[Discuss] The institutionalization of OSHW

[Michael James]

I am a bit confused when people say Open Source Hardware Company.

Any company can sell OSHW.  The OSHW designation applies to devices not
business entities.

Radio Shack carries Open Source Hardware - good for them I say and for OSHW.

If a company wants to sell open and close source - power to them.  If their
customer base feels alienated they can (and will) vote with their wallets.

-Michael



On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 7:30 AM, Catarina Mota
<catarina at openmaterials.org>wrote:

> I'm seriously sleep deprived, so take this with a grain of salt :)
>
> Perhaps we should stop using the expression "OSHW company." Otherwise,
> we'll end up having to determine what percentage of a business's products
> must be OHSW for that company to be considered open source. We don't need a
> company certification process, not right now I think.
>
> While I agree that some people behaved shamefully last week, let's keep in
> mind that they're a handful of individuals. Yesterday we stuffed almost 500
> people in a warehouse to discuss controversial issues and everyone (as far
> as know) behaved beautifully. So much so that the Eyebeam team complimented
> us on being unusually friendly, respectful and upbeat. Many sponsors,
> speakers and attendees showed up early (some of them were 2 days early)
> and, instead of taking a seat, rolled up their sleeves and started
> deploying chairs and picking up trash - yup, we put CEOs on trash duty
> :) The outpour of love and support in our inbox and twitter stream today
> has been one of the most moving things I've experienced. So while we can't
> condone rudeness and disrespect, we should also celebrate the majority that
> is so kind and supportive.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 10:04 PM, phillip torrone <pt at oreilly.com> wrote:
>
>> 2 weeks ago i got the usual once-a-month "purity" email from some random
>> person saying "you're not open source because you use quickbooks, or
>> windows, or EAGLE" etc.. but now this week adafruit along with sparkfun is
>> back to being a "good example of an open source hardware" company.
>>
>> i read your post and you say "Ok fine, I understand the need to
>> discourage knock-offs.  But if you do this you are NOT 100% Open Source
>> Hardware." -
>>
>> ok, but really, who is or isn't open source enough this week?
>>
>> is sparkfun 100%, is adafruit 100%, what about EMSL? they have a kit
>> that's not OSHW, so does everyone else who i consider an oshw company. are
>> we pure enough?
>>
>> our company statement, actually, limor's is "we're going to keep shipping
>> OSHW while everyone argues about open source hardware". we're going to keep
>> doing open source, we'll show that's an amazing cause and an amazing
>> business, smart people will want to join us.
>>
>> last week the most vocal voices in the open source 3d printing community
>> didn't inspire anyone to want to join their cause, in fact a 3d printer
>> maker told me "wow, glad we never did (or will do open source). that's the
>> worst thing i think, people steering clear of open source because of a
>> "damned if you do, damned if you don't?
>>
>> i really don't know what's next, but i'm thinking about. for now,  i'm
>> really excited about the OSHWA, because they're a group of people that has
>> the mission to celebrate OSHW companies, i'd like to know i can work hard
>> and someone *else* is going to say "these folks are doing OSHW, support
>> them".
>>
>> i'm going to do my best to get them members and help them celebrate oshw.
>>
>> join in :)
>>
>> cheers,
>> pt
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 28, 2012, at 2:07 PM, Andrew Stone <stone at toastedcircuits.com>
>> wrote:
>> As I listened to the OSHW summit speakers, I felt a pretty disturbing
>> trend towards closing aspects of some products, and "yes-sirring" both real
>> and "fake" regulatory bodies (as opposed to reluctantly complying) by the
>> well-regarded members of our community.  And then of course there were lots
>> of great presentations of cool stuff that completely disregarded all that.
>> >
>> > Looks like some of us are growing up :-(.  Did you feel that way?
>> >
>> > My full blog posting:
>> http://effluviaofascatteredmind.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-institutionalization-of-oshw.html
>> >
>> > Cheers!
>> > Andrew
>> >
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>>
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