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Alicia,
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Think about charging from a different angle.
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If we don't, then it's free for certain people to muddy the image of open source hardware. Free to weaken the movement. Free to make businesses uncertain about participating.
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Forget patents, a license for trademark to certify goods is much easier, especially if certifying is a simple matter of people in the OSHWA community sponsoring you.
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This system creates three kinds of incentives for genuine open hardware. Both sponsors and the people applying stand to lose credibility for a wrong certification. There is a penalty and loss of certification for the hardware. And the process is 100% transparent. You're motivated to uphold best practices in the scrutiny of fellow open hardware enthusiasts who have a strong ethos.
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I'm already going that route. We trademark '
<a href="https://twitter.com/freedware">freedware</a>' and will allow people to use it on truly open source and freed goods. The fee is perpetually waived except it kicks in for misuse of trademark on any goods that are found closed, at which point the license terminates after applying the fee.
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The community decides if the goods violated the spirit of open source. Simple as that. And we don't chase after anyone to pay the fee, the incentives are strong enough that most people who stray will pay up and clean up their act.
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You can wait to see how it works out for us before trying it out, of course. It'll be an honor to have you as 'competition'. Which in any case is good for everyone!
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Matt,
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The fee is accompanied by a loss of certification. We don't charge a fee for them to be falsely certified as open.
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Rest assured, friend, that a lot of thought has been put into this! We welcome input, however. Open door policy.
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😃,
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Marino Hernandez
<br/>(just a founder of
<a href="http://www.marketply.org">Marketply</a>)
<br/>203-429-4205
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On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 12:04 PM, alicia
<span><<a target="_blank" href="mailto:amgibb@gmail.com">amgibb@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:
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Marino,
<br/>.....
<br/>So far we don't charge for the logo or OSHWA branded oshw mostly because we don't want to turn into the USB problem 20 years down the road :). Gatekeepers by definition are not open, so OSHWA tries to stay away from that. Self labeling and self policing has worked very well so far, as you and Marco point out, but I don't know that the entire community would want to change that to include a payment for bad behavior.
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<br/>What I have heard from the community is that inventors want more options. Options to release some things open and some closed and have a clear direction about how to post that correctly. Options like the creative commons has options, but the issue we come up from a legal stand point is that these would all need to be in the form of social contracts. As I understand it, a license would only actually holdup in court if you had a patent to license your thing from, since oshw doesn't include obtaining patents, we can't really make licenses. Enter creative lawyering? Anyway, that last bit was maybe a bit of a tangent from your email there.
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<br/>Cheers,
<br/>Alicia
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On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Matt Maier
<span><<a target="_blank" href="mailto:blueback09@gmail.com">blueback09@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:
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Alicia,
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Regarding the discussion points, what is the goal(s) those questions are working towards? Are you trying to obtain some kind of protection for OSHW work aside from the prior art exception or are you trying to confirm that the prior art exception is enough on its own?
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Do the discussion points reference open hardware developers in general, or OSHW branded projects in particular?
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Marino,
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The Thing Tracker could work as a central point for searching open hardware projects
<a target="_blank" href="http://thingtracker.net/">http://thingtracker.net/</a>
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If someone's project isn't actually open, then why would they pay to certify it as open? If it's not open then it shouldn't be certified as open EXPECIALLY if they offer money.
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-Matt
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On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 3:22 AM, Marketply
<span><<a target="_blank" href="mailto:contact@marketply.org">contact@marketply.org</a>></span> wrote:
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I'd love to attend.
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And will add thoughts now as well.
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<strong>Defensive publishing tags:</strong>
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Make it as easy as possible for the USPTO to find open hardware. Use tags. Build a distributed, official database for the tags. With backups hosted by various other supporters (websites) of open technology. Or a BitTorrent type of strategy where all info from open hardware is distributed and contains tags.
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<strong>Publish often:</strong>
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Defensively publish to the USPTO, quite often, and each time include a link to the hardware info in database.
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<strong>Include examiners:</strong>
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Build something that functions like the
<a target="_blank" href="http://ip.com/publish/offensive-publishing.html">ip.com system</a>. According to
<a target="_blank" href="https://publish.ip.com/">their other page</a>:
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"
<em>Assure that your publication can be found and cited by patent examiners around the world by publishing to IP.com's publishing services</em>"
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If they can get patent examiners to browse their
<a target="_blank" href="http://ip.com/">ip.com</a> systems, we can get examiners to browse an open hardware system.
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<strong>Super easy certifying:</strong>
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Have people self-certify themselves, as suggested by
<a target="_blank" href="http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/2013-February/000207.html">Marco Perry</a>. Except have them be sponsored by people in the community, and to pay only if the community calls BS on their hardware being open. Otherwise it's free to certify, and this includes for companies.
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Each time BS is called on a person or company, their fine to pay increases. And their license is immediately void for the hardware that failed in being open.
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An annual crowdfunding plus any foundation grants helps to cover costs.
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<strong>Allow video as description:</strong>
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It's getting easier to
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1590403900/soloshot-go-film-yourself-automatically">webcam your activities</a> and to
<a target="_blank" href="https://make-dev.mozillalabs.com/en-US/projects/interactive-biography">add expandable info</a> into video.
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<a target="_blank" href="https://webmaker.org/">Videos</a> can say so much more than words, and you see the action and nuances of creating something. Soon we'll have cameras that can swivel to follow what your hands do. Or people can open-source make it!
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😃,
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Marino Hernandez
<br/>(just a founder of
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.marketply.org/">Marketply</a>)
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<a target="_blank" href="tel:203-429-4205">203-429-4205</a>
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On October 23, 2013 at 1:42 AM Alicia Gibb <
<a target="_blank" href="mailto:pip@nycresistor.com">pip@nycresistor.com</a>> wrote:
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Hi all,
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OSHWA is having a small meeting in NYC on the NYU campus with Julie Samuels, the
<a target="_blank" href="https://www.eff.org/about/staff/julie-samuels">Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents branch of the EFF,</a> and Jason Schultz, a professor at NYU who has researched many aspects of
<a target="_blank" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2298593">defensive patents</a>. They are both interested in helping the oshw movement.
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Unfortunately, the room we're meeting in is small, so we are having a few OSHWA board reps present and can only bring in 5 or 6 folks. We wanted to open the meeting to any folks on this list eager to discuss lawyer-y stuff. The meeting will be on Nov. 11th from around 10am-2pm though I haven't gotten exact times yet. Please let me know if you have interest in attending, and if you can't attend but have thoughts please send those my way too.
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Below is a summary of points we'll be talking about though the direction may shift during as the day takes course. >From the questions we get at OSHWA, we feel the community would benefit from further legal knowledge in these areas.
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<strong>Background:</strong>
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<span><span>Oshw is typically innovated faster than the patent system can keep up with, and the patent system is too expensive for small businesses. This was much of the basis that the current oshw definition was founded on.</span></span>
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<span><strong>Discussion points:</strong><br/><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"></span>1) Fears of someone patenting pre-existing oshw work and the USPTO fails to find the prior art. (Hasn’t happened yet to our knowledge.) Includes fears that the social contract as definition won’t be enough to hold up in court. Similar case studies could help?<br/> <br/>2) Is there another area we could put aspects of oshw that is not in the realm of a patent, but rather User Agreement or Terms of Service?</span>
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3) Continue the discussion / brain storm implementation of the
<a target="_blank" href="http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/2013-February/thread.html">layering of openness / laundry label from the discussion list</a>.
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Thanks,
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Alicia Gibb
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