[Discuss] Proposal: Open Source Hardware Score/Index

Tue Feb 24 17:56:02 UTC 2015

I think some of the answers must be invariably yes for some categories of
questions (i.e. the project must comply with ALL the requirements), whereas
a separate index could be calculated for aspects that improve the openness
of it. Perhaps grouping questions could make this become more apparent.

On 24 February 2015 at 11:51, Marcin Jakubowski <
marcin at opensourceecology.org> wrote:

> Mario,
>
> I like this. I don't understand the scoring, though.
>
> One thing on a metalevel - how to address the elephant in the room - in
> that some people call their project open source when they have an NC->OS
> model?
>
> Ie, a model where they are NC or otherwise closed source until they reach
> a funding point or some other metric, upon which case they release product
> as full open source? Case in point is license for Aker - http://aker.me/
> - with license at -
> http://www.community.aker.me/t/designer-agreement-points/29.
>
> Should this be addressed somehow in your metric?
>
> Marcin
>
>
>
>
>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Mario Gómez <mxgxw.alpha at gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 10:58 AM
>> Subject: [Discuss] Proposal: Open Source Hardware Score/Index
>> To: The Open Source Hardware Association Discussion List <
>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org>
>>
>>
>> Hi everybody!
>>
>> I have been on this list for at least a year from now and I have seen a
>> couple of recurrent topics on this list:
>>
>> The first is the question if a project is truly OSHW and the second
>> asking for a mechanism to validate/certify the compliance of the OSHW
>> definition.
>>
>> I currently work in data analysis and in the last year I promoted a
>> independent mechanism to crowd-validate the election results in my country
>> (I believe that community-based validation approachs are great to evaluate
>> compliance if they are well designed). So I was thinking that it could be
>> possible to construct a simple indicator that helps you to determine if
>> your project meets the basic premises for being classified as a truly
>> Open-Source-Hardware Project. So I borrowed this idea from the "online
>> personality tests" were you fill a survey and the result automatically
>> classify your personality on different traits.
>>
>> Also, I was thinking that this indicator needs to be easy to calculate in
>> a way that you can automate it in a platform that allows the community to
>> validate your answers.
>>
>> So I came with the idea of an Open Source Hardware Index (or Score but I
>> think that OSHI sounds better than OSHS). It works asking questions that
>> try to identify practices that prevent your project to be truly open source
>> hardware and also tries to identify good practices.  The idea is that if
>> you fill the expected answers you gain points and when you meet all the
>> required points your project can proudly say that is OSHW.
>>
>> However the truly beauty of an index like this is that it could be
>> validated by the community. My idea is that it could be possible to build a
>> crowd-validation system in a way that other members of the OSHWA can review
>> if your answers are true checking the evidence (links to your
>> documentation, sources, etc.) that you can attach to each of the answers.
>>
>> The idea is that the community validates if you are telling the  truth.
>> To prevent abuse a meta-validation system could be implemented were you can
>> "evaluate the evaluators" to see if their are being fair on their
>> evaluations.
>>
>> The added value of the index is that you can take the answers and
>> generate a profile or action path of things that your project must do or
>> improve to fully meet the OSHW definition. Also, it doesn't prevent
>> startups with small budgets to be validated (like other proposed
>> mechanisms), however the OSHWA could sell some kind of "OSHWA
>> certification" and certificacion services (like adapting bussiness
>> process/practices to meet OSHW definition and good practices) to companies
>> that want to put some kind of "marketing badge" on their products
>> considering that they also need to comply with the minimum required score.
>>
>> But well, I think that I have written too much. So is the link to the
>> index and the proposed questions, this is the first draft so any
>> suggestions are welcome.
>>
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PhDjiJIw6obQHZdK1bnozZMHUc3cUIjLUvL713kK4qo/edit#gid=1768287352
>>
>> I think that the next step could be to evaluate the performance of the
>> index, taking popular OSHW projects and other projects and see how they
>> score against the score or if we need to include/modify the existing
>> questions.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Mario.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> discuss mailing list
>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
>> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> *Non-confidentiality Disclaimer:* OSE works openly. All conversations in
> this email are intended to be transparent and subject to sharing, with due
> respect. OSE does not sign NDAs in order to promote collaboration. All of
> our work is libre or open source. If you are discussing potential
> development collaboration, your work must also be open source pursuant to
> the Open Source Hardware Association definition
> <http://www.oshwa.org/definition/>.
>
> See Global Village Construction Set TED Talk
> <http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski>. Sign up for our Design
> Sprints <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_Design_Sprint>. Subscribe
> as a True Fan <http://opensourceecology.org/community/#truefans>. See Tsu
> <https://www.tsu.co/OpenSourceEcology> or Facebook
> <https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcology> for updates. Subscribe to
> monthly update OSEmail <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSEmail>.
> Donate to our 501(c)3
> <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Other_donation_options>.
>
> Marcin Jakubowski, Executive Director
> Open Source Ecology
> http://opensourceecology.org
> +1.816.846.0736
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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/20150224/1fc4d989/attachment-0001.html>