A Critical Look At Open Licensing For Hardware

Glyn Moody writes "At a recent Open Hardware Camp in London, it became clear that one of the main obstacles to applying open source principles to hardware was licensing. For example, should competing big companies be allowed to use their economies of scale to make and sell cheaper products based on open hardware designs developed by small start-ups without payment? There's also the problem that hacking designs for physical objects like open source cars may have safety implications, which raises questions about liability. So what's the best way to address these issues?"

Comments

open design

[TheSHAD0W]

It's an "open design" for a reason. Perhaps switch "open design" for "easy licensing options". Further, unless a big company forks the project, the originator usually has some control over the progress of the project, which means their smaller product becomes a "reference platform" with some added value even if the bigger company has a somewhat cheaper version.

Open cars are hardly problems, much less new ones

[Chris Burke]

Cars have been "open" by default for the majority of their existence -- they may not hand you schematics, but all the workings of the car were out in the open for any mechanic to see and generally well understood. Mechanics could replace or rebuild just about any part of the car including replacing the engine with a from-scratch rebuild, and this behavior was not only generally tolerated but often encouraged by the auto makers. It's only in relatively recent times with the advent of computer control that the ability to hide the workings of the vehicle even became possible, and even more recently that these computers were used to try to create a "proprietary" environment where you couldn't have any random mechanic fix your car (and this attempt has largely failed).

Safety and liability are no more an issue than it was with hot rods and such back in the day. It's simple: Your vehicle, modified or no, has to comply with state and federal laws regarding road worthiness, and pass any inspections your state might have. If your car fails because of the original manufacturer's design, then it's their fault. If it fails because of a 3rd party modification, that's their fault. If it fails because of your tinkering in your garage, that's your fault. Grey areas are hammered out in the courts, like they always have been.

What we really need are openly documented hardware

[BhaKi]

Who asked open-source hardware? I just want hardware whose programming interfaces are completely documented.