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Open Hardware Journal

Posted by Unknown on from the i-think-you-mean-gnu-slash-hardware dept.

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.

12 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. I'm here by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:I'm here by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Informative
      eBooks and tablets are a relatively new phenomenon, but lots of folks have them. PDF works well offline, for these devices, and is well-supported by Free Software as well. I haven't learned the specialized eBook file formats yet.

      I tried this on a blog a while back, that is part of what technocrat.net was supposed to be for. What I found was that I was talking with the same 30 people all of the time. And there were maybe 3000 to 5000 regular readers at best.

      There's also differentiation - I don't want this to be "just another blog".

      And it seems that there is a history for technical journals being in print, and a more recent history of them being open publication. So, I am trying to do something that people who submit papers, and their bosses are used to. I have sometimes, working in academia, been asked to produce a list of my own publications. They seem to take the journal stuff more seriously than the blog stuff.

      --
      Bruce Perens.
    2. Re:I'm here by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sure. Someone, I know, has been working on Open designs for the 50 basic tools for civilization - tractors and plows and stuff. As long as the plans for them are under an Open Hardware license, we're interested in papers about them.

      --
      Bruce Perens.
    3. Re:I'm here by jonbryce · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I find pdf doesn't work that well on a small screen. Either you design the pdf for A6 sized paper, which doesn't look so good printed on A4 or on my 24" desktop screen, or you end up with something on your portable device that is either too small to read or requires lots of sideways scrolling. Maybe you should do the journal in something like docbook format, and use that to generate pdfs and ebook files.

    4. Re:I'm here by ciotog · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would assume you're referring to Open Source Ecology: http://opensourceecology.org/

  2. Licensing - copyleft? by femto · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Licensing - copyleft? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Informative

      I like The TAPR Open Hardware License. But yes, there is a problem that Hardware Isn't Generally Copyrightable. We can deal with the problem by using contract law, sometimes, and imperfectly, and by embedding copyrightable and trademarked content. I have a proposal for this that I've not finished yet, I'll try to get it up on the Open Hardware wiki soon.

      --
      Bruce Perens.
    2. Re:Licensing - copyleft? by AndreyFilippov · · Score: 3, Informative

      We at Elphel are now using the new CERN OHL ( http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cernohl/wiki ) and believe it is the closest to GNU GPL we are using fro the sofware

  3. Re:Fab lab network by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    Well, not just bring projects together, but avoid some of the mistakes we made with Open Source. Like have "recommended" licenses, with the recommended set really small, so we don't have the problem of 80 licenses accepted by the Open Source Initiative and no "recommended" list because we can't dis-recommend a license without offending someone. And not start out by building a schism between Free Software and Open Source. I could rant about all of the things that went wrong for a while...

    We could use good videos for smart people. The coverage we have so far panders to a lowest common denominator of viewers. I'd be delighted if someone was able to make better videos. If I tried to do it, though, it would eat all of my time.

    Yes, we definitely want to stimulate a new movement, and put both thought and experience into it.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  4. Re:LibreOffice by Christopher_Olah · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hey, I'm the author to the article "Producing Lenses With 3D Printers". It was originally in LaTeX and I think it looked a lot better that way. You can get the original PDF of it here .

    I'd be happy to answer any questions about it, surfcad, ImplicitCAD, Malthus, 3D printed vacuum cleaners, or any questions about my projects or 3D printing in general.

    (Essentially resubmitting my previous anonymous comment since I reset the login for this account and no one sees Anonymous Coward posts.)

  5. Re:Sad Microsoft bashing by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Insightful
    What the Motorola embedded software was doing about its preferred brand of battery was sufficiently similar to what media copy-protection does. These things are always software, with only as much hardware as it takes to implement to them. Now that Windows 8 will insist on UEFI, we're seeing something very similar to the Motorola hardware platform and its manufacturer-interest-enforcing embedded software.

    When we say Open platform, it really means a vendor willing to sell hardware without locking down the software in it.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  6. Re:Sad Microsoft bashing by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.