A new ethos for a design community: towards an open source and copy left learning-by-sharing attitude/action.

We, the undersigned, aware of both the urgent changes required by sustainable development, the potential role of design (and design thinking) in promoting system innovation in the way we produce, consume and interact, as well as the opportunities offered by the ever more interconnected society, propose the adoption and diffusion of a new ethos within a worldwide design community:

To view design as a unique multi-polar learning community promoting, enabling and activating any possible learning-by-sharing process aiming at effective knowledge osmosis and cross-fertilisation in design for sustainability in an open and copy left ethos.

We, the undersigned, commit our selves in such an ethos, trying our best to apply this in our daily life

as individuals or representatives of institutions in the design community.

In relation to our competencies and possibilities we will make our acquired knowledge to be,

as far as possible, freely and easily accessible in a copy left and open source modality (while safeguarding our authorship and scientific recognised publication activity), that enable others in the design community to acquire them free of charge,

with the possibility to replicate, modify, remix and reuse, through e.g. adopting creative commons licences.

• As researchers, this knowledge includes our acquired research knowledge base (e.g. papers, books, etc.) and knowhow (e.g. methods and tools).
• As educators, this knowledge includes our educational resources (slideshows, texts, video of lecture, educational support tools, etc.)
• As designers and design thinkers, this knowledge includes the design for sustainability concept proposal of products, services, systems and scenarios, as well as a knowhow they used to design them.

We commit our selves to seek the commitment of other individuals or institutions in such an ethos within the design community. In relation to our competencies and possibilities we will:

• do our best to commit individuals such as researchers, educators, professional designers and design thinkers as well as institutions such as research institutions, design schools, and designer?s associations to adopt the same ethos
• do our best to generate and/or enable open learning networking of sustainability of design researchers, design educators, professional designers and design thinkers.