It has been almost two years since I first began advocating for adapting an Open Source model to the development of Appropriate Technology. Naturally, my ideas did not develop in a vacuum, and a number of other groups were already working on the same concept, thinking the same thoughts, and [...]

The first advocate of Open Source was none other than the patron saint of neoliberal economics: Adam Smith. Although Smith's classic The Wealth of Nations has become the de-facto Bible of the neoliberal agenda, invoking Smith to justify cut-throat capitalism is nothing more than a distortion of his true philosophical [...]

 While blogging about Open Source AT, Jeff at sustainablog poses an excellent question: "Is this a concept that generally will appeal to the more technically inclined, but leave the rest of us out of the loop?" This question strikes at the heart [...]

Although Open Source appropriate technology may be a good idea, it faces a number of obstacles to its implementation. First, there is the issue of licensing. How do we license Open Source AT? Should we modify something like the GPL or the Creative Commons license to form a General Public Patent? [...]

In 1985, Richard Stallman published the GNU Emacs License in conjunction with his software package of the same name. Though it received little attention beyond the tight-knit community of computer hackers, Stallman laid the foundation for a revolution that is only now being realized by mainstream society. The GNU Emacs License was [...]