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Why We Need Free Digital Hardware Designs

Posted by samzenpus on from the open-it-up dept.

jrepin writes Free software is a matter of freedom, not price; broadly speaking, it means that users are free to use the software and to copy and redistribute the software, with or without changes. Applying the same concept directly to hardware, free hardware means hardware that you are free to use and to copy and redistribute with or without changes. But, since there are no copiers for hardware, is the concept of free hardware even possible? The concept we really need is that of a free hardware design. That's simple: it means a design that permits users to use the design (i.e., fabricate hardware from it) and to copy and redistribute it, with or without changes. The design must provide the same four freedoms that define free software. Then "free hardware" means hardware with an available free design.

78 comments

  1. Already have by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I copy all kinds of designs with ASICs. It's like the Wild Wild West of hardware.

    1. Re:Already have by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Yeah, the person should google it instead of bloviating. If you don't know about Open Hardware, you're not the one to be telling us about it, eh?

      No speculation needed, just a basic web search.

    2. Re:Already have by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The Ham Radio Group TAPR has this for their SDR projects which has been sucessful http://www.tapr.org/ohl.html
      snip
      "The TAPR Open Hardware License
      The TAPR Open Hardware License is TAPR's contribution to the community of Open Hardware developers. TAPR grants permission for anyone to use the OHL as the license for their hardware project, provided only that it is used in unaltered form."

    3. Re:Already have by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      OSHW License Guide is at http://www.inmojo.com/licenses/
      Licenses
      MIT License
      Simplified BSD License
      Modified BSD License
      Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0
      Creative Commons - Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0
      TAPR Open Hardware License (OHL)

    4. Re:Already have by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Precisely! With FPGAs, one can have all sorts of designs, copied, modified, whatever. Just that since separate expensive chips are needed, this is nothing like copying software from a CD to your computer.

  2. respectfully disagree by Pro923 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Making something free turns it into shit quality. Look at music for a great example. I've never really thought that software should be free, because it cheapens what I do and makes my field pay less. It seems like it's easy to make it free because it's easy to copy. Hardware is not the same. no one is going to even give away the raw materials.

    1. Re:respectfully disagree by Wootery · · Score: 1

      Hardware is not the same. no one is going to even give away the raw materials.

      Is it too much to ask that you read the summary?

      Don't worry, no need to read the whole thing. Here's the appropriate extract:

      The concept we really need is that of a free hardware design. That's simple: it means a design that permits users to use the design (i.e., fabricate hardware from it) and to copy and redistribute it, with or without changes.

      Or if that's still too much: free-as-in-freedom, not free-as-in-beer.

    2. Re:respectfully disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, universally true.

      It's pretty balanced in reality - both OSS projects and commercial projects can be really good or they can be shit.

    3. Re:respectfully disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And it works so well for non-free music?
      Enjoy the present while you can. In a few decades you won't be able to make or play anything without being sued for infringement.
      As for programming, I AM looking at it. There are a lot of technologies that wouldn't exist if they weren't developed open source.
      The internet is an ocean, before open-source became mainstream it was just a bunch of puddles each in it's own desert.

    4. Re:respectfully disagree by NotInHere · · Score: 1

      Free software isn't about cheapness, its about freedom. Nobody restricts me to improve the tools I have, and everybody is invited to. Also, nobody restricts me to pay for it, and fund development. If all those companies and offices around the world would pay the half of what they give to microsoft for {libre, open} office, it would be the best product you can get.
      What is your work worth when your company goes bankrupt, and your work doesn't get used anymore? When the company is bought by a larger competitor, the product you developed comes into the trashbin, your customers are told to use the larger company's product, and you are fired?

    5. Re:respectfully disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Making something free turns it into shit quality.
      I disagree that making something 'free' ruins the quality. There are *plenty* of closed source software that are just as crappy.

      Open/closed does not really impact quality much. Quality takes time and the will to do. You can get that in closed or open source.

      Open source quality is just more brazen about how bad it is. I will use a restaurant anaolgy. Because you can see the kitchen has not been mopped down for 2 months and the cook looks like he just rolled out of bed. Because there is no wall to protect what you see. In closed source the same is true however there is a wall and you can not see it as well. So it gives the air that it is better. What you are seeing is smoke and mirrors.

      Hardware is not the same. no one is going to even give away the raw materials.
      Getting basic electronic materials is cheap. Building a CPU however takes some pretty specialty hardware that costs way more than some dude working on this as his hobby is going to come up with. We do not have an army of Chinese people working away in a factory to make 100k widgets to a particular design. Even something 1980s in CPU tech and form factor would be well beyond the cost reach for most.

