects in India, at Vigyan Ashram Fab Lab just outside the village of Pabal in Maharashtra, and at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology in San Jose, Costa Rica. The projects in India are about developing controller boards to facilitate more accurate timing of the diesel engines they use to generate electrical power, and developing devices to monitor milk quality not at the collection centres and the processing plants, but at the producer level. The Costa Rican projects revolve around wireless diagnostic modules for agricultural, educational and medical applications, for example monitoring a certain skin condition in a rural village. ²³ SOCIAL DESIGN

In FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop, Neil Gershenfeld lists examples of what students at MIT made in his course on ‘How to Make (almost) Anything’. The list includes a bag that collects and replays screams, a computer interface for parrots that can be controlled by a bird using its beak, a personalized bike frame, a cow-powered generator, an alarm clock that needs to be wrestled with to turn it off, and a defensive dress that protects its wearer’s personal space. ²⁴

Arne Gjengedal reports on the early projects at the Norwegian MIT Fab Lab at Solvik farm in Lyngen. His list includes the ‘electronic shepard’ (sic) project that used telecom equipment  RECYCLING to track sheep in the mountains, the ‘helmet wiper’ for clearing the face shield in the rain, the ‘wideband antenna’ for the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio band, the ‘Internet 0’ project for a low-bandwidth internet protocol, the ‘perfect antenna’, and the ‘local position system’ for positioning of robots in the lab. ²⁵

Diane Pfeiffer describes her own experiments and projects in the context of distributed digital design. Her experiments were Lasercut News, Digital Color Studies & Pixelated Images, Lasercut Screen, and Lasercut Bracelets (which she sold at a local shop); the projects she worked on were Distorted Chair and Asperatus Tile. ²⁶

The Business Promise

All those initiatives represent various aspects of a commons-based peer production ecosystem (non-market or radically decentralized production) or are at least contributing to the emergence of such an ecosystem.

Torrone and Fried have shown how a regular and sizeable market has grown around open source hardware. Those open source hardware businesses clearly operate under market conditions and their production is not radically decentralized. Indeed, Torrone and Fried’s agenda might even be said to ‘prove’ that open source hardware results in marketable products. Evidently, the open source label confers a certain coolness in some circles of a gadget-crazy world.  OPEN EVERYTHING

Yet many of these open source hardware components – Arduino and MakerBot being the most prominent examples – are providing open source ingredients to a peer production ecosystem at a price that outweighs the pain of sourcing all the parts, having to deal with manual assembly, or facing issues of incompatibility. As components, they can become building blocks of higher-order machines. In that sense, they function as a platform for open source development. As far as the components themselves are concerned, they are open source in the sense that their internal structure and functioning are made transparent and potentially modifiable.  BLUEPRINTS

As flat-packed, self-assembly, open source machines, they are the choice of many peer-producers and form an important basis for highly decentralized – and highly customized – production. It becomes possible to own machines at the price of building them rather than the price of buying them pre-assembled. DOWNLOADABLE DESIGN And their open source nature makes it easier to adapt them to specific requirements or even repurpose them in novel ways.

Rather than commoditizing ingredients, 100k-Garages commoditize one part of the making process: the cutting. If there is a dense enough network of such facilities in any particular region, this makes a certain practical sense in terms of efficiency and safety, given the somewhat demanding fabrication process of a ShopBot CNC router as compared to a laser cutter. However, it establishes a division of labour, and it deprives user-clients from accessing potential learning experiences and therefore potentially contributing to a more general commons. The result is that the ShopBot remains a commons apart, and somewhat closed at that.

TechShops, Hackerspaces and Fab Labs are all providing facilities and knowledge as part or rather as a basis of a commons. The environment in which TechShops operate is strictly commercial. Peer production might happen by accident, but there seem to be no incentives to support it. As an ‘incubator for the atomic age’, they remain safely in the market arena, yet they are effectively creating opportunities for decentralized prototyping and production.

In contrast, Hackerspaces live up to their name, definition and history by building on non-market, sometimes even anti-market  MANIFESTOS commons-based principles. Their core focus is doing personal and collective projects. And Hackerspaces are far from exclusive; they frequently include casual users who might spend a lot of time in hackerspaces. Nick Farr even speculates that those casual users are “perhaps making more significant contributions than regular members, but decline to officially join for many different reasons.” ²⁷

The Fab Labs’ commitment to a commons is clear from how they are structured. Fab Labs subscribe to a charter which, among other things, stipulates open access, establishes peer learning as a core feature and requires that “designs and processes developed in fab labs must remain available for individual use”. In the same clause, however, the charter also allows for intellectual property to be protected “however you choose”. Underlining this point, it explicitly continues that “commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs”, while cautioning against potential conflict with open access, and encouraging business activity to grow beyond the lab and to give back to the inventors, labs, and networks that contributed to their success. ²⁸ Fab Labs incorporate an interesting mix of characteristics that might seem contradictory at first, but might well be considered the best practical approximation of Benkler’s networked information economy.  TREND: NETWORK SOCIETY

‘Libraries’ of the Peer Production Era

The fabbing universe could be described on two dimensions, characterizing initiatives as more reproductive or more generative in their nature, and as more infrastructure-oriented or more-project oriented in their approach.

Books, Libraries, and the Choices of Self-Directed Productivity

Open source hardware – as components or production equipment – not only embodies the technical knowledge of products and production the way that traditional components and machines once did. In sharp contrast to the opaque and impenetrable black boxes of advanced 20th-century engineering,  WYS ≠ WYG they give users access to that knowledge as a result of their open source design. Akin to books, which seem meaningless to people who cannot read, but open their content to those who have achieved literacy, open source hardware reveals its technicalities to those who grasp that language.

