🎙️𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐬 𝐎𝐒𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐈𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐃𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐠𝐨𝐰

What Is OSArch and Why It Matters With Duncan Lithgow

The OSArch community aims to provide support for a community and ecosystem of software that respects the digital freedom of the industry and its users. This digital freedom allows collaboration to occur, and is increasingly important as the industry and next generation of digitally savvy professionals leave academia to join us in our journey to improve the built environment. In particular, we help support four types of digital freedom, which are known as the four essential freedoms. When the OSArch community talks about free software, we are not referring to price (which is a common misconception), we are talking about software that provides these four freedoms, of which price is not a factor. The freedoms are:

1️The freedom to use software as you wish for any purposes, whether it be educational, commercial, R&D, in any context with no time limit, no arbitrary vendor restrictions, or any other rules governing your usage.

2️The freedom to study how the software works, and change it so it can do what you want. We want to promote digital learning and the freedom to customise software for your workflows, your data, your environment, with no restrictions.

3️The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. We need our tools to be shared to work together on the built environment. Sharing tools with others helps upskill and improve the abilities of the entire industry.

4️The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes.

A precondition to provide these four freedoms is to ensure that we are able to do all the work we need to do in the AEC industry using open source software. Satisfying this precondition means the license of the software must be an FSF-approved license or an OSI-approved license. Access to, and the freedom to change this code empowers and puts the users (that's you!) in control over the data in the built environment, instead of vendors.

Duncan Lithgow is a Constructing Architect and ICT Specialist at Henning Larsen Architects in Skanderborg, Denmark. At the same time, Duncan is one of the most active contributors in the OSArch community.

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Resources

Duncan's LinkedIn Profile
OSArch Community
OSArch Wiki
Support OSArch through Open Collective
AEC Free Software Directory
BlenderBIM
Blender
OpenBIM
Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)
IFC Specification Database
Which IFC Class Should I Use