Open collaborative design/Intro

Open collaborative design involves applying principles from the remarkable free and open-source software movement that provides 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 in such a way that anyone can freely use or customise them. Derivative works often automatically inherit the same terms too, meaning that anything based on the original item is also freely available.

This principle ensures that 'copylefted' works (whether they are designs, text, artwork or computer code) are effectively 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 and solutions – both for personal items and ultimately for all the material goods and infrastructure necessary provideing for needs of the global population.