If open source hardware can be compared to the ‘books’ of commons-based peer production, then TechShops, Hackerspaces and Fab Labs are its libraries. Traditional libraries act as common points of access to knowledge coded in books, and in fact offer locations where knowledge can be produced. Similarly, copy shops allow anybody to produce their own range of print products, from cards to books, T-shirts and mugs. Cyber-cafés also provide access to knowledge, as locations where everybody can link into a common information and communication infrastructure. Those new labs are the places that provide general access to the tools, methods and experience of peer production. Indeed, the National Fab Lab Bill presented to the US Congress in 2010 EVENT argues along these lines, aiming “to foster a new generation with scientific and engineering skills and to provide a workforce capable of producing world class individualized and traditional manufactured goods”. ²⁹

The business proposals of open source hardware and the various fabbing initiatives are not equally straightforward in every case. As discussed, commons-based peer production has found ways to generate monetary returns by selling open source products, charging memberships fees in open source communities, or providing paid education and manufacturing services. To some extent, the strong appeal of commons-based peer production can probably be attributed in part to its hedonic rewards: the pleasure of being creative, the pride of recognition by peers, the feeling of achievement and status. However, there are no clear examples of indirect mechanisms deriving tangible benefits from these hedonic rewards, such as makers getting corporate development assignments or contracts as product managers thanks to their reputation in open hardware design. If such examples exist, they are not being discussed openly. And commons-based peer production has yet to realize its potential as a platform for many more developers and producers to generate a substantial income under market or non-market conditions.

As Yochai Benkler notes, it is “important to see that these efforts mark the emergence of a new mode of production, one that was mostly unavailable to people in either the physical economy (…) or in the industrial information economy.” ³⁰ The initiatives of commons-based peer production give more people more control over their productivity in self-directed and community-oriented ways. The variety of the initiatives give people a range of fundamentally different options to choose from, and indeed requires them to make those choices instead of accepting a mode of consumption that has been predetermined by a lobby of the current “winners in the economic system of the previous century.” ³¹

Even if the emergence of open source hardware and fabbing initiatives only dates back a few decades, commons-based peer production is still in its early days. Nobody knows yet whether the one and only correct, long-lasting and sustainable approach to this new mode of production has been found yet – or even if such a uniform approach will ever emerge.
REVOLUTION It seems much more likely that the current trend will develop into a plethora of different models that embrace various aspects of commons-based peer production, with users switching between different models as appropriate. It will be interesting to see whether and how traditional businesses will be able to adapt to a new reality of real prosumer choice.

Andrew Katz

We are reaching the end of a great historical experiment. Printing (starting with Gutenberg-style presses  PRINTING and leading to huge industrial Heidelberg printing machines), radio broadcasting, 78s, vinyl, CDs, cinema, television: all these discoveries formed the technological backdrop for this experiment. All are (or were) media based on the principle of one-to-many distribution. To understand how this experiment was initiated, and how it is reaching its end, we need to understand a little of the nature of the businesses involved in these activities, and how the law enabled them to attain, and retain, that nature.  WYS ≠ WYG

As the public grew accustomed to the idea of passive consumption, creativity became increasingly marginalized.

The one-to-many broadcast distribution model distorted our perception of creativity. A key characteristic of one-to-many distribution is the role of the gatekeeper: the corporation which decides what we, the public, get to read, watch or listen to. The roles of creator and consumer are starkly defined and contrasted. As the public grew accustomed to the idea of passive consumption, creativity became increasingly marginalized, at least in those areas covered by copyright.  ACTIVISM Creativity was perceived as capable of flourishing only through the patronage of the movie studios, the record companies or the TV stations.

The industrial technology behind printing, broadcasting and vinyl duplication is expensive. Copyright law grants a monopoly which enables the distributors of media to invest in the capital infrastructure required for their packaging and distribution. These are the businesses which grew fat on the monopolies so granted, and they succeeded in convincing the public that it was the corporations’ role to provide, and the public’s role to pay and consume.

The original social approach to creativity did not become extinct as the dominant producer/consumer mode became established, even for media (like music, for example) where it applied. Andrew Douglas’s film Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus shows that a visitor to the late 20th century Appalachians of the American South may well be asked: “What instrument do you play?” If the visitor answers: “I don’t play any”, the questioner will go on to say: “Ok, so you must sing.”

Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From makes the convincing case, based on a mass of evidence, that the social mode is more effective at maximizing creativity than relying on lone inventors and creators sitting in their garrets and sheds. Lone creators make good central figures in a compelling narrative – one reason why this meme is so popular. However, examining the truth behind the narrative often reveals that any creative work has much broader parentage than the story suggests. James Boyle in The Public Domain reveals the story behind the Ray Charles song I Got a Woman, tracing it backwards to Gospel roots, and forwards to the YouTube mashup George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People, which sprang to prominence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To be sure, companies sometimes tried to foster a social model within the organization, but as Johnson points out, the benefits of social creation increase very dramatically with the size of the pool of participants, due to network effects. Until company silos are able to combine, the beneficial effects are relatively small.

Technology is Expensive

The internet has proved hugely disruptive.  TREND: NETWORK SOCIETY The sharing and social nature of Web 2.0 has enabled the rediscovery of the natural, human, social mode of creative endeavour. The social side of the internet is dominated by individuals acting in their private capacity, outside the scope of businesses. Companies were initially wary of losing control over the activities of their staff, and regarded internet social activities as time-wasting at best. In the worst-case scenario, businesses saw online social networking as a potential channel for employees to leak the company’s valuable intellectual property, and were therefore often slow to see the benefits of social interaction in terms of benefits to their creativity. As they have seen the benefits accrue to their competitors, however, compa-nies are starting to embrace a more open mode of business.

A return to the social mode is not without its setbacks. The internet radically lowered the barrier to entry for collaborative participation, and consequently increased the number of potential contacts that an entrant can make.  SHARING This immensely powerful engine of creativity comes with a brake that inhibits its full capacity: the effect of unfit-for-purpose copyright laws.

The copyright laws of the broadcast era do more to assist the incumbent gatekeepers (the film companies, music companies and so on) than to promote the social mode of  CO-CREATION collaboration. A side effect of the digital world is that almost every form of digital interaction involves copying of some sort. Whereas copyright law had nothing to say about sharing a book with a friend by lending it to her, in the digital realm, lending her a digital copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four to read on her e-book reader or computer involves a form of copying which may potentially violate copyright law.

