Get Your Nuts Cracked More Efficiently.
Submitted by Taran on Tue, 12/19/2006 - 02:36
No, really - the Full Belly Project is shelling peanuts more efficiently:
...The Full Belly Project is interested in licensing their machines under some form of the Creative Commons license. Currently, the plans are available online, but Rosenblith acknowledges some difficulties with the public domain. "We're funded by grants and donations, and if someone makes it in Nigeria and we don't get any attribution, then it doesn't help us when World Bank sees the machine and wants to contribute to making more. So we're still trying to figure out how to meet the goals of open sourcing the project, making it freely available, and making sure it's still traceable."
Rosenblith believes strongly in idea sharing. Technology, he says, "is not anything by itself. It comes about because there is a connection to something else. Like Darwin said, we know what we know because we stand on the shoulders of giants."
Having solved the peanut problem, the Full Belly Project is now tackling other impediments to productivity in crop processing. What began as a hand-cranked peanut sheller was given leg power, and now has become a full-fledged pedal-powered agricultural machine. Other nuts, including pecans and hazelnuts, have been successfully shelled, but macadamia nuts cracked the concrete bowl. Corn can be processed, but other grains have presented new problems to be solved. And Brandis has his sights set on another open source appropriate technology project: a portable, affordable cotton gin.
Great article.
Improving quality of life? Check. Improving production? Check. Decreasing wastage? Check. Uses available resources and is locally repairable? Check. Probably the best technology use I've heard all year.
Nut Cracking
This has to be the single most amusing title of any article published about the Full Belly Project. As the Director of Outreach for Full Belly, I commend you on your creativity! Since you know a lot about open source and creative commons. I was wondering if you could perhaps help us in our efforts to find an appropriate way to licence our technology. It appears to me that Creative Commons only applies to works that you can copyright. According to HowStuffWorks, Copyrights are:
* Literary works
* Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
* Musical works
* Sound recordings
* Dramatic works
* Pantomimes and choreographic works
* Motion pictures and other audio-visual works
* Architectural works
and a patent refers to:
any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof
So I'm not sure that we would be able to qualify for a Creative Commons licence as it only seems to apply to works that you can copyright. We clearly make machinery. However it appears...and here is where my pea brain starts pulsating...that software can be patented and or copyrighted. But now I'm reading about Open Source Patent Commons http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1846948,00.asp . Where software patents are made available to open source software community. This sounds like a good idea. Could we do the same thing for machinery? We just want to make stuff for people in developing countries, and make it availble for free. But at the same time make sure that we recieve attribution so we can get more funding to make more stuff for poor people. We like Jamie Love's Creative Commons Developing Nations Licence http://creativecommons.org/license/devnations. We just wish it was applicable to machinery. Any advice? The livelihoods of 1/2 billion people (that use peanuts as their primary source of protein) are depending on your answer.
Roey Rosenblith
Director of Outreach
Full Belly Project
www.fullbellyproject.org
Wilmington, NC
Thanks
I'm going to be straight with you and say that 'I am not sure'. I think that the patent commons is probably the best for what you are trying to do.
From what I understand, people cannot patent a pre-existing work - or that this is the way it is supposed to work. The patent is supposed to be 'original', and could be disputed if it can be proven it is not original. But like I said - I am not sure, and I'm not a lawyer.
You could talk to someone at the Free Software Foundation about this - such as Eben Moglen. I'd like to hear what is chosen and why, myself.
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