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The Unspoken Rules of Open Source Hardware
ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine's article talks about some of the {unspoken} rules most/all the open-source hardware community seems to follow. Why? Because the core group of people who've been doing what is collectively called 'open source hardware' know each other — they're friends, they overlap and compete in some ways, but they all work towards a common goal: sharing their works to make the world a better place and to stand on each others shoulders and not each others toes : ) There will be some folks who agree strongly with what they've outlined as 'unspoken rules,' others, will completely disagree with many points too. That's great, it's time we start this conversation!"
Guess there is some truth to it, it's like us old farts that started messing with our computers back in the ZX80 Commodore vic 20 / 64 days...when we tweaked and tuned and got rid of borders & made the impossible - possible.
I still do that these days, my workshop is a gazillion components (nos from eBay etc...) from factories worldwide gone bust, old electronics...albeit new and unused - finds new life in makers everywhere.
The maker generation - is our new generation, it's like the electronics hobby is rising from the dust again. Love it, embrace it - and above all - have a LOT of fun with it.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Never talk about Open Source Hardware.
Rant on. I read that hoping for some interesting discussion of how open source hardware filters down to users. Enabling people to build better, and innovate quicker, and all I got was some weird manifesto about how no one is doing it right except the few people this guy knows.
I just read TFA, and that puppy grinder sounds great. Anyone got schematics for it?
coopetition
hiya - you can check out the dozens of other articles, talks and overviews for what you're looking for - just google around or you can also email me and i can point you to a few. this article was specifically about the rules we all seem to follow, not "how open source hardware filters down to users". if you're interested in a specific one about that, here's one i wrote about someone who took a design we worked on and funded a kickstarter, by doing open source we enabled people to build better, and innovate quicker:
Open Source Hardware is Kick-Starting Kickstarter!
http://blog.makezine.com/2011/10/20/how-open-source-hardware-is-kick-starting-kickstarter/
The design and the source code have copyleft licences which derive from the underlying copyright.
The hardware itself, if not patented, is simply in the Public Domain.
Sorry but your "unspoken rules" are not worth the paper they're not written on.
ptorrone am I accurately summarizing the article as "Don't be a jerk"?
I would advise that people who don't get it wrt social interaction in open hardware ecosystem are probably going to continue to "not get" that social interaction thing therefore respond unfavorably to having it pointed out to them. Its funny to read for those who already get it, but I donno how to get people who don't get it, to get it.
I've got another good unrelated question, what is the prevailing theory on why the Venn diagram of ham radio experimenters and "makers" is approximately zero people despite having pretty much the same tools, ethic, motivations, attitudes, etc? I've never seen a good explanation of that. Maybe I should write an article for Make magazine about that.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Great, now they'll have to start a new set of unwritten rules.
Leave arrogance at the door!
This rule is also best applied towards everything in life.
What's with the curly brackets around {unspoken}? Is it punctuation free-for-all day" where we can just use any punctuation mark as we see fit] I!m not sure if I like the idea or not( but I could get used to it/
"And donate to the OSHW foundation. That I want to run, except Bruce Perens keeps trying to horn in on it. New York is the 3d printing capitol of the world!* Also, even though I say I'm cool with OSHW, please stop making exact copies of our stuff and selling it for half price, cause at least we don't mark up things 6x like Sparkfun does"
*if you ignore all the other 3d printing companies.
Paying royalties and not cloning doesn't seem very open source to me. Open source licenses explicitly allow not paying royalties and cloning. If you don't allow that, someone will say it's not open source. So why bother calling it open source if we'll just get in trouble for not paying royalties or creating something that's too much of a clone?
hi not-really-anonymous :)
*i'm not going to run an oshw foundation, ever. i said that in the article and on the mailing list(s) we're both on. i'm not the best person for that at all.
*bruce perens self-nominated himself for his legal effort thing, i suggested he nominate someone besides himself.
*with makerbot and shapeways i think new york might just be a 3d printing center, we'll see!
*i'm glad you value our prices.
*it's interesting to hear your perception of sparkfun is that they mark up things 6x.
see you around!
These efforts are to a large extent laudable, and ought to be encouraged in any case; ...however, it gets messy when this hardware requires firm/soft -ware which comes only on a proprietary platform, or binary only libraries, or libraries which require binary only libraries. .Net, Eagle, MPLAB... are easy examples, others are more subtle. These guys know about this problem and either are "working" on it (and for that, gawdbless'em), or in some few cases, just don't give a damn; (there is a buck to be made presenting it thus after-all). So, "Open Source Hardware" is often "Open Hardware", sans the source.
You'll be mightly lonely, and probably poor
Or a wealthy corporation will come along and profit from your legally unprotected design. You can't shame a company into compliance with your kooky culture, so you're boned.
If "cloning" open-source hardware is considered "bad", what's the point of open-source hardware?