The broadcast-model gatekeepers have used this unintended side effect of copyright law to their advantage, taking action against private individuals who had no intention of monetary gain, including mash-up artists,  REMIX home video enthusiasts and slash fiction authors. Incumbent rights holders, fearful of losing their profitable monopoly-based businesses, have sought to extend their rights ever further by lobbying governments (frequently successfully) to legislate for new and increased intellectual property rights, extending such rights far beyond their original purpose and intention. To put the issue in context, it is necessary to ask a fundamental question: what is copyright for?

Thomas Jefferson was one of the most lucid writers on the topic. He understood well the unique nature of knowledge:

“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.” ¹

A Monopoly is a Bad Thing

Jefferson did admit that creative people should be given a limited right of exclusive control over their creations. A monopoly is inherently a bad thing, a fact that was recognized in the late 18th century, as it is today. Nonetheless, a monopoly of control in the form of copyright or a patent was the most convenient way of enabling the creators to be remunerated for their work. And once the monopoly expired, the idea would be freely available to all and would become part of the common heritage of mankind, to be used without restriction by anyone. The necessary (but limited) monopoly includes ‘copyright’. The principle that the restrictions should be the minimum possible to achieve that aim should be copyright’s golden rule.That golden rule has been repeatedly ignored. The scope of protection has increased steadily over the last three hundred years, to the extent that the protection granted in Europe to the author of a novel, for example, lasts for seventy years after his or her death. Materials that are not restricted by intellectual property are considered to be ‘in the public domain’. Commentators have become increasingly strident in arguing that the public domain is a public good; it is likely that Jefferson would have agreed. In the same way that common land is an area where anyone can allow their animals to graze, the public domain has been described as a commons of knowledge, where potentially anyone can graze on the intellectual creations of others. The public domain has one crucial difference from a commons in the tangible world: a meadow open to all can easily be over-grazed and ruined, so that it becomes of use to no one (sometimes referred to as the ‘tragedy of the commons’). It is impossible to exhaust the commons of knowledge and ideas.

The Tragedy of the Commons

The modern ‘tragedy of the commons’ is that, just as the internet makes it easier to pass ideas and knowledge  KNOWLEDGE from one person to another (for “the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition”), it seems that legislation and the more extreme activities of the rights holders are making it more difficult for those ideas and knowledge to enter the commons in the first place. This is because the duration of intellectual property is constantly being extended (will the early Mickey Mouse films ever enter the public domain?), and so is its scope, as evidenced by the patenting of genes or plants. Increasingly, people are becoming aware of the value of the commons and are seeking to protect it. At the same time, we are gradually realizing that the monopoly granted by intellectual property laws is a blunt instrument, and that people are prepared to create for reasons other than the expectation of payment for the use of their creation. Copyright law does not always have to work against the commons. Free and open source software has been an undeniable success. Gartner confidently states that all businesses today use at least some free software in their systems; the Linux Foundation is predicting that free software will underpin a $50 billion economy in 2011. Following from these and other successes, the applicability of the open source model has been considered in other contexts.

The Creative Commons Licenses

One of the most prominent open source models has been the Creative Commons  CREATIVE COMMONS movement. Founded in 2001, Creative Commons has written a suite of licences which were inspired by the GNU/GPL, but which are intended for use in relation to a broad range of media, including music, literature, images and movies. The licences are drafted to be simple to understand and are modular, in that the rights owner can choose from a selection of options. The attribution option requires that anyone making use of the work makes fair attribution to the author; the share alike option is akin to the GPL, in that if a licensee takes the work and redistributes it (whether amended or not), then the redistribution needs to be on the same form of licence; the no derivatives option means that work may be passed on freely, but not modified, and the non-commercial option means that the work can only be used and distributed in a non-commercial context.

There are now millions of different works available under a Creative Commons licence: Flickr is just one content hosting site which has enabled Creative Commons licensing as a search option. There are, at the time of writing, nearly 200,000,000 Creative Commons-licensed images available for use on Flickr alone. Similar sites provide music and literary works under a Creative Commons licence. Creative Commons provide a legal infrastructure for designers and other creatives operating within the digital domain to adopt this model. They also offer an effective choice as to whether an appropriate model is GPL-style share-alike, or BSD style. Where designers’  DESIGNERS work moves into the physical world, matters become much less straightforward. The movement of hardware design into the commons has been difficult. The fundamental issues can be summarized as follows:

→ In the digital world, the creator has the choice of whether a GPL or BSD model is appropriate. This choice does not translate well to the analogue world.

→ Digital works are relatively easy to create and test.on low-cost equipment. Analogue works are more difficult to create, test and copy, which creates barrier-to-entry problems.

→ Digital goods are easy to transport; analogue goods are not. This creates a barrier to the communication necessary to get the maximum benefit out of network effects.

The barrier to entry for any participant in a digital project is remarkably low. A low-cost computer and basic internet access are all that is required to have a system capable of running the (free) GNU/Linux operating system, accessing (free) project hosting sites like sourceforge.com or koders.com. A vast range of tools required to develop software (such as GCC – the GNU Compiler Collection) are also available as free software. Copying purely digital works is trivially easy. Physical (or ‘analogue’) objects are a different matter.

Hardware development is likely to require more intensive investment in equipment (including premises in which the hardware can be placed), not just for development, but for testing. Electronic digital hardware is probably closest to software in terms of low barrier to entry: for example, the open-source Arduino microcontroller project enables an experimenter to get started with as little as $30 for a basic USB controller board (or less, if the experimenter is prepared to build the board). Arduino’s schematics, board layouts and prototyping software are all open source.  BLUEPRINTS However, Arduino-like projects represent the lowest barrier to entry in the hardware world.

Complications of Analogue

An Arduino-style project is essentially a hybrid of the analogue and the digital domains. Prototyping software makes it possible to develop Arduino-based hardware in the digital domain, where it retains all the characteristics of the digital world: ease of copying, the ability to upload prototypes to fellow contributors for commentary, assistance and the chance to show off. These are characteristics which enable network effects, and which make the open source model very powerful. It is only when the project is implemented as a physical circuit board that these characteristics are lost.

