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Tour Houston's Texas-Sized Hackerspace (Video 2 of 2)
A few weeks ago, on his way to LinuxCon, Timothy stopped by the biggest hackerspace he'd ever seen. Houston's TX/RX Labs is not just big — it's busy, and booked. Unlike some spaces we've highlighted here before (like Seattle's Metrix:CreateSpace and Brooklyn's GenSpace, TX/RX Labs has room and year-round sunshine enough to contemplate putting a multi-kilowatt solar array in the backyard. Besides an array of CNC machines, 3-D printers, and wood- and metal-working equipment, TX/RX has workbenches available for members to rent. (These are serious workspaces, made in-house of poured concrete and welded steel tubing.) There's also a classroom full of donated workstations, lounge space, a small collection of old (but working) military trucks, and a kitchen big enough for their Pancake Science Sunday breakfasts. Labs member Steve Cameron showed me around. You saw Part One of his tour last week. Today's video is Part Two.
Uhhh, the end was all repeated from the first video...
I am will to put $1,000 to your $10 that Tx/Rx does not take owner ship of intellectual property produced in its facilities or in its operations by default. Fair warning, I am the current President of Tx/Rx and helped come up with our policies on intellectual property.
We choose to use it for several reasons some of which are:
* The term seemed to growing in usage and how it was being used described a reasonable chunk of what we were trying to do. I dislike new terms for the sake of new terms, though I am not 100% sure that is the case here, and it would have been going against how the terminology seemed to be evolving.
* Workshop and similar words invoked images of a for profit business(Tx/Rx is a non-profit).
* Workshop correctly invoked thoughts of metal working, wood working, CNCs, but did not invoke thoughts of programming, soldering, circuit design, or a tight knit community. At least to the small number of people I asked when we were trying to decide what we would call ourselves.
Oh the Humanities!
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
TX/RX member here. (I'm the guy in the guy in the brown shirt, working with the concrete.)
I'm about as introverted as they come. I don't like large groups of people, especially if they are non-technical people. At the Labs, we really only have crowds during the "open houses" (like the one when timothy came through). The rest of the time, particularly during the week, it's usually just a small number people that I can have meaningful, interesting, and technical conversations with, or work on neat projects with, or just hang out and not even talk to. There is no one forcing anyone to be social, you don't have to talk, you don't have to help others on their projects, and you don't have to let anyone help you with yours if you don't want to. We are a space that provides a neat environment for people to come and do stuff. If some super-introverted person comes in and work on their stuff long enough to warm up to people enough to interact and help out, great, if not, that's OK too.
As for the intellectual property thing, I can't speak for any other 'spaces (we aren't affiliated with any of them), but TX/RX Labs certainly does not claim any ownership, whatsoever, to any code or invention produced by our members. We are a non-profit, we just want to keep the lights on, build cool stuff, and teach others how to build cool stuff.
If someone writes s cool bit of software at the Labs, it's theirs and theirs alone. As far as the Labs are concerned, their membership fee has covered the electricity and WiFi that they used. The same goes for any other inventions (a couple of our members have provisional patents for things they are developing at the Labs). If they get help with development from another member, that's between those members, the Lab plays no part.
The closest thing to fine print we have is the standard release form, and it just basically says that machines and tools are inherently dangerous and you might get hurt, so please don't sue us.