[Discuss] Favorite OSHW Linux computers?

Thu Feb 5 17:41:50 UTC 2015

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for your reply. I also have seen that the big manufacturers are
opening more with the time and that's great.

But with the bottom line at least my impression hast been the opossite.

I'm a small maker but also a ditributor of OSHW products and very
frequently I have requests from my clients to help get them devices that
have a lot of interesting functions but at the end of the thay I end
dissapointed because they use some kind of closed-technology that makes
impossible to replicate or make a derived product even when they're sort of
open.

Regards,
Mario.

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 11:28 AM, Nathan Seidle <nathan at sparkfun.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> tldr: Read Alicia's book "Building Open Source Hardware". All of this is
> covered :)
>
> At the risk of poking the hornet's nest: you cannot license something you
> do not own. In the US, ownership of hardware requires a patent. I don't
> have any patents so I technically can't license any of the SparkFun
> products. That said, we still stick a 'license' on most of our schematics
> and board layouts simply to encourage folks to take, make, modify, and sell
> our stuff.
>
> An absence of a license does not make something closed; it simply makes it
> confusing and scary to the end user: "Can I really base my product on this
> design? Will the original designer come after me?". By putting a disclaimer
> (make believe license) on our products we clarify that confusion as much as
> possible. If a hardware company is saying it's open and they are posting
> editable files I can actually find (yay Hummingbird and Inversepath!) then
> I think the community should support them. We should encourage them to
> include a license on the files for clarity's sake, not because it's a
> requirement to claim OSHW.
>
> @Mario - Binary blob firmware has been an IP protection tool for a long
> time. I have not seen an increase in the past year - rather, I've been
> impressed with the number of companies coming around to open source
> thoughts. I'd rather have more open source hardware in the world even if it
> means part of the firmware is a binary blob. We at SparkFun regularly
> hammer on larger companies what it means to be truly open but we still
> regularly come up against NDAs and cagey IP lawyers. They are getting it,
> but slowly.
>
> --
> Nathan Seidle
> CEO, SparkFun Electronics Inc
> Boulder, CO
>
> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 10:08 AM, Hal Gottfried <hal at kcohg.org> wrote:
>
>> There is also a great book about it ...
>>
>>
>>
>> Apologies if this message is brief as it's sent from my phone.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 9:07 AM -0800, "alicia" <amgibb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  This type of stuff is actually all laid out in the Best Practices
>>> <http://www.oshwa.org/sharing-best-practices/> of Open Source Hardware:
>>>
>>> Ideally, your open-source hardware project would be designed using a
>>> free and open-source software application, to maximize the ability of
>>> others to view and edit it. For better or worse however, hardware design
>>> files are often created in proprietary programs and stored in proprietary
>>> formats. It is still essential to share these original design files; they
>>> constitute the original “source code” for the hardware. They are the very
>>> files that someone will need in order to contribute changes to a given
>>> design.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 10:03 AM, Pablo Kulbaba <pablokulbaba at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Mario: can you list some of the "many pseudo-"Open-Source" boards." ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 05/02/2015 01:48 p.m., Mario Gómez wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   Hi Michael!
>>>>
>>>> Yes it can be called Open because you could easily reaplicate it in
>>>> another CAD software or convert it to another CAD format to comply with the
>>>> EAGLE License terms. Even it's possible to share the diagrams as
>>>> non-editable formats (JPG, PDF, others) if a CAD design file it's not
>>>> available. As I understand, the latter is accepted but not recommended for
>>>> obvious reasons.
>>>>
>>>>  However if for example your PCB layout requires a really precise
>>>> differential-signalling considerations and you dont provide the details or
>>>> the specs for the only reason to difficult making copies. I wouldn't think
>>>> that design could be considered OpenSource-Hardware beause you are hiding
>>>> or making difficult to access critical details of the design needed for the
>>>> proyect to work.
>>>>
>>>>  And that's the "trap" of many pseudo-"Open-Source" boards.
>>>>
>>>>  Regards,
>>>> Mario.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 10:35 AM, Michael McCormack <
>>>> mike at themccormacks.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> To Hal's list of requirements - if I release Eagle files, which can't
>>>>> be used commercially without a commercial Eagle license can it be called
>>>>> "open" ?
>>>>>
>>>>>  Cheers
>>>>>
>>>>>  Mike
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> discuss mailing list
>>>>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
>>>>> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> discuss mailing listdiscuss at lists.oshwa.orghttp://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> PabloK
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
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>
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