0.0.11 – Why I Made My Jacket Files Source-Available

tl;dr

I made the CLO 3D files for my in-progress jacket public on Github today! That means others can run them on CLO / modify them / use them non-commercially.

What’s Source-Available vs Open-Source?

True open-source software can be used/modified/enhanced by anybody, commercially or non-commercially, whereas source-available software may have restrictions on its use.

Source-available and open-source software often becomes valuable because it can grow a community, which can build on it, modify it, and often even contribute directly to the original project.

Almost every major software application you use leverages one or more open-source software libraries. Big companies also often open-source pieces of their code, for others to use. As just one example, Facebook/Meta open-sourced their React library, a hugely popular frontend framework used to develop web applications.

Closed-source software, in contrast, doesn’t reveal its inner workings. Regular people can’t examine it, modify it, or enhance it. Most software companies make their flagship products closed-source, which protects it; nobody will copy/steal code, because they can’t easily see it.

Source-available work is arguably easier to discover, adopt, modify, spread, and create more value: ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’

Making the files public fits with this blog’s general goal of public learning. At some point (way too late) I realized that writing stuff down and synthesizing it was the ideal way for me to learn, and that’s a big part of the reason why I’m blogging. It forces me to think about things, explain myself, and work through problems.

While writing this post, I went looking for more supporting evidence of why learning publicly is a good idea. I discovered swyx’s excellent Learn in Public blog post and Open Source Knowledge YouTube video. Check those out if you find this compelling.

Also, the decision was subtly influenced by my job.

My professional background is as a software developer. I spent most days pushing something up to GitHub. One of the only tech t-shirts I’ve bothered hanging onto is a GitHub t-shirt one of my coworkers brought back from a conference 7 years ago.

I currently work as a ‘sales engineer’ (technical person directly involved in the software sales process) at a company whose code is source-available. I think that’s pretty awesome. It means that people who don’t work at the company can read through the source code and contribute to it. Users can also self-host the application rather than paying a subscription fee for a SaaS (software as a service) subscription.

I see Open Source Garments as potentially similar. Maybe one day I’ll sell physical Memory Jackets. But in the meantime, I also want to make it easier for people to make jackets at home and even contribute their ideas.

Overall, I want to invite others who have the same interests as me to get curious and try stuff out themselves. If even one other person made something cool as a result of my work, I would be thrilled.

Besides, every clothing company out there is already closed-source. People make amazing stuff and never share their patterns, even when their brand goes defunct. It’s too bad they don’t release that information into the public domain if they aren’t going to do anything with it!

One potential dream I have is to get brands and independent menswear designers (including talented students, or DIY creators on social media) making their own patterns source-available. By releasing their old, no-longer-used patterns (or even current patterns) to home sewers, brands can help become the backbone of a unique and passionate community and maybe find a novel way to grow their community. If you’re a brand and that sounds interesting – get in touch with me!

Over the last decade, many more men, including myself, have become interested and knowledgeable clothing consumers. However, there is very little available for people who want to understand how design and construction work in a hands-on way.

There are a few men’s sewing blogs, but the types of items they produce (often button-up shirts in loud, patterned fabrics, occasionally a classic-ish coat with a loud lining) do not overlap with the stuff consumers like myself are interested in. I don’t want to dunk on anybody in particular, so I won’t link anything, but you can get the idea if you search around.

Most publicly available men’s sewing patterns are either extremely dated or pretty basic. The best I have found are simple chore coat designs. This is fine, but not exactly groundbreaking menswear.

Sewing patterns for modern, cool stuff don’t seem to exist. And trust me, I looked. Lots of people are designing and sewing their own stuff on social media. Some of it sucks and some of it is cool. And lots of small brands seem to be popping up in the last 5 years as access to knowledge and factories grows. But the information needed to make cool clothes at home is not available.

As a dream, I would love to end up with a roster of legitimately cool open-source garment patterns that DIY-inclined people can sew at home. And ideally, a community might spring up around this and enhance/modify those patterns even further!

Yes. “True” open-source software is free to use, both commercially and non-commercially. I doubt the audience for this blog cares that much about nitpicking open-source vs. source-available, but I want to acknowledge this.

I didn’t go full open-source because I don’t want others to profit from the work I’ve done so far. I realize this is probably hypocritical because so far this blog is just me reverse-engineering and ripping off the silhouette of an Acronym jacket that someone worked very hard to design 😅

But I do want to allow regular, non-industry people like myself to understand how this unique jacket is constructed, plus maybe leverage it in their home sewing projects.

So: I don’t want free riders, but also want people to be able to benefit for personal use. After 4 years, the software will convert to full/true open-source anyway, per my License file. No idea how I’ll feel about this project or blog in four years, anyway.