[Discuss] discuss Digest, Vol 10, Issue 13

[Alicia Gibb]

>From the OSHWA side of things, what we can do right now and what we have
resources for is very limited. Since we have no paid staff and are working
as volunteers (hoping to change that with more funding), I think a
certification or specific OSHWA mark separate from the current oshw logo is
a couple years out. About a year ago, stakeholders for OSHWA chose to first
set up a 501(c)3 for charitable education purposes. This means we cannot do
anything that promotes for-profit business in open source hardware. There
is another organization that I think will only be a matter of time,
especially given this discussion called a 501(c)6, a business league.
Business leagues are mainly how standards organizations are set up. Please
see the attached doc for similarities and differences between the two types
of non-profits. It is becoming more apparent to me day by day that we will
definitely need a 501(c)6 sooner rather than later if oshw continues to
grow as it has been.


Alicia



On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 12:12 PM, Tom Igoe <tom.igoe at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are a number of good questions here, Matt.  At this point it's best
> for me not to comment on this further, and let folks who are actively on
> the OSHWA board answer some of these questions. I can see potential
> responses to this argument, but I'm not sure if they're relevant. I'd like
> to hear what others think, and you're probably tired of hearing what I
> think.
>
> Also, it's time for me to pay the rent with some writing that's not on
> this listserve, interesting though it is. :)
>
> t.
>
>
>
> On Mar 3, 2013, at 11:12 AM, Matt Maier wrote:
>
> I don't see the conflict. Why would it matter who thought of it and/or
> published it first? Openness depends on people publishing early and often.
> The point isn't to encourage people to keep secrets until they're
> positioned to extract maximum profit from exploiting the idea, the point is
> to encourage people to publish ideas that are good enough for now so that
> everyone else can build them into something better.
>
> However, now that I phrase it that way, I can see how the professional
> open source world might think of "openness" differently than the amateurs
> (for lack of better terms). It would make sense for commercial entities to
> treat openness more like a way to outsource/crowdsource technical support
> rather than a way to grow their own competition.
>
> Okay, so, I think I'm running into the my limits having never run a
> commercial open source project. I'm probably not doing a good job of
> adopting that perspective.
>
> Another question, why would a panel of industry experts have to leave
> their day job? Why not just make the panel big enough that individuals can
> be temporarily excused? You know, in your example, you could just go get
> some coffee for 10 minutes while the people who don't have a conflict of
> interest arrive at a decision. I assume any kind of decision making body
> like that would have to be pretty flexible. If it's successful (which is
> kind of the point) then it will have to churn through submissions quickly,
> especially if nobody's getting paid for their time. They would have to be
> able to get stuff done even if some people couldn't make it.
>
> How about this as an exchange of value. Lets assume the people who have a
> vote on whether or not a project gets the OSHWA stamp of openness approval
> are not being monetarily compensated for their time. That seems like a safe
> assumption. But, they DO get to be the only people in the world who see all
> of the brand spanking new technical details of open projects before anyone
> else, and they get to meet all of the people pushing things forwards. In a
> community where it's nearly impossible to steal an idea (because it's being
> released open) getting to see things first would have a certain tangible
> value that would compensate them for their time. That value would encourage
> everyone to plan nice cuz if they don't they get kicked off the panel.
>
> On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 8:33 AM, Tom Igoe <tom.igoe at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Let's say someone starts a kickstarter campaign to make a new Arduino
>> derivative.  They want to claim it'll be open in their kickstarter
>> campaign, so they submit it to OSHWA for review approval, whatever. Let's
>> say I'm on the curatorial panel for OSHWA. Now imagine Arduino (my company)
>> is working on a new model very similar to the kickstarter derivative.  Even
>> though we may have thought of it independently (which happens with some
>> frequency), who are you going to believe when one party complains? Even if
>> one party produces docs with a timestamp that's earlier than the other, we
>> all know that's easy enough to be modified.
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> discuss mailing list
> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20130304/17cbd32b/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 501c3 c6 comparison Sheet1.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 41312 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20130304/17cbd32b/attachment-0001.pdf>