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How Open Source Hardware Is Kick-Starting Kickstarter
ptorrone writes "Imagine waking up and seeing your design for a circuit being used in a product by someone who never contacted you to ask if it was okay. You will not get any payment for their usage of your design, they've raised over $31,000, and they're selling something you worked really hard on. You have no control over what someone does with something you made. Is this a nightmare? Perhaps for some, but this is actually a dream come true for others who do open-source hardware. MAKE magazine profiles a maker using open-source hardware for his now-funded project and looks at others using open hardware for their works."
for lengthy periods of time?
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
If I didn't have the resources and someone else did, good for them. This is not hypothetical: I publicly posted an idea a while back to build a device for myself, and a couple of years later, it was a successful consumer electronic product someone else made. Someone else did the production and marketing, and then a big company eventually bought the company out. Yeah, I had the idea and did the initial design, but I wouldn't have marketed it. So I'm glad someone else was able to get what they wanted.
People who want to hoard knowledge are bad for society. If you actually will act upon it, great, you need some protections like patents or whatever. But if it's just something you enjoy doing, be happy with doing what you enjoy. Life's not all about money...
If your idea is unique enough to get a patent, patent it. Not everybody who can invent wants to run a company.
I donated to an open source hardware group called "Global Village Construction Set".
I hate the whole "Global Village" concept. I love the idea of sitting down and designing hardware to be cheap to make, and giving away the designs.
And just like open source, you can improve on the original designs, fix any flaws, etc.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
If you've got true talent in designing hardware, you should work for a real company. Giving it away for free isn't going to feed you spouse and children. What are you going to tell them, "It brought happiness to some dudes on the internet that I don't know?" In the current economy, you need to look out for number one, not these commune pipe dreams.
Who the fuck do you think you are telling other people what to do.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
In the hardware realm, design theft is SOP. Most of the hardware theft that causes problems are firmware IP theft and industrial design.
As a hardware designer, almost all of my designs utilize bits and pieces of previous designs, mine and others. There is very little that is actually new or patentable. Most of the circuits with patents have had the patents run out. Those portions of my designs that were unique could have received an industrial dsign patented but my employer chose not to.
Imagine my surprise when one of my designs was "knocked off" by a competitor. That is buisness. That is how technology advances. Take a good idea and make it better.
Simply put, as a former CEO of Motorola once said, "Steal shamelessly"
He is Anonymous Coward, the most famous user in Slashdot. ;-)
I'm pretty sure KickStarter really kickstarted with indie movies, music, etc. In fact, they are still the main projects on KickStarter (and similar sites, like indiegogo).
What's really 'kickstarting' KickStarter a second time, at least when it comes to tech, is the iDevice.
There's two areas for technology, the Tech section:
www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/popular
And the Design section, which is vastly more tech than design:
www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/design/popular
1 in 5 of the projects in either section section are iDevice-oriented - this includes, for example, the 'Sacred Grounds' smartphone app, by which they really mean iOS app and "they hope" to make an Android version as well.
For the Design section this of course makes sense.. the iPhone and iPad give a narrow target with lots of users so you're far more likely to gain success with e.g. a stand or enclosure there than you could when designing for any single random Android, BB, WP7 or whatever device.
But also keep in mind it includes such gems as this:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mcnab-lazar/cablegone-cable-managing-solution?ref=category
Now I'm all for cable management solutions, even if there's dozens available in the world that doesn't mean we can't have one more. But the additional quality of this cable management is that it can double as a stand for an iPad, the project summary (as seen in widgets etc.) notes:
Yes.. then again, it could be used as any tablet stand. It could be used as a laptop stand. Similarly, a two-by-four could also be used as an iPad stand.
So why point out the iPad? Marketing, of course. And not just to end-users, but to KickStarter as well. I've more than once joked to people who are doing innovative tech that if they want to get listed on KickStarter, they should mention an iDevice in some way to increase their odds.
With 1 in 5 projects being iDevice-exclusive or iDevice-targeting in those two sections, I'm not sure I should be treating it as just a joke anymore.
A bit more on-topic.. 'open hardware' is indeed a large portion of the other 4 in 5 projects in those sections - sometimes from the get-go, sometimes after deliberations and popular demand (such as with the HexBright Flex flashlight). 'open software' however lags behind quite a bit with most projects going nowhere fast. In part that's because those projects tend to be vague, and in part it's because there's often no visible ROI. With an indie movie, you get some exclusive images, a downloadable copy, perhaps even the DVD. With hardware you might get a kit to build it yourself, or a pre-assembled thing, or maybe you just get to see that a website that ends up selling the completed products was indeed launched and you get a sticker (hey, whatever you pledge for - it's not a bazaar after all, it's more like an investment round.. rewards are just for enticement). But with software, especially open source software.. what people, or the market, get is often unclear.
E.g. TweetFree: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1100820943/tweetfree-secure-distributed-social-networking-pla?ref=category
So in essence, any funding goes into a black box never to be seen, or accounted for, again, if the blurbs are the only thing to go by. And this for a service that vaguely de
Who the fuck do you think you are telling him what to do by asking him who he thinks he is asking him what to do
If you think your idea is worth something, try to sell it. Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is worth gold.
So if he is Anonymous Coward who are you?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
How the fuck do you not understand the difference between asking and telling?
which is totally what she said