The analogue world is not always so simple. One of the most ambitious open source projects is the 40 Fires/Riversimple hydrogen car project, which has developed a small urban car (the Hyrban) powered by hydrogen, using a fuel cell/electric drivetrain. Elements of the design (such as power control software or the dashboard user interface) can be developed largely in the digital domain, but the development of motors, brakes, the body shell and so on are strictly analogue only.  WYS ≠ WYG Not only do these analogue elements present a large barrier to entry for interested tinkerers, but they also tend to restrict their ability to participate in the development community: a necessity if network effects are to work. It is, clearly, difficult to upload a car to a development site and say “can you tell me why the windscreen leaks?”

Copyright protects the expression of an idea. Retaining the same idea, but recasting the expression of it in a different form, does not infringe on the copyright.

Another significant issue is the lack of access to design software at a low cost. Software developers have access to high-quality tools like development environments and tools available for free under free software licences. There is no similar suite of CAD software, and proprietary CAD software is notoriously expensive. The barrier to entry is raised once again.

Many of these issues are surmountable, given time. Ever-improving simulation software means that more and more testing and prototyping can be undertaken in the digital domain. The introduction of 3D printers PRINTING like the RepRap means that it is becoming increasingly affordable and feasible to print physical objects, such as gears, from a variety of plastics. The lack of suitable CAD software is being addressed by a number of projects.

For designers, progress in open source tools, increased connectivity and so on makes the establishment of open source communities ever more feasible. The legal issues, however, are less straightforward.

So far, we have concentrated on copyright issues. In some ways, other forms of intellectual property pose greater challenges. Copyright protects the expression of an idea. Retaining the same idea, but recasting the expression of it in a different form, does not infringe on the copyright. The story of two people from warring tribes meeting, falling in love, and dying in tragic circumstances can be told in a myriad of different ways, each with their own independent copyright, none of which infringes on anyone else’s copyright. This has two practical consequences. The first is that if a creator creates something which he or she has not copied from something else, then the creator will not be in breach of copyright, even if their creation turns out to be very similar, or even identical, to someone else’s. The second is that if a component of something is found to be infringing on a copyright, it is possible to salvage the project by recasting the same idea in a different expression.  REMIX

Design Rights

Copyright also has the advantage of being (reasonably well) harmonized worldwide, and has also proved amenable to hacking (e.g. by Richard Stallman)  HACKING so that it can be used to guarantee openness in the code it covers. However, other forms of intellectual property protection are more problematic for designers.

This issue is linked to the distinction between the analogue and digital domains. Designs almost invariably start with some sort of drawing or description, which is protected by copyright as a literary or artistic work. Often, this material will be digital in nature. At this point, it is similar to software. Licensing options include the suite of Creative Commons licences. Once an item is created in the physical world, a different set of legal considerations applies.

The most obvious is design right. Unfortunately, design right is complex and uncoordinated. There are many different types of design rights, and they differ from country to country. In the UK, for example, there are four separate design right regimes operating simultaneously. Depending on the right in question, they cover aspects such as shape, texture, colour, materials used, contours and ornamentation. Registered designs are in many ways similar to patents; in fact, they are sometimes called petty patents or design patents. Infringement can be unintentional, and independent creation is irrelevant. Unregistered designs are more in the nature of copyrights, and are vulnerable to infringement only where copying has taken place. The very fact that registration of design rights is required in itself provides a barrier to entry for collaborative projects, whereas copyright arises automatically and without the necessity of registration. On a collaborative project, who will pay for the preparation of a design registration, and who will make the application and maintain it?

Patents

Patents provide a particular problem for both programmers and designers, as they can impinge on both the digital realm and the analogue realm. Patents are a protection on the idea itself. Regardless of how that idea is expressed, its expression would represent patent infringement. Independent invention does not excuse patent infringement. The only way to be sure that an invention does not infringe a patent is to do an exhaustive check in patent offices worldwide. Such checks are very rarely carried out, since the expense is enormous and creates a vast barrier to entry for small businesses. US law in particular applies a positive disincentive to search: if a search is undertaken, then the searcher can be deemed to have knowingly infringed a patent – even if their reasonable determination was that the patent was not infringed – and will be liable to triple damages as a consequence. Pressure groups are lobbying worldwide for a reform of the patent system and process, but at present it is clear that the system benefits incumbent large companies with an existing patent portfolio.

The upshot of the intellectual property issues is that the BSD model is the only viable option in the hardware, analogue world. In contrast, those operating wholly in the digital domain (which includes programmers, but which can also extend to digital creatives such as filmmakers, novelists or graphic designers) have the ability to choose whether they prefer the GPL model to the BSD model, for a number of reasons. In brief, the two main reasons are as follows:

Copyright, being largely universal, automatic, unregistered and long-lasting, is better suited to the development of a copyleft model than other forms of intellectual property. The difference in cost between copying and reverse engineering  WYS ≠ WYG (which is vast in digital world, but much smaller in the analogue world), makes the copyleft a less compelling problem. A more detailed discussion of these reasons is needed to clarify why they are pertinent.

The system benefits incumbent large companies with an existing patent portfolio.

If a GPL model were applied to hardware designs, in order to be effective, it would need to impinge on the ideas underlying the design (patents), or on the visual characteristics of the design (design rights). A GPL-style model based on patents would likely fail because of the cost, complexity, and time involved in applying for the patents – not to mention the necessity of keeping the invention secret prior to its publication, since part of the application process squares badly with the open source ethos. If the model were based on design rights, it would fail in relation to registered design rights, for the same reasons as for patents. If it were based on unregistered design rights, it would be unlikely to work because the scope and length of protection would be too short, and because the rights are insufficiently universal (although there is some scope for a limited GPL-style model in relation to unregistered design rights). Even if a GPL model were feasible in the world of hardware, there is an economic reason why it would be unlikely to work. The reasoning is as follows: the digital world makes things extremely easy to copy. Imagine a programmer wants to create some software based on a program with similar functionality to a word processor released under the GPL. The options are either to take the original GPL program, modify it, and release the result under the GPL; or to take the GPL program, reverse-engineer it, and rewrite a whole new program from scratch, which would be unencumbered by copyright restrictions. There is a vast difference in the amount of work involved in the two scenarios, and any programmer is likely to consider very seriously adopting the easier, cheaper and quicker option (modifying the original), where the ‘cost’ is licensing under the GPL. However, to offer a different example, even if there were a functioning mechanism for applying share-alike to a mechanical assembly, an engineer wishing to reproduce the mechanical assembly would, in effect, have to reverse-engineer it in order to set up the equipment needed to reproduce it. Copying a digital artefact is as simple as typing:

cp old.one new.one

Copying an analogue artefact is vastly more difficult. REPRODUCTION Consequently, there is little difference between slavish copying, which would invoke GPL-like restrictions, and reverse-engineering and re-manufacturing, which would not. In this case, it is much more likely that the ‘cost’ of GPL-like compliance would be greater than the benefits of having a GPL-free object. In conclusion, even if GPL-style licences were effective in the physical world, economics would tend to disfavour their use.

