Open-source appropriate technology is appropriate technology developed through the principles of the open-design movement. Appropriate technology is technology designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, social, political, and economic aspects of the community it is intended for. Open design is one that is public and licensed in such a way as to allow it to be used, modified and distributed freely.
Benefits
Open source is a development method for appropriate technology that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. An example of open-source appropriate technology is Appropedia. There anyone can both learn how to make and use appropriate technology free of concerns about patents. Also, anyone can add to the collective knowledge by contributing ideas, observations, experimental data, deployment logs, etc. It has been claimed that open-source-appropriate technology has an enormous potential to drive applied sustainability. The built-in continuous peer-review can result in better quality, higher reliability, and more flexibility than conventional design/patenting of technologies. The free nature of the knowledge provides lower costs, particularly for those technologies that benefit little from scale of manufacture. Finally, OSAT enables the end to predatory intellectual property lock-in. This is particularly important for relieving suffering and saving lives in the developing world. The "open-source" model can act as a driver of sustainable development. Reasons include:
It enables localization for communities that do not have the resources to tempt commercial developers to provide local versions of their products. It thus minimizes the need to ship materials over long distances and organizes material activities accordingly;
Local manufacturing makes maintenance easier and encourages manufacturers to design products to last as long as possible;
It can be free as in "gratis" as well as free as in "libre", an important consideration for developing communities. following the lateral scaling concepts of Jeremy Rifkin. It thus optimizes the sharing of knowledge and design as there are no patent costs to pay for.
Ethical considerations
For solutions, many researchers, companies, and academics do work on products meant to assist sustainable development. Vinay Gupta has suggested that those developers agree to three principles:
I will not permit any human being to be deprived of life-giving technology by the profit motive.
Any works that I patent I will make available to others who are engaged in humanitarian activity for free, except where this would breach other contractual responsibilities.
I will not use patent law to slow the pace of innovation or service delivery to the needy under any circumstances.
The ethics of information sharing in this context has been explored in depth.
Support in the literature
It has been investigated how open sharing of designs, specifications, and technical information can enhance effectiveness, widespread use, and innovation of appropriate technology.
OSAT has been proposed as a new model of enabling innovation for sustainable development.
OSAT has been claimed to assist in development of medical technology particularly for the developing world.
It has been claimed that the sharing of design processes, appropriate tools, and technical information enables more effective and rapid development of appropriate technologies for both industrialized and non-industrialized regions. In addition, it is claimed that this sharing will require the appropriate-technology community to adopt open standards/licenses, document knowledge, and build on previous work.
At the university level, the use of open-source-appropriate technology classroom projects has been shown to be successful in forging the connection between physics and social benefit: This approach has the potential to use students' access to resources and testing equipment in furthering the development of appropriate technology. Similarly OSAT has been used for improving service learning. MIT studied the usefulness of appropriate technology in education and its relation to OSAT. It has been proposed that the evolution of the open-source 3D printers can enable a new method of development for OSAT
Open source hardware for science can also be considered OSAT. Hundreds of scientific tools have already been developed and shared. Recently open source labs have been proposed.
Evaluation
Appropriate technology is designed to promote decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient and environmentally sound businesses. Carroll Pursell says that the movement declined from 1965 to 1985, due to an inability to counter advocates of agribusiness, large private utilities, and multinational construction companies. Recently, several barriers to OSAT deployment have been identified:
AT seen as inferior or "poor person's" technology
Technical transferability and robustness of AT
Insufficient funding
Weak institutional support
The challenges of distance and time in tackling rural poverty
