Facilitating International Development through Free / Open Source

From "The Gupta Option", this draft-stage article intends to show "examples of technologies that could be created at the [United States] US taxpayer's expense, help people all over the world live as they wish to, and also displace technologies which are actively bad for the US taxpayer, wherever in the world they are employed." The article is based in the philosophy that "Free/Open Source development is inherently non-coercive", but has potential for universal benefit and for closing the digital gap in developing countries.


In a prior whitepaper written for the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), the author champions "An open library of designs for refrigerators, lighting, heating, cooling, motors, and other systems [that] will encourage manufacturers, particularly in the developing world, to leapfrog directly to the most sustainable technologies, which are much cheaper in the long run. Manufacturers will be encouraged to use the efficient designs because they are free, while inefficient designs still have to be paid for...." This article puts forth a number of resource management ideas to carry further the notion of an open design library. The ideas and communication needs associated with them include:

1. Solar water pasteurisation and other clean water technologies - which includes the need for the mapping of which parts of the world have enough sunlight for the idea put forth here to work, as well as indicators to answer: "Is this water sterile?"
2. Algal turf scrubbers or other algae biodiesel/biobutanol/bioethanol systems - which needs investment in a pilot production facility and then information dissemination of the technology involved.
3. The 300 mile-per-gallon (MPG) autorickshaw - which, as stated here, could be a "challenge... well-addressed by a [US]$1,000,000 design prize or other "challenge driven" competitive engineering events." The author favours having the results "produced and published, enabling business people from all over the world to easily set up shop producing these vehicles."
4. Software for global democracy - described as: A) binding a "hard" identity to a mobile device like a cell phone; B) protocols to allow secure anonymous voting "in an environment where physical coercion cannot be protected against"; and C) flexible polling and governance software.
5. GPS/Satellite property registers through cellphone technology.
6. The primers, "[a] set of hypertexts available in every major language explaining the history, geography, and political structure of the world to the global [economically] poor as they come online through ultra-cheap [information and communication technology] ICT" - a scheme for electronic standardised basic education texts, as well as a "media primer" helping people interpret texts they find online to counteract the possible effects of propaganda.