Group items tagged

The key of values, by FSF : "The fundamental difference between the two movements is in their values, their ways of looking at the world. For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, "Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement." For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution."

"Even without considering radical projects like all the Open Money and Metacurrency initiatives that proposes new forms of currencies, we can think more about further joining existing currencies with microcredit certificates like the Open Source Hardware Reserve Bank ones. There is the need of accurate, portable and shareable tools of reputation ranking, able to interconnect different local contexts and attached to existing currencies. The Open Hardware still needs proper open-content licenses, since with current licenses we can protect the design but not the manufactured product or forks. And Open Hardware projects will have the need of warranties and conformance marks about the proper function of the manufactured product. Why don't we use the microcredit certificates for these tasks as well? We could design microcredit certificates to act as a conformance mark, warranty and license certificates as well: only the community can issue them and use them for its own self-organization." (http://www.openp2pdesign.org/2011/open-design/business-models-for-open-hardware/) "

Raphael Rousseau, our co-founder and the most in free culture of Ynternet.org team, is pointing this definition as THE key. Situations can change, sometimes even licenses can update version and become less or more appropriate, but what is interesting is the definition, then it is easy to rely it to a license that suits the specific situation.

"Open source hardware has a set of business models that include the following: Design distribution - Companies can pack sets of designs and sell the distribution just like Linux distributions. The OpenTech CD-ROM is an example of this method. Design technical support - Experts can give support for Open designs. Asics.ws is a company that follows this model by releasing IP cores and charging customers for technical support. Design implementation - Companies can implement the designs, sell them and pay royalties to original designers, according to their release license. Releasing - The release of open designs under the control of GPL-compatible licenses can occur whenever a silicon implementation is considered commercially." "

"Furthermore, there are three more business models for Open Hardware already implemented: 1. Free service for building a greater user base: Adafruit created Adafruit Jobs Board as a marketplace for designers, makers, programmers, artists, engineers and companies who want to meet and work together. This is a free service, but in order to use the job boards users must be Adafruit customers. 2. Partnership between Long Tail Open and Fabbing businesses: Ponoko has teamed up with SparkFun Electronics to enable its users to build custom electronics products combining Ponoko's laser cutting technology with a 1500+ strong electronics catalog from open source electronics supplier SparkFun. 3. Funding Open Hardware projects for getting good Open documentation: In August 2010, Bildr offered to fund original user projects in return for good documentation: in this way it would have promoted a bildr user by showcasing his/her work and paying for the parts to construct it. In return, Bildr would have got more information for its wiki, blog and community under the MIT software license.""

"The Forty Percent Model This model is based on a simple rule: transparency about costs and a choice between paying us to make the product or doing it yourself. The basic process is that we list all the components and other costs of our product (an autonomous blimp in this case) and links to where you can buy them yourself, along with instructions on how to put them together. If you want to do it yourself, or perhaps already have some of the parts and don't need ours, go for it!"

"The current Open Source Hardware Draft Definition is intended to help provide guidelines for the development and evaluation of licenses for Open Source Hardware and it says that Open Hardware is "a term for tangible artifacts - machines, devices, or other physical things - whose design has been released to the public in such a way that anyone can make, modify, distribute, and use those things". The main difference with Open Source Software is that Open Source Software is collaborative, while Open Hardware is derivative:"

"Open hardware companies are experimenting with different business models. Arduino, for example, makes money largely through design consulting. By creating a design community around their products, they stay in touch with the latest developments. They have also registered their name as a trademark."

I don't know if he's right, but he is pointing some intersting existing debates

Here we can see that Opensource Hardware" is a n expression mostly used for computer-related hardware. It is intersting to evaluate if OSE and wikispeed should relate to other branches of opensources, non-computerized ones ?

US based, setting standards and micro-formats for compatibility...