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The Need for Open Hardware
bwt asks: "With all the talk of DRM lately, it occurs to me that the entire concept depends on limiting the choice for computer hardware. OK, so the proper reaction to the copyright industry's attempts at PC market control is to be able to build a PC that they can't control. I know there have been some discussions on open hardware, but most if it was prior to the emergence of DRM as a real threat. In fact, Richard Stallman wrote an editorial in 1999 and said 'Because copying hardware is so hard, the question of whether we're allowed to do it is not vitally important.' DRM has perhaps changed that. Isn't the need for open hardware becoming critical? What is the status of the open hardware efforts?"
What is the status of the open hardware efforts?
So far its closed, I'll let you know when I decide to void the warranty.
If any of evil legislation being proposed passes, wouldn't the status of open hardware be....
illegal
Really that is what the fight will be all about. Hardware will be made to defeat DRM, the only way it will not be is if it is all illegal.
Even if anti-DRM hardware is deemed illegal expect a black market in it that will put the alcohol black market during prohibition to shame.
General purpose components (processors, memory, storage) without DRM enforcement will be readily available until it is governmentally mandated otherwise, and at that point open hardware without DRM would be illegal. This discussion leads to a dead end.
There's always OpenPPC.
To quote the site: "The immediate goal of the project is to enable interested parties to build inexpensive, PPC-based Linux boxes from IBM's reference plans. In the longer term, we hope to expand the open-source ideals expressed in the GPL to hardware projects, primarily motherboards."
Isn't capitalism supposed to solve problems like this? Shouldn't companies who offer non-DRM hardware find favour with the consumer, and thus prosper over crippled-ware sellers? Oh wait, I forgot, the governments of the "Western" world are rapidly abdicating their role of legislating against the most abusive excesses of capitalism, in favour of legislation aiding and abetting them... Whoops.
Freedom: "I won't!"
There are a lot of open hardware designs at www.opencores.org.
CPU cores, Ethernet MACs, complete SOC designs, etc. It's a great site, especially if you are into fpga development.
The European Space Agency has made available VHDL for a CPU that implements the SPARC V8 instruction set. The VHDL is available under the GNU LGPL license. Granted, implementations of LEON are slow (25 MHz?) but it's totally freely available. You may need to buy a $99 license from SPARC International to actually sell any CPUs you make, but that's pretty cheap.
The SPARC instruction set is pretty simple. I don't imagine that a similar effort for x86 CPUs would be as simple or as quick.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
A brief introduction to the simputer to those who don't already know:
"The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man. "
The system software is available under GPL, and the hardware specs under SGPL, the full licensing info is here.
With a $99 FPGA development board and the free design tools from Xilinx, you too can make your own CPU without even breaking out a soldering iron. :)
Which is, in my opinion, a good definition. Open specifications of hardware is needed for fair competition in the OS-market, as well as for higher quality software. Drivers based on reverse engineered specifications is obviously harder to write than if you had the specifications from the start.
The real problem isn't availability of open hardware; anyone will (presumably) remain able to cobble together chips and wires and create a piece of computing equipment.
The problem will arise when you try to use your homebrew machine on the internet. There are two scenarios here.
The more likely scenario is that the big content suppliers and middlemen will pressure PC manufacturers into supplying only "DRM enabled" hardware to consumers; support for such hardware will be built into the Windows kernel and DMCA-protected against interference. What's more, a Palladium (or succeeding) web security system will interact with the trusted end-user hardware to enable net content access. In this scenario, users of noncompliant hardware will still be able to use their machines locally, and to access non-Palladium net content, but will be excluded from using the most popular OS and apps.
The less likely but still frighteningly probable scenario would involve the government (whichever government you happen to live under) passing a "net homeland security act" which would make it illegal to attach non-certified hardware to the internet. Needless to say, the certification process would be onerous and expensive for hobbyists, and would mandate compliance with DRM standards.
The latter may sound far-fetched, but consider that we already require cars to be certified as safe (and relatively non-polluting, in some states) before they're allowed to use public roads. The analogy is fairly direct.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
" Open Hardware is engineers sharing their designs with each other through the disclosure of their schematics and software systems used on their designs. Do you remember the time when you purchased a circuit board, or computer, and the schematics came with it? I do..."
Software can be written by anyone with even a very lowly computer.
So can hardware if you use Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). True, you won't generate a 20 THz processor with FPGA, but most hardware doesn't need power. If FPGA's became more common, you could download and share devices, rather than just downloading and sharing device drivers.
You would still need to buy the physical end, such as a virgin controllerless harddrive, or a simple plug to put an ethernet cord into. But if you could download the rest of the hardware, and if you could then plug it into a device like an FPGA, you could bypass almost any complaints people would have with hardware manufacturers.
More importantly, when you can download a set of instructions for programming hardware, you can then share these instructions. Then you gain all the known benefits of open source software.
The key to open hardware, in my opinion, is paradoxical. To have open hardware, your design must be closed, immutable.
That's the only reason why Apple survives, even thrives today, because they control the OS as well as the hardware.
