[Discuss] OSHW & Economics

[Marketply]

Article by founder of Bug Labs saying that hardware is hard
<http://www.thestreet.com/story/11995288/1/the-digital-skeptic-it-turns-out-hardware-as-a-business-is-hard.html>
.

...the firm had its first WTF moment: Bug Labs could not find vendors for even
basic parts, including critical Wi-Fi chips.

"It was like being a software coder and being unable to buy if/then statements,"
he said.


That seems to validate Stallman's reasoning on the maker's side, and he even
doubts that 3D printing will be the answer:

"These tools are cool. We use them. But what you learn is, 3-D printers will
never replace manufacturing basics like injection-mold plastics, rapid metal-fab
and mass-produced computer chips,"


Yet plenty of existing technological feats were at one time considered
impossible because people, even good inventors, couldn't see a way forward based
on that era's understanding.

So instead of accepting 'never', if we take it as a challenge and try to find
every way possible it'll make it far more likely that we'll actually solve the
way forward.

Marino Hernandez
(just a founder of Marketply <http://www.marketply.org> )
203-429-4205


> On November 24, 2013 at 5:53 PM Matt Maier <blueback09 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>  This is the only thing I can find that's recent and it implies that his
> perspective hasn't changed in 10 years.
> 
>  <http://www.processmakerblog.com/uncategorized/the-processmaker-developers-meet-with-richard-stallman/>
> 
>  " All in all, the conversation was very interesting for all involved, but
> Stallman was pressed to keep up with his email, so he pulled out his famous
> Lemote Yeeloong <http://www.lemote.com/english/yeeloong.html>  laptop, a
> small-screen portable whose entire specs and firmware code are available for
> free download on the internet.  The appearance of the legendary device
> provoked a rumination about what this new type of hardware should be termed.
> Reacting to our use of the term “free hardware”, Stallman observed that it
> wasn’t really “free” in the same way as software since only companies with
> access to sophisticated equipment have the ability to create the hardware from
> the specs. Perhaps in 20 years Stallman mused that the average person would be
> able to create hardware from the specs, but at the current time it wasn’t in
> the same category as free software from the point of view of the user. Even
> thought hardware increasingly is developed as software with Verilog and
> otherhardware description languages, Stallman argued that that fact didn’t
> make much difference for the average user of the hardware. Therefore, he
> suggested that we use the term “hardware with published
> specifications”–certainly a mouthful compared to “free hardware” (or the taboo
> term “open hardware <http://www.openhardware.net/> “), but useful for
> provoking thought about the future of hardware development."  [emphasis added]
> 
>  Although the Free Software Foundation has certified some hardware as
> "respecting your freedom." So there's
> that.<http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom>
> 

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