The idea of an Open Lab comes from the [Fablab](https://www.fablabs.io/) which is an openly accessible fabrication workshop with various propriertery machinery such as 3D printers, laser cutters and CNC mills. These propriertary machines listed on the [Fablab Inventory List](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1U-jcBWOJEjBT5A0N84IUubtcHKMEMtndQPLCkZCkVsU/pub?single=true&gid=0&output=html) which is an exhaustive list of machinery that can be bought and installed to setup up a fablab locally. These proprietary machines are relatively expensive and propietary and shipping from the US to lesser developed countries can be prohibitively expensive. Lastly propiertary machines can never really be owned and users are locked within the company ecosystem. So an Open Lab is basically a fab lab with open source hardware machinery instead of proprietary machinery.
