Open source design: The jacket design is settled
Ok, THIS time we think the jacket design is settled.
We've thought it before, and every time we make one, something else pops up and we feel a need to fiddle with it a little more. Achieving our goal of uber simplicity, retaining functionality of a contemporary jacket design, and using classic materials turns out to be quite a complicated endeavor! But on the plus side, each time we tweak the design our documentation of it gets better, the pattern improves, we find another path to more simplicity.
Our intention has always been to open source our designs. We've been pretty inspired by the folks at Open Source Ecology, and when they interviewed Lastware about their open source publishing of the patterns to their clothes, we thought - that's what we'll do. Sadly, Lastware have stopped publishing their patterns, saying it wasn't benefitting them.
I guess our question is, has it benefited them by not publishing? Our intention is to publish simple patterns, that can be printed on a standard desktop printer, leaving it to the end user to scale up the drawing with say, a grid.
Apart from conviviality being a defining principle for us, we think showing the inner thinking of our designs will aid people in their decision to order a jacket or not. But most of all, we're also reaching out to makers. We want to try and build a network of makers who like casual casual work to order. Our hope is that when an order comes in we have a chance of getting it made and modified locally to the person making the order.
If makers out there want to try their hand at making a jacket to our design, by all means, we'll put the pattern out there for exactly that, and support them as much as we can. We can source and deliver materials, and give extra advice. If those same people learn to make a jacket to this design at a quality we agree is a Peak Oil Company product, then we want an association to our name to be an incentive for makers. Those makers become partners in the production of this product, and are paid well per item.
If people take the pattern and design and improve it for other purposes, then the expectation is they'll let us know, and share the new design back, under the Share Alike condition of the copyright license we're putting on this.
What do you think.. is this a better path than protectionism? We can't really afford to register a patent, nor will we ever have the capacity or inclination to chase down copycats.. so rather than resist that, can we embrace copying through open source production, and make good on it?
The pictures here in this post are our latest drawings.. we're getting the pattern professionally laid out, and will load it up as soon as they're done. These drawings are used to aid the maker, in combination with the pattern and a sample jacket.