The more I read the claptrap coming out of the Brooklyn "Maker" scene the more I realise what the so called maker movement is all about. I think a few other people have pointed out that the hobby engineering community has been around for a long time. We have been hacking , futzing, inventing and maybe even selling since the industrial revolution, hell, long before that even. The "Maker" revolution is really all about exploiting the hobby engineering market. Make magazine only exists to Make money. It has no other useful purpose. We had mailing lists, web sites, forums and catalogues long before Make existed. Torrone and his ilk are salesmen. They make a tidy profit selling other people's work to the masses. There are no "unspoken rules" in open source. The only rules that are worth anything are ones that can be enforced by law. If that were not the case we wouldn't need the open source license in the first place. Phil should stick to riding Limor's coat tails, coming up with new stickers and badges to hock and re-publishing other people's projects.
Could chocolate be quiet and let me finish?
To elaborate on why open-source hardware is hard.
Why open-source software works is:
Widely available repository of code.
Many people able to review it, or sections of it, and understand it.
Ease of submitting tested patches.
Hardware has problems that don't really fit well with this.
The open schematic is the trivially easy part, and not really a problem.
(though in practice, you need a schematic with copious links to design documents, which isn't well solved by open tools).
The number of people who can review it is rather smaller - as you can't
open up a c file, and see a clear error or awkwardness in code that can be edited.
For all but the most basic errors, you are going to have to sit down and
read several hundred pages of hardware documentation about how the chips in question work, in addition to having in-depth knowledge about the circuit design, and costings of likely changes.
Now, you've done this, and generated a patch that you think (for example) lowers the supply current by 1%.
Compile - test.
On a PC, this takes a couple of minutes.
For something of a smartphone class, a one-off PCB may cost several hundred dollars. Then the parts will cost another several hundred dollars in small quantities, as well as being difficult to obtain.
Now, you have to solder the parts onto the board, which is a decidedly nontrivial thing - and if you decide you want someone else to do this, it's probably another several hundred dollars.
So, you're at the thick end of a thousand dollars for a 'compile'.
Now, you boot the device, and it exhibits random hangs.
Neglecting the fact that you are going to need several hundred to several thousand dollars of test equipment, you now have to find
the bug.
Is it:
A) The fact that unlabled 0.5*1mm component C38 is in fact 20% over the designed value, as the assembly company put the wrong one in.
B) C38 has a tiny bridge of solder underneath it that is making intermittent contact.
C) The chipmaker for the main chip hasn't noticed that their chip doesn't quite do what they say it will do, and the datasheet is wrong.
D) You missed a tangential reference on page 384 of the datasheet to proper setup of the RAM chip, and it is pure coincidence that all models up till now have booted.
E) Because you're ordering small quantities, you had to resort to getting the chips from a distributor who diddn't watch their supply chain really carefully, and your main chip has in fact been desoldered from a broken cellphone.
F) Though the design of the circuit is correct, and the board you made matches that design, and all the parts are correct and work properly, the inherent undesired elements introduced by real life physics means it doesn't work.
G) A completely random failure of a part that could occur with even the best design, and best manufacture.
G - may mean that it's worthwhile making two or more of each revision - which of course boosts costs.
Hardware is nasty.
This gets a lot less painful of course for lower end hardware. For very limited circuits, which can be done on simple inexpensive PCBs, and be easily soldered at home - costs of a 'compile' can be in the tens of dollars, or even lower.
Wow, sounds like a rehash of all the teapot-tempests that were raging in the Open Source Software world ten years ago. Stop whining and start soldering. And if you want to make money, that's OK too. Just refrain from rent seeking and pissing other (sane) people off. Quite simple.
Yeah, go fuck yourself.
Don't like cloning? Don't make it open source.
God, fuck you.
Open sources are easy to use and learn for everyone, Many people able to review it,This gets a lot less painful of course for lower end hardware.
pvc fönster
Oh yah, you don't want to do the paperwork, just write it. Bullshitter-Laureate?
Keep it cheap.
And that's why open source hardware guys have these unspoken rules. They/we don't have access to a $20million dollar custom fab house or a $100million design studio.
If you keep it cheap, you make money (really, it all comes down to this) by volume, and the 1st guy that makes his fortunes is OK, since all the OS hardware guys use the same cheap hardware (it's limited fellas), so everyone can make some cash. And they all work together since any day MS or Apple can get into the game and wipe (or buy) everyone out (e.g. Kinect)
It's not a "dominate" the competition as with MS, Apple, HP, and Google, were desired profit margins are unreasonably high. So, that a win-win in the OSH community. Also, there is no "race to the bottom". I mean name me one open source hardware developer building a improved Arduino for $900 (when we know a iPhone sold for that amount retail, unlocked)?
mate, assuming you think I'm responding to you,oddly enough, I'm not silly enough to quote back on myself and swear at someone while pretending to be anonymous.
/sigh