Open collaborative design/Intro

Open collaborative design involves applying principles from the remarkable free and open-source software movement that give us a powerful new way to design artefacts, machines and physical systems. The basis of this development model is a principle called 'copyleft' which applies terms of use to creative works enabling anyone to freely use or customise them. Derivative works will often inherit the same terms too, making sure that anything based on the original item is also freely available, although this depends on the particular license chosen.

This principle ensures that 'copylefted' works (whether they are designs, text, artwork or computer code) become gifted to humanity, adding to an ever increasing universal 'commons'. And because this principle is to the benefit of everyone, it completely changes the way that people think about contributing their time, creativity and efforts to projects licensed in this way. This nascent field has huge potential to radically change the way we create goods, machines, solve problems and provide the physical necessities for the global population while simultaneously reducing our impact on the environment.