    6. Re:respectfully disagree by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Thank goodness your proprietary religion keeps me from being subjected to the horrors of using your software.

      I will say this much, proprietary seems to give better results for absolute beginners, since with Free Software there is no emphasis on that, but instead of tools people already know they need.

      The best thing about Open Source was always escaping the crap software that you get when you pay.

    7. Re:respectfully disagree by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      It's not just about freedom, it's also about economics. Copying software (and music) is trivial. Writing software is hard (well, writing good software is, at least). With free software, you don't charge for copying, but you often do charge for writing the software in the first place. And, because of the relevant licenses, there's a large body of code that you can charge for fixing / extending / customising.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    8. Re:respectfully disagree by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      That is only if you randomly compare software. If you choose carefully, there are better choices in the commercial domain.

    9. Re:respectfully disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody restricts me to improve the tools I have, and everybody is invited to.

      That's just propaganda. Few people can compile the code, let alone understand it or modify it. Look at all the people downloading linux distros, when they could be downloading linux themselves, compiling it and booting up their systems with it. Guess what, it's not easy. Just the fact that linux users don't compile the OS themselves is proof enough that they don't care or understand the internals of the software. They simply want to use it.

      Another example: systemd has forced into many distros causing displeasure to many users. So where are people like you that are taking a distro source and eradicating systemd from it?

      The only reason users care about free software is they have to pay $0 to use it. Other than a few adventurous developers and hobbyists, the common user does not care how software works, just like how many car owners don't care about how cars work, it's the mechanics job. All that free software users care about is, it costs nothing.

    10. Re: respectfully disagree by ZeroWaiteState · · Score: 1

      There is no reason why people should be making $30 a copy for compression software that does the same thing today that it did 20 years ago. There is a point where boxed licensing ceases to be about paying programmers and instead becomes rents taking. For software that is not widely used but is otherwise essential to a particular businesses competitive advantage I might agree. For software that is very mature, widely relied upon, and a fundamental building block of infrastructure, I think free software has advantages that proprietary stuff does not, and by virtue of business need being spread over a large group of people, you are more likely to get constructive contribution. The success of the Linux kernel project, Apache, GNU build tools, Xen hypervisor, Docker, and several Java application servers is a testament to that. If you do not have users who are engineers (I.e., you are running on Windows), then yeah, expect the code to suck, if not be downright malicious.

    11. Re:respectfully disagree by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      I'd posit that you tend to see a lot of "crappy" OSS projects partially because there's no financial pressure to cull those products from the "market". As long as someone is motivated enough to keep developing a project, it will continue regardless of whether anyone uses it or not. Even when it's abandoned, it's still available for anyone to use and improve for themselves if they want.

      Commercial products, by nature, have to be good enough for people to actually pay for them, since you're paying expensive programmers to work on it. Once a product is abandoned, it typically isn't sold anymore, because the company doesn't want to incur any support costs. That's a brutally Darwinian culling process, and as a result, you're typically left with best-in-class software that compete either on features and/or price.

      Software longevity is actually one of the strengths of FOSS, not a weakness, because it means someone always has a chance to branch or continue development from someone else's original work. And there's a lot of stuff out there that isn't easily monetized that FOSS covers. It does have the downside that there's a lot of abandoned crap out there, of course.

      For me, personally, I'm glad that both exist. The competition between the two philosophies makes for better software all around, and each tend to fill niches that the other doesn't bother with.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    12. Re:respectfully disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately, when a FOSS product gets "good enough", which usually isn't good enough, it wipes out commercial product development for the reasons you stated, then innovation stalls. If most people are happy with crap, and they inevitably are, then if you're the one who isn't happy with crap, you have nowhere to shop. The commercial OS vendors (except the really crappy ones) are all out of business, Linux and BSD are crap, and the prospects of starting another company based on OS innovation are zero.

      OS will never get good and everyone is stuck with the unreliability nightmare because the market for reliable software is too small for anyone but the most monied (aerospace, etc) interests. The only parties left pushing OS quality and reliability are charging obscene amounts and not innovating in a mass market direction because they know that's a dead-end.

      If what happened to OS, happens to other software, the result can only be a catastrophe.

    13. Re:respectfully disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Making something free turns it into shit quality

      Most commercial software is shit, it's just better at hiding that fact. For one example see : videogames

      "Many years ago, I briefly worked at NVIDIA on the DirectX driver team (internship). This is Vista era, when a lot of people were busy with the DX10 transition, the hardware transition, and the OS/driver model transition. My job was to get games that were broken on Vista, dismantle them from the driver level, and figure out why they were broken. While I am not at all an expert on driver matters (and actually sucked at my job, to be honest), I did learn a lot about what games look like from the perspective of a driver and kernel.