It can therefore be stated that designers operating in the analogue realm are likely to be restricted to an openness model more akin to BSD than to GPL. Their challenges are to make this model work, and to discourage free riders with a combination of moral pressure and a demonstration that playing by the community norms will be beneficial both to them, and to the community as a whole.

Benefiting from Connected Creativity

Designers and creators are increasingly able to benefit from the promise of the connected, social mode of creativity. The way was paved by free software pioneers, who skilfully hacked  HACKING the copyright system to generate a commons which has not only generated a huge global business, but also provided the software which runs devices from mobile phones through to the most powerful supercomputers. It provides the software which gives the developing world access to education, medical information and micro-finance loans and enables them to participate in the knowledge economy on similar terms to the developed nations.

Designers and creators are increasingly able to benefit from the promise of the connected, social mode of creativity.

The challenge for designers and creators in other fields is to adapt the model of software development to their own field of work, and to counter the extensive efforts of incumbent beneficiaries of the broadcast era to use ever more draconian legislation to prop up the outmoded business models. Ultimately, the social mode will win: it takes one of humanity’s defining characteristics, the fact that we are highly social and community-oriented, and uses it as the foundation of the entire structure. One-to-many works against this fundamental trait, but Nature will ultimately triumph.

GNU/GPL AND BSD LICENSES

In the late 1980s, computer programmer Richard Stallman realized that copyright law could be turned inside out to create a commons of computer software. The method he proposed was simple, but brilliant.

Software is protected by copyright. The software business model used in the 1980s involved granting customers permission (the licence) to use a specific piece of software. This licence was conditional on the customer not only paying the software publisher fee, but also adhering to a number of other restrictions (such as only using the software on one computer). Why not, Stallman reasoned, make it a condition of the licence that if you took his software and passed it on (which he was happy for people to do), then they had to pass it on, together with any changes they made, under the same licence? He called this sort of software ‘free software’: once a piece of software has been released under this sort of licence, it can be passed on freely to other people, with only one restriction: that if they pass it on, in turn, they must also ensure that it is passed it on in a way that guarantees and honours that freedom for other people.

In time, he reasoned, more and more software would be released under this licence, and a commons of freely available software would flourish. The most widely used version of the licence is the GNU General Public License version 2, known as the GPL. In the 19 years since it was issued, it has become the most commonly used software licence. The GPL is the licence at the core of Linux, the computer operating system which powers Google, Amazon and Facebook, and which enabled Red Hat to forecast revenue in excess of $1Bn in financial year 2010-11.

The software commons envisioned by Stallman not only exists; by any measure, it has been an overwhelming success. Its success can be measured in countless ways: the number of participants creating software for that GPL commons, the number of open source software programs in use, or the environments in which such software can be found. More than 90 of the 100 most powerful computers in the world run on GPL software, not to mention mobile phones and in-car entertainment systems; open source software is at the core of the business offerings of such large companies as IBM and Red Hat.

The Commons Analogy

The success of free software cannot be solely attributed to the GPL. The GPL extracts a price for using the commons. To risk taking the analogy too far, a landowner who has property adjoining the GPL commons and who wants to use it also has to add his own land to the commons. (Remember, this is the magical land of ideas which cannot be ruined by over-grazing.) This will have the effect of increasing the size of the commons as more and more adjoining landowners want to make use of the commons and donate their own land in the process. However, many of them may not want to join this scheme, either because they do not want to add their own land to the commons, or because they have already pledged their land to another commons.

Is it possible to generate a commons of ideas without forcing participants to pay the price of entry; without requiring that they add their own adjoining land to the commons? Is the compulsion of the GPL necessary, or is the social and community dynamic powerful enough to allow a similar commons of ideas to spring up on its own?

The software industry has given us several outstanding examples of this. Apache, the most popular web server software in the world, used by many of the world’s busiest web sites, is issued under a licence which does not ask users to pay the GPL price. Anyone can take the Apache code, and modify it and combine it with their other software, and release it without having to release any sources to anyone else. In contrast to the GPL, there is no compulsion to add your software to the Apache commons if you build on Apache software and distribute your developments, but many people choose to contribute in return even without this compulsion. FreeBSD, to take another example, is an operating system bearing some similarity to GNU/Linux which is licensed under a very liberal licence allowing its use, amendment and distribution without contributing back; nonetheless, many people choose to do so.

Free Riders

A parallel development to the GPL was the BSD licence, first used for the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). As opposed to the GPL, the BSD licence only requires the acknowledgement of the original authors, and poses no restrictions on how the source code may be used. As a result, BSD-licensed code can be used in proprietary software that only acknowledges the authors.

The GPL tackles an issue called the free rider problem. Because BSD does not compel people to contribute back to the commons, those who take advantage without contributing back are called free riders. The question is whether free riders really are a problem (as the GPL band would maintain), or whether they are (as the BSD band would maintain) at worst a cost-free irritant, and at best, a cadre of people who will eventually see the light and start to contribute, once they recognize the benefits. Supporters of both the GPL and BSD models of licensing have similar aims. In both cases, they seek to support a software commons which will enable the social mode of creativity to flourish.

While the BSD model could subsist in the absence of copyright, GPL relies (perhaps ironically) on copyright law to enforce its compulsion to share. It still remains an open question as to whether the better model is to use licensing to compel people to participate in the software commons, thus reducing the free rider problem (as with GPL), or whether voluntary engagement will result in a more active community (as with Apache). Designers working outside the digital domain will rarely have the chance to choose a GPL-style option.

