Intro | DIY Build Instructions | Fabrication Method | GEK Licensing

All GEK materials are open source and actively supported by ALL Power Labs.  The design concepts and drawings of the GEK gasifier are released under the intentions of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License.  Many rights are given.  Some rights are reserved.  Our overarching goal is to create a collaborative commons of gasifier solutions- a commons that rewards contributors, discourages freeloaders, and generally lifts all boats in the broader biomass thermal conversion endeavor.

You are welcome to use GEK materials free of charge for making, using or modifying the GEK for any personal endeavor.  By using GEK materials, you agree to acknowledge its source and similarly post documentation of updates and/or new additions you come up with so others can benefit from your work.  Updates should be posted to the GEKforum or GEKwiki.

Making and using the GEK for a personal commercial installation is also fine and without licensing requirements.  Licensing only comes into play if you want to manufacture, sell and/or install the units for others, and receive pay in the process (i.e. you want to go into business making and selling the GEK to others).   Otherwise, making and using it yourself, at your facility or house, for any reason, including financial gain is acceptable and an irrevocably granted right.  If you invest the effort to “make our software”, you are welcome to do most anything you want with it– just as long as you don’t sell it to others.

Using GEK materials for commercial manufacturing and resale requires a formal partnership agreement with ALL Power Labs.  We reserve the rights to and responsibilities for the regular commercial use of GEK designs and concepts to ALL Power Labs and its formal collaborating partners.  As our product and manufacturing process have matured, we have found that granting licenses to manufacture GEKs is impractical.  The GEK design is developing too rapidly for our small team to service multiple manufacturing relationships.  We anticipate being able to grant and service manufacturing licenses in the future.  We invite potential partners interested in manufacturing or locally assembling our products to begin with a simple re-seller arrangement.

You are welcome to develop proprietary add-ons and customizations for the GEK base, and transact those in any manner you like.  ALL Power Labs does not own your ideas or any personal work you might choose to expose to the GEK project.  Most ideas are more beneficially contributed to the commons for all to use, but there are of course exceptional innovations that a person might want to protect.  APL similarly has a combination of open and proprietary work.  We expect you might desire the same combination as well, and we’ll respect your rights to do so.

APL uses some patents and trademarks to maintain our stewardship of core aspects of the GEK project.  This is the exceptional case, as few things really rise to major innovations, better engaged through protection vs contribution, despite the common strung and drang to the contrary.  When there is some protection or rights parsing, those who contribute regularly to the GEK project are usually given use rights beyond the default definitions, and generally rewarded for their participation.  In short, this is a typical doacracy or meritocratic open source ecology.  You acquire rights and ownership in proportion to your contributions.  Paranoia is counter-productive.  Pronoia is rewarded.

The above is our attempt to hybrid an open source process and resource commons, with the potential for meaningful commercial endeavors by the primary contributors to the commons.  The particulars of how to do this are proving rather different with open source hardware projects vs their software siblings.  Thus the models continue to evolve and we are very much still figuring out the specifics.  Input and feedback on the model(s) is encouraged.