      The first lesson is: Nearly every game ships broken. We're talking major AAA titles from vendors who are everyday names in the industry. In some cases, we're talking about blatant violations of API rules - one D3D9 game never even called BeginFrame/EndFrame. Some are mistakes or oversights - one shipped bad shaders that heavily impacted performance on NV drivers. These things were day to day occurrences that went into a bug tracker. Then somebody would go in, find out what the game screwed up, and patch the driver to deal with it. There are lots of optional patches already in the driver that are simply toggled on or off as per-game settings, and then hacks that are more specific to games - up to and including total replacement of the shipping shaders with custom versions by the driver team. Ever wondered why nearly every major game release is accompanied by a matching driver release from AMD and/or NVIDIA? There you go."

      http://www.gamedev.net/topic/666419-what-are-your-opinions-on-dx12vulkanmantle/#entry5215019

  3. Open-Source Hardware (OSH) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware

    Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) as well as open-source hardware is created by this open-source culture movement and applies a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH (free and open source hardware). The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it - coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, schematics, bills of material, PCB layout data, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout data), in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing creates enormous economic value.

    1. Re:Open-Source Hardware (OSH) by jason.sweet · · Score: 1

      It seems jrepin should have read your link before posting. Or maybe the article was really meant for a different audience. Or maybe slashdot is no longer the audience I thought it was.

    2. Re:Open-Source Hardware (OSH) by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Hey new guy, don't click links, it isn't safe. Don't read the summaries either, because Snow Crash + goase = all your base

  4. Hardware has no protection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There is no real need for open source hardware. Which has been long been discussed in the long standing and thriving Open Source Hardware community. Hardware has no copyright protection or trademark assertions if you do not copy any 'art' included with the board. Copying does not take too long as reverse engineering for even complex boards can take only a week at most. Firmware and software have copyrights, so any derivative work of hardware no matter how close is not protected. Not there are plenty of people involved in openly sharing hardware whether its officially OSH (there is a foundation and everything) or not.

    Just because there are idiots that do no research at Wired, does not mean it is news.

    1. Re:Hardware has no protection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd like some of what you've been smoking!

    2. Re:Hardware has no protection by bobbied · · Score: 1

      Just because there are idiots that do no research at Wired, does not mean it is news.

      Or that they know what they are talking about.....

      You want to copy a Pi? Knock yourself out. http://www.arduino.cc/ even provides you with their hardware designs directly if you want to take their stuff, modify it and even sell it to somebody else.

      Then there are the multiple Software Defined Radio projects that have "Open Source" hardware out there. Check out GNU Radio, it connects to a number of "free" hardware designs.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    3. Re:Hardware has no protection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hardware has no copyright protection or trademark assertions if you do not copy any 'art' included with the board.

      I searched out of curiosity and found this: "The survey indicates a loophole in intellectual property (IP) laws that fails to offer sufficient protection to layout designs on PCBs. Accordingly, there may be good reasons for conferring IP protection in the layout designs on PCBs as a form of sui generis IP right." Sounds like you're right, for now at least, and for circuit boards. Chips are another matter, reverse engineering them is considerably more difficult, they are encumbered by patents, and making your own is much more difficult.

      Just because there are idiots that do no research at Wired, does not mean it is news.

      Richard Stallman authored the article; it discusses whether his ideas regarding free software apply to hardware designs. For Stallman, of course, there is an important distinction between "open source" and "free".

  5. opencores.org by pem · · Score: 5, Informative
    There are a lot of free designs and sites supporting them out there. Open source hardware is a thing. Even "free" (according to RMS) hardware is a thing.

    Is there some new point to this?

    1. Re:opencores.org by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are a lot of free designs and sites supporting them out there.

      My favorite is opencores.org. They have a lot of free hardware IP, many using the standard Wishbone bus. The cores can be used in an FPGA, or incorporated into an ASIC. It is a fantastic resource.

    2. Re:opencores.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This Wired article introduces "free hardware design" as something radical and new. Which is patently ridiculous. Opencores.org is just one of many many EE design resources.

      Get this ill-researched article of my slashdot!

    3. Re:opencores.org by wiredlogic · · Score: 1

      90% of what's on Opencores is half-baked student projects. The other 10% I cringe at whenever browsing through the code and see horrible management of basics like clocks and resets.

      --
      I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    4. Re:opencores.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So don't be a complainer and improve it yourself if you have such high and might knowledge! That's the spirit of opensource, isn't it?