RIGHTS AND LICENSING SCHEMES

The re-use of designs is governed mainly by copyright, design rights and patents. Traditional open licensing schemes have been based on copyright, as this is the main intellectual property right which impinges on software, the most fertile ground for openness.

Software licensing schemes include the GPL (which enforces copyleft) and BSD (which doesn’t). Software licences rarely work properly when applied to other works. For literary, graphic and musical works, the Creative Commons suite is more effective. They allow both copyleft (share alike) and non-copyleft options. They may work well when applied to underlying design documents, which are covered by copyright, and control the distribution of those documents, as well as the creation of physical objects from them, but (depending on the jurisdiction) their protection is unlikely to extend to copying the physical object itself. Some efforts have been made to create licences that cover hardware; the TAPR Open Hardware Licence is one example. However, these efforts have frequently been criticized for their lack of effectiveness.

www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html

CREATIVE COMMONS AND DESIGN RIGHTS

Creative Commons licensing is fundamentally based on copyright, and there is little clarity or consensus on how such licenses would operate in relation to design rights across the myriad different jurisdictions and types of rights.

Those designers operating purely in the realm of copyright will find that there is already an existing structure of support in terms of Creative Commons licences and associated communities. Where other forms of intellectual property impinge, matters are far more murky. The Creative Commons licences are arguably drafted to be sufficiently broad as to cover unregistered design in certain circumstances. However, since they were not drafted with design rights in mind, it cannot be assumed that the copying of a three-dimensional object will automatically fall within the scope of such a license.

www.creativecommons.org

STRUCTURE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

The rule of thumb for intellectual property is that all works are considered to be in the public domain, with intellectual property protection as the exception. However, this exception is highly diversified. Copyright protects the creative, original expression of an idea, whereas patents protect the idea itself and its technical specifications. Design rights cover aspects such as shape, texture, colour, materials, contours and ornamentation. Other forms of protection include trademarks, database rights and performers’ rights.

More information about Creative Commons can be found at creativecommons.org.

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: PUBLIC DOMAIN  ➝  AUTHORS AND OWNERS  / ANDREW KATZ

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: BY  ➝  THIS BOOK

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: NON-COMMERCIAL (EUROPE)  ➝  THIS BOOK

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: NON-COMMERCIAL (JAPAN)  ➝  THIS BOOK

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: NON-COMMERCIAL (USA)  ➝  THIS BOOK

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: NON-DERIVATIVE  ➝  AUTHORS AND OWNERS  / ANDREW KATZ

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: REMIX

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: SHARE ALIKE   ➝  P.4

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: SHARE

CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE: ZERO

LAWRENCE LESSIG

PHOTO: JOI ITO, JOI.ITO.COM

Marleen Stikker

In his novel The Man Without Qualities, Austrian author Robert Musil describes two ways of thinking and interacting with the world.

“If you want to pass through open doors you have to respect the fact that they have a fixed frame: this principle is simply a prerequisite of reality. But if there is a sense of reality then there must also be something that you might call a sense of possibility. Someone who possesses this sense of possibility does not say for example: here this or that has happened, or it will happen or it must happen. Rather he invents: here this could or should happen. And if anybody explains to him that it is as it is, then he thinks: well, it probably could be otherwise.”  ¹.

Possibilitarians think in new possibilities, and get all excited when things get messy and life becomes disorderly. In disruption, possibilitarians see new opportunities, even if they do not know where they might lead. They believe, with Denis Gabor, that “the future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented” ² .

Realitarians are operating within a given framework, according to the rules that are given, following to the powers there are. They accept the conditions and the institutions as given, and are fearful of disruption.

Whether a person is a possibilitarian or a realitarian has nothing to do with their creativity. People representing these frames of reference can be found in all professions: entrepreneurs, politicians, artists. In fact, art and design are not avant-garde by definition, and it would be overstating the matter to claim that innovation is an inherent quality in the arts – or science, for that matter.

It would equally be wrong to think that all realitarians are reactionary. There are many different kinds of realitarians. Some play with the given rules, finding better ways to use them, making them more efficient, increasing their moral justice and fairness. Others want to cover all eventualities, seeking to keep everything under control in neatly written scenarios that contain no surprises whatsoever.

When it comes to open design, possibilitarians are enticed and enthused by the new opportunities it could bring, even if they do not know exactly what open design will become, or where it might lead. ACTIVISM Possibilitarians see the disruption that open design brings to the design world, and respond by embracing the potential that is inherent in that disruption.

Possibilitarians engage in open design as a process, trusting their own abilities to guide that process. And as possibilitarians, they pursue strategies to be inclusive, to involve others, to build bridges between opposite positions: North-South, old-young, traditional-experimental. Possibilitarians represent a sharing SHARE culture which is at the core of open design. As such, they trust others to make their own contributions and to build upon what has been shared. Trust, responsibility and reciprocity are important ingredients in an open, sharing culture. These factors have been discussed at length in relation to software development; the debate has been revived in the context of the ongoing informatization of society. As with open data, open design will have to address these questions. And as with open data, open design will have to involve the actual end users, not organizations, panels or marketers. Design will have to identify the fundamental questions, which supersede the design assignments issued by mass-producers or governments. And design will have to develop a strategy of reciprocity, particularly when objects become ‘smart’ parts of an interconnected web of things, similar to the emergence of the internet.

OPEN DESIGN WILL HAVE TO INVOLVE THE ACTUAL END USERS, NOT ORGANIZATIONS, PANELS OR MARKETERS.

Open design will have to develop its own language for trust. What are its design principles, its ethics, the responsibilities it entails? MANIFESTOS Although a clear answer to these questions is currently lacking, this absence does not prevent possibilitarians from engaging with open design. They know that this trend is not about a dream of the world as a better place, a dream which could too easily be stigmatized as naive and utopian. Possibilitarians also know that only by taking part in the process, by participating and by giving it a direction can those answers be found.

