Open Source Business

Background references

• Open source cola
• Farmers using Twitter

• Kelty2008 - Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software

Bugzilla

One of the needs I perceive is a communication line extending along the production chain, from producers to consumers. This would work if consumers actually buy products that maintain production codes of some kind. Part of the problem, however, is that the supply chain involves several "secret" (i.e., deliberately invisible) elements. We don't know what kinds of meat go into the sausage we buy, and it is also apparent that, in Mongolia at least, the labels don't always match the content.

To deal with this issue, I envisage several potential strategies:

1. Licensing. A type of labelling scheme in which the entire production process is "open", in the sense that large amounts of data are collected and maintained by each actor at each stage. This means that the sausage factory can only buy meat from partners who also supply data about their livestock, for instance. The problem with this scheme is that, in the short term, it limits adaptability. But this can be something like the LGPL, which allows users potentially to create "closed" products downstream, so long as the original license is preserved.

2. A shortening of production chains. Either vertically intergrated production (which can mean either Big Business or producer cooperatives), or else consumer cooperatives.

3. A Bugzilla-type reporting mechanism that allows information to flow upstream and downstream along the commodity chain. In the case of open source software, as an end user I am able to report problems (which may or may not be software bugs) by logging into a bug-reporting system. Software developers and other end users are able to contribute information to my bug report, such as whether the problem can be duplicated and, if so, under what conditions, and whether it can and should be fixed. But I am also able to post questions about the product, request new features, and look for suggestions from other end users. This type of communication begins to resemble the Twitter-style communication between farmers and consumers described in the CBC News article referenced above.

In any case, we are looking at (1) increased documentation, and (2) a transmission of documentation along the supply chain.

The "open source" model would be interesting to adopt in this regard. We could try to come up with a license through collaborative authoring, based on input from the forum. Issues to consider include the types of data that would be desirable to collect (e.g., pasture type, location, animal weight, etc.?), how to document, and so on. We could start out with a brief introduction to the Open Source movement in computing, the GPL, Creative Commons, eco-labelling, organic production, standards, Wikipedia, and the cooperative movement (including Rochedale Principles), and take things from there.

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