[p2p-research] decentralizing open source bike production?

[Samuel Rose]

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Michel Bauwens<michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Very interesting question posed here, but is is 'absolutely' true that scane
> trumps decentralized production?
>
> see: http://worldbike.org/what-open-source-bicycle-design
>
> "
>
> What’s hard is open-sourcing the production process. Bicycles that sell in
> big box stores for $79 are made by the millions in huge factories in Asia.
> The massive economies of scale allow these producers to build and train
> robots to cut and miter the metal tubing and weld the frames together. To
> get the Worldbike concept to that level of production will require a
> significant leap from where we are now. And yet, without doing so, our
> customers will be forced to pay higher prices.
>
>


My suggestion: don't even try to compete in this space, or even
compare these prices to what you are doing. An open source bike
project could instead compete in the long tail by making a series of
many easily modifiable bicycle design cores (plus a standard way to
contribute more cores) that people can download and fabricate, and
modify/adapt.



>
> How will we secure the participation of factories who are motivated by
> profit?


You won't initially. So instead look at the growing networks of
flexible fabrication efforts, home builders, etc. Invest in those
networks and forget about the existing mass production system. it's
not worth your time.


> Will these factories set a lower minimum order and underwrite some
> of the fixed costs for a bicycle that helps people earn a living? Will the
> charitable nature of our work resonate with factory owners? Or will
> Worldbike.org and other NGO’s have to use donor funds to subsidize the new
> bicycles until volumes rise into the millions?

I guess I just don't understand the nature of these questions. are
they really asking "who will fund our open source development?"
because that seems like what they are asking to me.

>Here is where the open-source
> analogy breaks down a little bit. But perhaps we can use the spirit of the
> open-source movement to freely exchange information about purchasing,
> shipping, and selling utility bicycles in developing countries."



Now you are talking. Look for millions of existing niches and work
towards filling them. This in turn will *create* new niches, that mass
producers with proprietary designs will likely not be able to fill.

>
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