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Open Hardware Journal
Bruce Perens writes "Open Hardware Journal is a new technical journal on designs for physical or electronic objects that are shared as if they were Open Source software. It's an open journal under a Creative Commons license. The first issue contains articles on 'Producing Lenses With 3D Printers,' 'Teaching with Open Hardware Submarines,' 'An Open Hardware Platform for USB Firmware Updates and General USB Development,' and more."
Mr. Perens has promised to be around tonight to answer any questions readers might have.
I'm playing editor for Open Hardware Journal. I'll be in and out this evening, and will be able to answer questions from Slashdotters, maybe with some delay.
Bruce Perens.
Hey! When did Bruce become Mr. Perens in these parts?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
What are the current licensing options for open hardware? Has anyone found a "copyleft" equivalent?
About a decade ago, this issue was discussed at length on the OpenCores mailing lists. At the time, the best we (engineers) could come up with was that the design documents/files could be copyrighted and so GPLd, but there was no way to oblige that a physical device be distributed with design data.
It seemed to be okay for someone to take a design, make secret modifications, build it and distributed a physical product that could not be replicated. The obligation to share modifications only kicked in when the GPLd design data was distributed, not when the physical product was distributed. Is this the case, or has a real legal mind figured out that we were wrong?
Hey Bruce (do you mind if I just stick to Bruce :-) ), well done and congrats
I have been a wee bit involved in the fab lab network (born in MIT by Neil Gershenfeld), it's a really cool network of 'labs' which are basically small buildings with some 3d manufacturing equipment, printers and enough 'stuff' to allow people to make anything they can dream of. One of the goals is to spread the designs to other labs around the world.
1: To me it would seem this effort you are now involved in could act as a catalyst to bring this and the (seemingly) many other open hardware initiatives together, do you agree?
2: I also watched a video on TED about open source cancer research (from Boston, still on front page) and note the open publication efforts currently being touted. Do you not think there is an opportunity for a Open X network (X == everything) ?
In essence, do you think there is a possibility of momentum towards a new world here, where research and innovation in all areas take centre stage and move us all along at the pace mankind can move along? (I am thinking of the mass unrest with the way everything is and the apparent move towards a change, I feel we need a catalyst and somebody has to do it. I for instance have donated all my shares in a business I have been building for more than 5 years to a charity for innovation and education and the rest to the staff of the business, I know there is need for change and I constantly look for ways to actually do it, something more than 'rooftop shouting').
Is there a chance here to stimulate a new movement, a slow and focussed movement with real thought behind it ?
Being almost entirely a softie, I've often been tempted to take some of my embarassingly parallel mass evaluations (e.g. board evaluations in games, or number-theoretic applications) onto a large array of tiny slaves on an FPGA. However, I've get to find a comfortable route into that field. Will the OHJ be heading into that middle ground? And with the skin-flint newb in mind?
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
If enough people get annoyed, fork the project. I think the biggest problem with OpenOffice was our reluctance to fork, which went on much too long.
Bruce Perens.
Apparently it as produced with LibreOffice (metadata, if you can't spot it). Is the source odt file for the journal available? It's fairly clear that designing the journal was not a priority, and I think that's fine, but in terms of sane defaults, Latex would have produced a much better looking document. E.g. the odd positioning of "Software:" on page 19 just wouldn't happen, left aligned instead of justified is very strange, no hyphenation.
If you're worried about the increased work load (without cause, in my experience), you could crowdsource the effort, same goes for still accepting submissions in HTML, ODT or MS formats to avoid scaring off people who aren't used to Latex.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
this is potentially a huge space. do you have any ideas about the segment you're addressing? I can
image projects that are
- too dangerous: there are some plans floating around for making a tig welder out of a microwave transformer, which seems
cool but it might be too dodgy
- too specialized: tips for grinding fluted cutters
- too derivative: projects that require alot of infrastructure (i.e. a ccd and a xilinx)
- too expensive: I found this neat application for my $150,000 low end used gas spectrometer
- too substantial: construct this working harrier jet in your own back yard out of sheet metal and a file
do you have a bounding box in mind?
Hi Bruce!
Obviously I'm biased, since I work on the project -- but have you seen Public Knowledge Project's "Open Journal Systems"? It's FOSS and its goal is to automate the management and workflow for publishing an academic-style journal. It wouldn't do your layout etc. for you, but it would help with submission management, peer review, and a lot of the associated stuff that needs doing. See http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs for the details.
Cheers,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
I'll put in a way to do RSS.
Bruce Perens.
When we say Open platform, it really means a vendor willing to sell hardware without locking down the software in it.
Bruce Perens.
It's like reading a dumbed down version of "Make" magazine. "How to Make Really Crappy Lenses with a 3D Printer". "How to Make a Submarine Out of Plastic Irrigation Pipe". A simple USB to something interface board. Plus a whiney "Open Hardware Needs Your Help" section, and a long rant on the right to modify stuff.
Compare "Home Shop Machinist", "Fine Woodworking", "Nuts and Volts", or "Servo". There are far better DIY magazines.
