WorkParty - Open Knowledge Standards for distributed manufacturing, material peer production

On Dec. 14th 2022 Sensoricas organized a workparty for implementing open source hardware documentation standards (OKH). This was done in collaboration with the Internet of Production Alliance, Valueflows, hREA and Holo. 

During the first part of this gathering Lynn led a discussion to understand how OKH (a standard) could better align with Valueflows (a vocabulary). We also learned during this exchange that FabCity uses Valueflows and is willing to implement OKH in an initiative called Interfacer. Perhaps we can strive for better collaboration between Sensorica and FabCity, especially because Interfacer's economic model seems to be inspired by the Sensorica's OVN model, as seen in this video (min 43). 

We went over the new capabilities of LOSH (a crawler and search engine) in conjunction with OKH. LOSH is used to scrape open source hardware designs of various collaborative platforms (Gitlab, Github, Thingiverse and Wikifactory) and creates a library in RDF, using OKH specifications. The problem is dealing with the variety of ways an open source hardware thing can be described on platforms.

A useful distinction was made between OKH and Valueflows. Valueflows is mostly demand-driven, the original pattern was dependent demand which was workshopped at the 1997 Pattern Languages of Programming conference. OKH is mostly supply-driven, focused on how instructions about making something can be effectively disseminated. Perhaps this realization can bring Valueflows and OKH closer together. 

The second part of this workparty was led by Lucas, representing the interests of Holo. We built on the realization that LOSH+OKH were trying to reduce the variety in which open source hardware designs are documented on the Internet, bringing everything out there under the same OKH format. What is this standardization was done at the source, by the creators of the open source hardware? The problem LOSH+OKH are trying to solve is in fact introduced by platforms, intermediaries, which dictate how things are described or formatted. Can Holochain change all that by taking away the middleman, by making platforms obsolete?

During the third and last part of this workparty we went over the process of creating a OKH Manifest. This was facilitated by Max, representing the interests of IoPA.

Harvesting was done in this document. Feel free to engage with participants through this doc.