Just because the design is closed doesn't mean, however, that the use and functionality of the system cannot be adjusted. You can slam as many drives, RAM, processor upgrades, and PCI cards in a desktop Mac as you would any other PC. Only the circuit designs remain under the control of one company.
In the case of Apple, it's a benevolent dictatorship at the moment, with a CEO who is outspoken on DRM issues.
The Intel world is problematic because Intel calls the shots. This is good because all companies must follow the designs that fit their processor. But it leaves us in that benevolent dictatorship again. Add the Microsoft layers and things are pro-DRM again.
Yet, take out the MS layers and Intel loses the need for most of its processors and cannot afford to make them.
So, it does seem that the only way to break into a true open hardware design is to break out of the traditional processor model. The PowerPC chip specs are openly available, but I don't see processor manufacturing becoming a home or OSS project. Too much capital and hardware.
Was it the Crusoe project that was trying to make a processor that ran any OS? Could that be the key? Was it cheaper?
Somehow, there's gotta be a way to make a cheaper processor.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
What concerns us most is the thin layer between hardware and software: items like the BIOS and flash ROM. That layer is ripe for DRM and other technologies. That issue is quite different from Stallman's essay mentioned in the post. This isn't an issue of Free (as in freedom) hardware, but is about a matter of that "thin layer" of software where DRM will likely dwell.
FSF is currently extremely short on resources, but we hope to put at least some force behind initiatives to create Free Software in this area. In some sense, it is the last frontier for freedom on our computers. Indeed, the only proprietary software code anywhere in my computer is that which lives in the BIOS. Before now, the issue was not so strategically significant, but the fact that DRM technologies may soon live in that very BIOS makes it more significant than ever.
If anyone has an interest and reverse engineering experience, and would like involved with working on the free BIOS projects, particularly for laptop devices, please contact me. Also, please contact me if you would like to donate to a restricted fund for this effort, as we are considering setting one up if there is substantial interest.
Sincerely,
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
Well, it's not as open as it was in the early 80's when IBM used to sell technical reference guides for PCs which contained the actual circuit diagrams. Those of us who worked at PC clone companies found these to be immensely useful.
You might argue that IBM ended up losing out to its competition in the PC market and shouldn't have done this. I believe, however, that the open nature of the PC eventually resulted in a total market sized hundreds of times larger than what would have resulted under IBM's total proprietary control. They probably made more profit in PCs, PC-based servers and PC software over the last 20 years than they ever would have if the system weren't open.
Their relative share of the pie was smaller, but the pie turned into a monster pie. Moreover, other clone companies pioneered the concept of the very profitable PC-based server. IBM stole this idea back and created their own lines of servers. The PC pie became richer, too.
There's even a control case to check this theory: witness the what happened when they tried to go back to a closed hardware system with the PS/2. It wasn't a poster child for success.
www.sparc.com
From the SPARC site:
I've about had it with Slashdot's political bent. In the past year. Slashdot has gone from an site full of links to interesting and fun things to a mess of misinformation about the DMCA, DRM technology, patents, copyrights, and other issues that-- for reasons that escape me-- are fundamentally offensive to a good chunk of the Slashdot audience.
I believe that reasoned political debate is a wonderful thing. I love talking politics with my friends, whether we agree or disagree. Those sorts of conversations always leave be with the sense that I've learned something new, or heard an opinion that I haven't heard before.
But Slashdot is not the place for reasoned political debate. More often than not, the people who post to Slashdot seem to lack even the most basic information about the topic at hand. Instead of reading and listening and learning about significant issues, the Slashdot readership prefers instead to just repeat the same old litanies: DMCA bad, RIAA bad, MPAA bad, DRM bad, MS bad, Linux good, EFF good, RMS good, capitalism = greed, government = corruption, et cetera, et cetera.
A year ago, the solution was easy: I just chose not to see any articles from the "Your Rights Online" section on the front page. Poof. Done.
Now, half the articles, more or less, make reference to one of the collection of alphabet soup I listed above.
I'm tired of this. I've been an active participant on Slashdot for a long time-- I don't remember precisely how long, but I've posted some 1,200 comments, and I maxed out my karma a long time ago-- but I'm just about ready to give it up. I'm just not finding that much on Slashdot that's worth reading any more.
I know this is off-topic-- and I'm sure I'll be moderated accordingly-- but I just felt like letting go with a rant. Don't follow this up here. Instead, if you want to reply at all, do so on my journal.
It is actually kind of depressing that even though we were all so well aware of what was coming we are still here, right up against the wall with so little progress to show.
P.S. Yes, I am aware of how the "M$" makes me look :-) the sad thing is I am a lot like that guy, except until I got my well paying IT job it was my parent's garage, not basement.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The notion that the "Free market will solve everything" is based on some very flawed assumptions.
The first is the assumption of the perfectly informed consumer. There is no such thing as the perfectly informed consumer, a customer who is aware of which companies own which, which company behave ethically or distrubite products that do not conform the consumers ethical standards.