I'd completely agree with you in regards to Windows 8. But I still don't see Vista fitting in contexually to the statements made at all.
"There is a trend in devices to protect the interests of the manufacturer " .. "as we saw with the market failure of Windows Vista and see here"
The market failure of Windows Vista had nothing at all to do with vendor hardware locking whatsoever. That Windows Vista was a market failure is beyond dispute. That any lockouts may or may not have occurred in embedded systems with Vista, may also be possible. And certainly, Vista supports hardware-based DRM - as Windows 7, and MacOSX do. However, the market failure of Windows Vista bears no comparison to manufacturer hardware protection.
My point was not to argue about whether Windows Vista failed, but that its placement appears to be a cheap jab at Microsoft, as its failure doesn't relate to the topic being discussed. WHEN Windows 8 comes out, if we experience a severe lack of adoption due *in large part* to vendor hardware locking - and it fails on that basis - then by all means, use it as an example of an OS failing in the market due to such.
There are plenty of current vendors shipping software locked to specific hardware - any one of which, if shown to cause failure in the marketplace for that product, would have provided a fine example. Trying to attribute Vista's failure to such is extremely weak, and gives the appearance of catering to a specific group of readers. If the problem is that hardware locks aren't actually causing marketplace failures yet (see Apple, Sony, MS Xbox, etc), then that's a space for another discussion.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Vista's media protection was intrusive. Going back farther, you might remember copy protection dongles. I sincerely would put both of those things in the same bag with the Motorola battery lock and its failure in this case, the stupid way my HP printer is programmed to behave once I reload ink in its reservoirs, and the need to jailbreak an iPhone. They are all instances of the software placing someone else's agenda above that of the customer.
Bruce Perens.
Bruce,
One of my pet peeves is open hardware projects that use closed source or free-beer-crippleware design automation tools. It seems very hard to get people to see how important it is to provide open hardware design files in formats that can be edited with open source DA tools. I even had Lady Ada tell me once in a forum: "Tools don't matter." I found that attitude shocking. I understand that a fully open source tool chain is neither practical nor appropriate for every open hardware project. But I am amazed that open hardware schematics and PCB files are still designed using cripple-ware when at least two good open source tool chains exist.
So several questions:
1) What is your personal take on necessity for open source DA tools where possible?
2) What is the Open Hardware Journal's policy?
3) Is there any hope of seeing a "recursively open artifact" license for open hardware projects? (That is: a license where the design is open, the design file formats are openly documented, and at least one open source tool exists for every step in the tool chain.)
As the Journal is evolving, you'll find that simple applications like Libre Office simply are not flexible enough. Please consider (the sooner the better) migrating the workflow towards Scribus (http://www.scribus.net) - it's Desktop Publishing - oriented, open source and the best FOSS tool for the job.
Also, as a former DTP pro, I'd recommend producing two versions of the journal - one that's meant to be read on paper, and (at least) one meant to be read on-screen. The present form of the Journal is a hybrid and does not suit everybody. Having a low and high quality download doesn't solve the problem.
Finally, before making decisions for the screen-only version, you could administer a poll to see what screen size is the majority of readers using. Formatting the Journal for 15" is very different from formatting it for 9". Perhaps a HTML version (where users can adjust the font size at will) is a better solution than the fixed-font-size PDF format. Probably the commenter above that suggested a blog format had this problem in the back of his mind.
Homepage for the EPUB standard.
Why do I recommend EPUB so highly? Besides the fact that it's an open standard, that is? ;) Well, Wikipedia has a good comparison chart of e-book formats versus the e-book readers that are covered. It shows that the only format with a broader range is straight text. (Yes, it even beats out PDF and HTML.)
There is a plug-in available for OO.o and LO called Writer2ePub that will save directly to EPUB, btw. The main support channel is through a MobileRead forum.
May I suggest that you spend some time browsing MobileRead before making any final decisions? In particular, I would like to call your attention to the Calibre, Sigil, and OpenInkpot forums.
Next, there is a package called eLyXer which does a pretty good job of converting LyX files to XHTML. EPUB relies heavily on a subset of XHTML as part of its specification so I've been experimenting with a new toolchain.
I write my documents in LyX to get good looking PDFs, then use eLyXer to get XHTML, then use the import/convert function of Calibre to get a good looking EPUB, then use Sigil to fine tune the final output. Since both eLyXer and the e-book conversion utility packaged as part of Calibre can be called from the command line, it would be possible to automate some of that work pretty easily. I haven't bothered with that as my needs are only for occasional use at the moment.
Another alternative would be to just write the journal in Sigil. That would probably mean abandoning PDFs and paper output entirely, though.
P.S. How come you didn't have an article focussing on Arduino in your initial issue??
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough for you. The article purports to blame DRM for the failure of Vista. My point is, DRM has very little to do with the failure of Vista, and subsequent versions have only built on that DRM. In other words, pointing out Vista's failure was inserted simply to try and bash Microsoft for something. There are many products which DO fail due to their DRM. Vista wasn't one of them. It was completely irrelevant to the article, and judging by your response, will go unnoticed (and even, backed up) by most zealots.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk