Open Source Project

OSE defines an open source project in a particular way.

What is an Open Source Project? Here we share a few words on this distinction.

First, industry standards for the open source paradigm involve ability to examine, use, modify, and copy the source information. An open source process strives to be transparent, open to examination itself, open to input, and open to absorbing new participants.

OSE emphasizes that in order to meet the replicability and transformative goals embodied in OSE Specifications - we must create an organizational infrastructure capable of generating open collaboration and absorption of new participants into the project as part of our open source model. This is consistent with our goal of creating a world-class development center for open economic development - as a viable route to product development beyond the mediocrity-enforcement inherent in the competitive corporate production model - as a disruptive force towards transforming the economic system to its next level of possibility.

You may ask, why do we say that business-as-usual corporate practice enforces mediocrity? This is a huge point, and it revolves around the fact that the goal of open source economic develpment is to avail best practices to every economic player. This way, everybody has a chance to start with the best designs, and improve from there. This has the potential to liberate effort to making improvements, as opposed to 'reinventing the wheel.'

Why does existing business systematically enforce mediocrity? In the business world, there is a bell curve of performance. There is typically a leader in the field with the best products, and the others are so-and-so. THis means that while one or a few companies have the best products, most production by other companies is inferior or not best practice. All in all, there is a huge amount of waste associated with inferior products. It is true that inferior products may also be cheaper, so it can be said that the inferior products serve a need.

What would happen, however, if not only everybody had access to produce best-practice products, but also, if they could do it at lower cost? That is exactly the aim of open source economic development - to bring everybody up. This is the motivation for developing a disruptive mechanism of best-practice production - via open source economic development - as opposed the ongoing enforcement of mediocrity which most people take for granted.