There is just too much information and it is just too complicated for even the concerned consumers to know it all. Most consumers dont even care if a company kills babies* so long as they get cheap gasoline (*i know of know such company).
the second flawed assumption is that the market can ever actually be free.
Governments can and do interfere. Governments usually* set minimum ethical standards and try to stop companies defrauding the investors or cheating their customers (* need i even say Enron, WorldCom etc?).
Governments are also one of the largest spenders in the market. The economies of many small towns are totally dependent on Goverment military spending, governmetn prison bugdets.
So government legislation and spending have a huge effect on the market place.
big businness calls for 'laissez faire' so they can make as much profit with the minimum obligation to show and morality or provide quality products.
Capitalism is not supposed to solve problems like this.
Democracy, and a goverment that represents the best interests of the majority of its people is supposed to sovle this.
The whole problem with DRM is that anytime someone can choose between having it or not, they will almost always choose not to have it. This is elementary common sense.
Manufacturers are rightly scared of DRM for this reason. Anything too radical or obstrusive will kill sales. And what MPAA/RIAA wants is highly radical.
They are thus pursuing two avenues around the problem. The first is to make DRM a part of Windows. Since as we've observed most users (for a variety of reasons) are locked into Windows, they will have no choice but to (eventually) upgrade into DRM. There are some problems with this approach; they (correctly) don't trust Microsoft, either to do a good job or to look out for their interests, and there are those pesky "competitors." Will Apple play ball? Think about it. They'll have a powerful incentive not to, to try to use the Windows-DRM shock as an opportunity to gain marketshare. But of course, as has been well established in the past, Apple can be bought. That still leaves Linux. And that's a bit frightening, frankly, since you can't reliably control Linux, and the buzz on the street is that, someday, it might be what everyone uses.
That brings me to the second prong of this attack: the CBDTPA, in its many forms, past and (undoubtedly) future. And that, basically, would make "Open Hardware" illegal. If past legislation is any guide, it would probably also make talking about how to build open hardware illegal.
So if you're considering spending time and energy getting involved in the design and (god forbid) manufacture of open hardware, please don't bother. If you're determined to contribute to the issue, you're needed in Washington.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
gEDA is also a good project for Linux people interested in open hardware: they develop a GNU liscenced set of hardware design tools.
Just my bookmarks two cents on the topic.
All circuits busy.
There actually already is a great deal of open hardware out there. It just depends on what you want to build, if you want to look at some neat circuit designs for various applications the University of Washington EE dept maintains a list of older circuit designs here (hey guess where I go to school). Pretty simple stuff like how to make Oscillators, pelter coolers, using serial ports, multi-vibrator circuit A-D converters, etc.
There are lots of other archives and examples, around the web. BUT, the catch is that this information is useless to most people. Unless you have a few hundred thousands of dollars to spend to make your own IC's the only option is microprocessors, FPGAs, CPLDs, etc. The design of custom IC's is not a consumer market and never will be untill someone comes out with a neat little Star Trek replicator. The closest thing to consumer IC's is MOSIS, which will make a few chips for you for around $10,000. The UW actually has two IC fabrication labs and only a few people can (and need to) make chips with them because the lithographic masks cost $30k each.
You can make your own processors if you really want, there are plenty of books that will teach you how to make your own Verilog MIPS processor. But, the software to take that design and turn it into a chip layout costs a couple hundred thousand dollars. But, if you want to build your own Pentium class processor, you're out of luck. Those designs are the property of whoever makes them, and with good reason. It costs millions of dollars to make and design these chips (don't forget just getting your chip to work is only 1/3 of the work, manufacturing it reliably is a far greater problem). There was a case several years ago against AMD (I believe) who suddenly came out with a memory design that was smaller than the industry standard. Funny thing was that another smaller company had come out with the design several months earlier... and guess what happened? They got a hold of the chips realized AMD had copied the design EXACTLY, except for a single reversed transistor (which didn't really change anything). Needless to say AMD lost a shit load of money and had to pay royalties. So, with respect to Stallman's rather silly statement the question is important and the answer is a resounding NO.
If you want to make your own circuits though, there are plenty of resources out there pcbexpress.com will take your PCB (printed circuit board) layouts and manufacture boards for under $100. And there's even free PCB design software out there (a lot of companies have their own for their services but everyone takes GERBER files - the industry standard for PCB layout). One popular free program is EAGLE which has Linux and Windows clients http://www.cadsoft.de/ , which has pretty good quality - hey its free. Plus there are lots of other PCB programs on Freshmeat. There are plenty of resources out there to make your own boards and lots of people do, but open hardware will never be as simple as downloading a design and hitting a button (even open source software isn't even that easy) because electronics isn't that simple. You can solder things together perfectly and have your design not work, because of some small detail or it could work perfectly, which is what makes it so fun!
I'm not even to the point yet where I can compile my own kernel, and now you want me to build a clean room so I can build my own hardware?
It'd be nice if I could do this, but what's the point in OSH if you can't build your own?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!