OPEN DESIGN CAN BE VIEWED AS THE LATEST IN A LONG LINE OF SIMILAR DEVELOPMENTS, STARTING WITH THE FIRST PCS – THE ATARIS, AMIGAS, COMMODORES AND SINCLAIRS – THE ARRIVAL OF THE INTERNET, OF MOBILE COMMUNICATION.

Realitarians, in contrast, respond to open design with fear and mistrust. When a fretwork artist recently realized that a laser cutter could achieve within hours what took her four months to cut, she was extremely disappointed and angry with the machine. The positive effect that the machine could have on her work only occurred to her later. This is the Luddite revived, the fear of the machine that might threaten a person’s livelihood, that could render irrelevant an individual craftsman’s contribution to culture and society.

Realitarians fear that all the energy it costs to create something might be wasted; that the time and effort it took e.g. to write a book would be pointless, that anyone could just go and copy it. Fundamentally, they fear that someone else could commercially utilize something that they have contributed to the public domain. Even Creative Commons CREATIVE COMMONS takes on a threatening aspect in this context, creating a concern that the author will no longer be able to control fair use. Or a designer might argue that open design could result in loads of ugly products, expressing a concern that if anyone can do it, amateurs AMATEURISSIMO willpollutethebeautifulworld of design. This is the realitarian speaking.

We’ve had this discussion in other domains, in other areas: it arose in relation to hacking, and we’ve experienced it over and over in media and journalism – in the 1960s with the pirate radio stations, in the late 1990s with the advent of blogging. Now it has emerged in the domain of design.

Open design can be viewed as the latest in a long line of similar developments, starting with the first PCs – the Ataris, Amigas, Commodores and Sinclairs – the arrival of the internet, of mobile communication. TREND:NETWORK SOCIETY It is often the same people who are involved in these initiatives again and again. These are the pioneers of our time, people with that hacker- artist-activist attitude. They are not taking the world at face value, a given from outside; rather, they see the world as something you can pry open, something you can tinker with.

So they started to experiment. GRASSROOTS INVENTION The first computers gave them a feeling of autarchy. 17 Suddenly, they were able to use desktop publishing; they produced their own newspapers, they were typesetters, they took responsibility – they got organized and put their opinion out there. This was the first DIY DIY movement that was a parallel campaign. In contrast to the Parallel aktion in Musil’s novel, it happened beyond the confines of discussion circles: squatting became a parallel movement to the housing market, and they established their own, alternative media infrastructure. In all likelihood, the dynamic of the internet helped it happen. Indeed, in the Netherlands, the first opportunity to experience the internet was created by a possibilitarian movement – De Digitale Stad (the digital city) in Amsterdam. Commercial internet access became available much later.

Open design is rooted in information and communication technology, giving us all the instruments to become the one-man factory, the world player operating from a small back room. Despite this semblance of easy access, many of these resources require the user to be extremely tech-savvy. In addition, purposeful and effective utilization of these resources requires considerable social skills and expertise in social engineering. This combination of technical and social skills is extremely interesting and very rare. Tech-savvy usually carries the connotation of nerdy, socially handicapped and awkward at communication, while the socially adept are generally assumed to lack technical skills.

A similar schism is strikingly evident in education. As a media student, you might finish your degree without ever having made anything yourself, or being responsible for a product. You may have spent your time studying games made by other people, instead of learning to make good games. As a vocational student learning a trade, you might end up sitting at old machines the whole time, never getting to see a 3D printer, or only encountering these relevantly recent developments at the end of your education, or in an external module instead of in the core programme.

In fact, it may be argued that there is a fundamental dichotomy in society, an essential separation between the field of making and the field of science. There is too little science in making, and too little making in 18 science; these two fields are far too disconnected.

Examples of the opposite are emerging, and the connection between modern technology and craft traditions is sometimes aptly named hyper-craft. The implications for education are huge, and hyper-craft broadens the perspectives in education – not only for design, but for all crafts. Hyper-craft as a practice of open design is not primarily concerned with the objects that are being made. Its focus is on the process of making itself and the responsibilities that makers take – for the monsters they may be creating, for the process of creating, and for the ingredients used. PRINTING

Recently, a vocational school in the Dutch province of Brabant took the idea of the Instructables Restaurant and used it as a blueprint for a cross-over programme that combined elements of their hotel and catering education and their design education. Together, they realized an Instructables Restaurant for the CultuurNacht event – students created furniture based onblueprints BLUEPRINTS theyhaddownloadedand cooked meals prepared according to online recipes. The restaurant served 1500 people that night. The school made a smart addition to the very classical trade of cooking, adding more dimensions, more layers, and creating their first open curriculum.

The agenda of open design – increasing transparency in the production chain, talking about responsibility – is certainly a political agenda. Open design is part of today’s possibilitarian movements, such as open data provided by governments seeking greater transparency. The potentially extreme effects of open information initiatives like Wikileaks are becoming apparent in the enormous backlash affecting the people involved. This is a manifestation of the clash between two worlds: the people operating within the bounds of ‘reality’ fighting back against the challenge to their system.

WHEN ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE STARTED TO DISAPPEAR BEHIND THE PAYWALLS OF LARGE PUBLISHERS, THE OPEN ACCESS MOVEMENT CREATED NEW WAYS TO MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE AGAIN FOR EVERYBODY.

Open design may appear less extreme: designing is seen as more friendly, more creative, more playful. Much of the unfairness in the field of open design is ‘petty injustice’. These incidents include small production runs that are impossible or prohibitively expensive in a mass-production environment – or manufacturers accustomed to mass marketing who decide what will be included in their collection.

These forms of petty injustice are certainly not the only problems in open design, however; there are also profit-driven corporations limiting technical and design solutions, preventing new possibilities from being put to good use. This immediately invokes the global dimension of open design. When international trade agreements become a guise for Western corporations to privatize indigenous knowledge, activists ACTIVISM and librarians deploy open design strategies, documenting and codifying this knowledge and developing protection mechanisms such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Archive Protocols in Australia.

When sustainable solutions are locked away in patents, initiatives such as the GreenXchange started by Creative Commons and Nike facilitate easy licensing schemes. When academic knowledge started to disappear behind the paywalls of large publishers, the Open Access movement created new ways to make it accessible again for everybody.

