Raisio is a Finnish food company producing, among other products, the traditional Elovena oatmeal products. They wanted to start calculating the carbon footprint for their products, and have now developed a model or combining all CO2 emissions from each part in the value chain in producing Elovena oatmeal (link into website in Finnish). According to the company, it was a difficult process to come up with tools for finding the exact CO2 load of each phase from growing, harvesting, producing, packaging and transporting the product, but after several trials and errors they have managed to build a precise way of calculating the 37 g of CO2 in 100 g of oatmeal.

                                                                                  

The company wants to distrubute their method in "the spirit of Linux". Finns are very proud of our boy Linus Torvalds, and I can't help but smile whenever his name or Linux is dropped in a conversation in order to bring a certain aura into the topic. Here's an extract from their press release:

"The calculation model used in the indicator is based on lifecycle analysis conducted by MTT Agrifood Research Finland. The indicator can be compared to the Linux computer operating system - all those who want to, can use it if they observe the scope required by the indicator in emissions labelling. Raisio continues to develop the labelling system further."

There are many definitions of what open source, or open sourcing means. I'm currently reading two books on the topic and the definitions by different camps with differing vierws are not making me smarter on the matter. I don't even try to define it here, but  when a company builds something in house, and then gives it out for others to use free of charge, I would call it a very nice thing to do but I wouldn't necessarily call it an open source project. What's the "source"? Giving out a calculation model without accepting changes back might be more analogical with "binary".

When comparing this initiave to the open sourced car project, the eCar is a clear winner. In that project, a group of individual people actually formed a community, and developed and implemented new technology together. Anyone could contribute, and anyone could modify. With Raisio's case Raisio announces that they will keep developing the model further without inviting others to join.

Even with this criticism, thank you Raisio for doing all this work. I will probably switch to eating Elovena oatmeal from now on. Bon appetit.