Collaborative construction methods and tools

http://opensourceecology.org/

"The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts."

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-01/the-post-apocalypse-survival-machine-nerd-farm

Fifty tools aren’t a hedge against the apocalypse, although if most of civilization is wiped out, survivors with Factor e Farm plans may at least have something to work with. What Jakubowski is trying to prove is that people can live without the help of corporations. A few years ago, his attempts at utopia kept being undermined by the costs of repairing his farm equipment. So he decided to cut out the middleman and forge his own gear. “If you’re going to try to build any kind of sustainable, model community, you find out quickly that the tools you need break down and are expensive,” he says. “Without fixing this situation, you’re always left conducting business as usual.”
After Factor e Farm completes its “Global Village Construction Set,” Jakubowski expects communities around the globe to use these tools, spurring an explosion of innovation as people take his tractors and drills and build even better ones. Eventually, this virtuous circle will yield equipment rivaling that made by market-leading corporations—a tractor that is 90 percent as good as a John Deere (DE) at a fraction of the price. Showing up established corporations is critical to Jakubowski, because, he says, they spend too much time obsessing over patents, spending millions on commercials, and generally getting in the way of progress. “We are calling our work the Open Source Economy,” he says. “We can collaborate on the machines and publish everything openly. We can reduce all of this competitive waste. You have to start somewhere.”

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   Looks good. Again, this is where someone decides that crowd sourcing is better than corporate reliance.