When transnational supply chains blur the provenance of raw materials and the labour conditions of mining, harvesting and manufacturing, fair trade campaigns advocate transparency and propose alternatives, for example the Max Havelaar product range or the Fairphone project.

Disrupting these macro-political movements that privatize the commons or control access to the public domain is the major challenge for open design. An effective response to that challenge starts with understanding and reflecting on what we are doing when we make things.

Bas van Abel Lucas Evers Roel Klaassen

Open design existed before the publication of this book, of course. The term first appeared at the end of the last century with the founding of the non-profit Open Design Foundation, which attempted to describe this new phenomenon. ¹ The organization proposed necessary conditions for open design rather than attempting to comprehensively define it: open design was design whose makers allowed its free distribution and documentation and permitted modifications and derivations of it.² Around the same time, Reinoud Lamberts launched the Open Design Circuits website ³ at Delft University of Technology for the purpose of developing integrated circuits in the spirit of open source software. The fashion industry was a notable early adopter of open design. ⁴ More than a decade later, open design is actively developing and has become an influential trend in the world of design. Open Design Now looks ahead to the future of design. Using key texts, best practices and a visual index, we sketch a picture of open design based on the knowledge and experience of the present moment. In doing so, we seek to contribute to the development of design practice and at the same time draw attention to the importance of open design among a broad audience of design professionals, students, critics and enthusiasts.

USING KEY TEXTS, BEST PRACTICES AND A VISUAL INDEX, WE SKETCH A PICTURE OF OPEN DESIGN BASED ON THE KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE OF THE PRESENT MOMENT.

The three initiators of this book – Creative Commons CREATIVE COMMONS Netherlands; Premsela, Dutch Platform for Design and Fashion; and Waag Society – represent three different but complementary perspectives on design. Sharing, design and innovation came together in a natural way in the (Un)limited Design project, which we began together in 2009. The first (Un)limited DesignContest EVENTS was intended as an open design experiment. Entrants could submit product designs on the condition that they shared their digital blueprints so others could modify and improve their designs or manufacture them using Fab Labs. Creative Commons licences allowed entrants to share their designs without relinquishing copyright. The contest elicited innovative and imaginative designs ⁵ and led directly to Open Design Now.

Open

Digital technology and the internet have irrevocably changed our world. Millions of bloggers are providing serious competition for renowned media and news organizations. The entertainment industry struggles to capitalize on the vast growth of audiovisual consumption. A single individual with internet access can unbalance political relations all over the world. Writers and musicians no longer need printers, publishers, studios or record labels to take a shot at eternal fame. As equipment continues to get cleverer and cheaper, these developments are also affecting physical products and production processes. You can create a 3D design on your computer using free platforms like Thingiverse and make it freely available on a site like the Pirate Bay (or sell it on Etsy) so that it can be manufactured locally all over the world, digitally or otherwise, using a distributed manufacturing service like Shapeways.

Although technological progress is the driving force behind these new forms of design, distribution and production, we must look for and develop more satisfactory forms of intellectual property rights in the near future. The Creative Commons licences were designed to give creative people the freedom to deploy copyright in a flexible manner. They allow a creator to retain all rights while giving permission in advance for his or her work to be shared, distributed and modified – depending on the specific terms stated in the licence. While the licences can no longer be considered innovative, they are being applied in creative new ways. By putting open design on the agenda, Creative Commons Netherlands is expanding the use of open licences into the domain of product design and giving intellectual property back to its creators. After all, before an object is designed and produced, it leads a separate life as an idea, often taking on a range of forms during the process, from a sketch on a scrap of paper to the final CAD drawings used in production. Open licences can be used to protect every form in between. These licences smooth the way for creativity and innovation, but also remind us of a fundamental issue in design: that design cannot remain exclusive.

Digitization BLUEPRINTS has brought unprecedented growth to industries like industrial design, architecture, fashion and media. It has led to technological and professional changes that have also had great social significance. Open design offers unprecedented possibilities for the design of our surroundings, for design as a profession, and for designers – professionals and amateurs alike. The industrial era was mainly about designing products for the masses; in the post-industrial digital era, the masses themselves are seizing the chance to design, manufacture and distribute products.

Design

It is perhaps not surprising that the Netherlands has proven to be a fertile breeding ground for open design. In a culture characterized by a continuous battle to hold the sea at bay, the Netherlands has built up a rich history in adapting and designing the human living SOCIAL DESIGN DesignSmashes,REMIX FairPhones, environment and can be considered one of the first modern democracies. The relatively open-minded society has allowed experimental design to flourish. This small country has a proportionally high number of designers, most of whom tend not to be highly specialized or tied to an industry. Consequently, they cannot limit themselves to one area and must remain open to other disciplines, inside the field of design and beyond. It is no coincidence that Premsela, the Dutch platform for design, encourages the development of an open design culture. In the 1990s, this mentality led to what became known as conceptual design. Today, a decade later, we can see that an open design philosophy is essential to coping with a changing world. Open Design Now!

Now

Where do we go from here? Reading this book could be a good start. It has become an open project; anything else was hardly conceivable. Open Design Now is meant as a travel guide to the emerging and expanding world of international open design. Pore over it in your study, take it with you to work and discuss it with your colleagues, and allow it to inspire you. This book provides an overview of best practices in ‘creative innovation’, as Waag Society calls it. Or perhaps we should call it ‘social and participatory innovation’, since the term refers to the continuous search for meaningful applications of technology and design that will benefit the general population.

According to Paul Valéry ⁶, creativity springs less from one’s own ideas and originality than from a structure that compels new insights. CO-CREATION In his eyes, the true creative never stops searching. Creation itself is the work, the primary goal, an end in itself; in his view, your completed object is no different from anyone else’s. The same is essentially true of this book: it is not finished, nor can we claim full credit for its contents.

Textually, Open Design Now ⁷ is structured around feature articles and case studies. Visually, however, it is structured around images that show how open design has changed the way the world looks. Although many of the examples in this book are small in scale, they indicate the promise open design holds for the near future – a future of $50 prosthetic legs, Fritzing, Instructables Restaurants, COMMUNITY RepRaps and (Un)limited Design.