There are 3 relationships that need to be regulated:
- The relationship between FabLabSG and the FabLab/Educational Institution (aka the MOU).
- The relationship between FabLabSG and the users (members) - we can call it the 'user agreement'.
- The relationship among the members of FabLabSG, which is a Society registered in Singapore. This is governed through its articles or associations or 'Constitution'.
- The normal scenario would be FabLabSG and the FabLab/EducationalInstitution to work for about a year in the following:
- Procedures for allowing third parties (the members of the FabLab community) to enter the Lab and operate the machines.
- Development of specific training programmes to 'certify' these 'third parties' to be able to use the Lab and its machines.
- Development of a list of unit prices for every hour of machine and consumable in the lab so that they can be charged to the third party users.
- Procedures for the FabLab/EducationalInstitution to 'bill' the machine hours and consumables to FabLabSG, who in turn will bill the users.
- For all billed hours and materials, FabLabSG is liable to FabLab/Institution, and the third party users (the members) are liable to FabLabSG
- After all the procedures have been developed the relationship will move into an ongoing mode, which will be transactional. The FabLab will provide training, machine use hours and consumables, while FabLabSG will be in charge of paying those services to FabLab and recovering those costs from its users.
- The potential challenges:
- Not being able to complete the development phase after a year, so we need to decide whether we keep trying or put an end to the project.
- Shortages of supply, meaning not enough availble machines time or consumables.
- Problems with insufficience of funds or defaul by the users or by FabLabSG.
- Changes on management at FabLab or FabLabSG who don't understand or don't want to continue with the project.
- The project needing to be aborted by some legal challenge or government directive.
- The collaboration between FabLabSG and the FabLab/EducationalInstitution is very in much on methods, procedures, training contents and data flows. We are not going to build hardware, we are mostly going to build documents and computer software.
- There will be a bit of IT infrastructure that will be build (to contain and run the software), this infrastructure will be own and mantain by FabLabSG, so there will be no 'shared assets'.
- All the methods, procedures, training materials and designs will be open source.
- As for the desings and the data brought by the members to be processed or manufactured at the Lab, all these 'blueprints' or designs will be uploaded first to the IT infrastructure to enable:
- Total transparency of what is being manufactured or worked on, enabling inspection of legality of the items being manufactured and also the preservation of the materials to be used by other users.
- All these designs will be immediately open source and made available to the public
- If someone complains that a material is illegal in any form, it will need to be quarantined, and eventually taken down from the system and banned.
- We have made the draft based on the constitution of some other society and verifying it complies with the directives given by the Singapore government in its websites.
- The approach will be to submit for registration first and act upon approval/rejection by the authorities.