      Or make an engine with a manager that takes care of those basic.

    5. Re:opencores.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >But, since there are no copiers for hardware, is the concept of free hardware even possible?

      As best I can tell, this article was written by Richard Stallman. Does he not there is already an open hardware community, albeit a small one? Has he heard of the GPL'd OpenSPARC?
      Processors and hard drive space and bandwidth aren't free either, yet free software exists despite this. Seems cheap because anyone using software already paid into it.
      "Copying" hardware is far, far more expensive. VLSI fabrication is out of reach to individuals, even paying a company to make ASICs is out of reach to most of us, but FPGAs, circuit design, and PCB mfg. are definitely within reach. Commercial FPGA hardware is still proprietary though.

      Hardware design has almost no sex appeal either. Even long ago the idea of free operating systems and compilers was cool to geeks. With hardware though you can't just pick it up like a web code monkey picking up PHP or Ruby or Python. It's not approachable like software is and thus there will probably not be a vibrant, several-million-person strong community in hardware like there is with open source.

    6. Re:opencores.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This sound like an idea for "Examples of Horrible clock/reset management at Opencores".

      Putting out a halfway decent writeup on the (bad) example and explaining what best practices was violated can only be good for the profession.

    7. Re:opencores.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My favorite is datasheets.

    8. Re:opencores.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey you worthless faggot, some people actually want to move out of their parents' basements. Maybe if you quit scratching your neckbeard and giving away your work for free by contributing to hobby open sources projects you might be able to get yourself a job and leave the basement by your 40th birthday. Fucking idiot loser.

  6. Confused on the concept. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But, since there are no copiers for hardware, is the concept of free hardware even possible?

    Someone is confused.

    3D printers aside (because they're not replicators, nor will they be for a while yet), we don't share free software by copying the binaries and passing them around (well, free as in beer, maybe), we provide the instructions for building the software, i.e., the source code, build scripts, etc.

    Free hardware is the same. Plenty of free hardware out there. Not free is in beer, but you can get the circuit diagrams, PC board templates, pick lists, CAD files, etc, etc for no charge and free to redistribute. Look at how many Arduino clones (and forks) are out there, or variations on the rip-rap 3D printer.

  7. Print by P3r1$c0p3 · · Score: 2

    Imagine being able to print an open source clone of a current gen processor or memory. I am sure that 3d printing will make it there one day. The other 3d printer I want to see is the one that lays down a weld bead instead of plastic. Printing out of metal would be awesome. Add a computer milling machine and there is little you couldn't produce. The benchmark is the 3d printer that prints 3d printers chips, motors, and all.

    1. Re:Print by itzly · · Score: 1

      Imagine being able to print an open source clone of a current gen processor or memory.

      Extremely unlikely to happen. Current gen chip technology is so advanced that it requires extremely expensive equipment. Think billions of dollars.

    2. Re:Print by itzly · · Score: 1

      Here's a nice presentation of what it means to make state of the art integrated circuits.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    3. Re:Print by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The other 3d printer I want to see is the one that lays down a weld bead instead of plastic.

      tada

      Add a computer milling machine and there is little you couldn't produce.

      If you could print something on a fixture which would then be automatically relocated to a mill, you'd really have something. Namely, your part spit out without user intervention, as long as it only required one setup. With a 3.5D mill, even that limitation goes away, but I'm always thinking on the cheap...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Print by P3r1$c0p3 · · Score: 1

      I know how they are produced. Did you notice the Imagine? I am not talking tomorrow, derp.

  8. Hello... 3D Printing...??!!!!!! by taiwanjohn · · Score: 1

    You can't be serious. Of COURSE there will be a "free hardware" movement. It's already beginning to happen...

    Hm... well, I got myself all het-up to rant, but seem to have blown it in the first line of text. That pretty much covers it.

    G'night...

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    1. Re:Hello... 3D Printing...??!!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Come back when you can 3D print an ARM core

    2. Re:Hello... 3D Printing...??!!!!!! by Wootery · · Score: 1

      You're right of course that we'll probably never be able to 'print' a chip anywhere near as well as a billion dollar foundry can, but that's not necessarily to say that Free and Open hardware is totally pointless.

      (And I'm ignoring the effort in designing a high-speed CPU. Even if fabrication were trivial, designing a competitive CPU isn't easy.)

      A 'trusted' low-speed CPU in FPGA might still have its uses.

      That said, we can do this today, but it doesn't seem to see much use.

      The 'We need free digital hardware designs' section of TFA gives some other reasons for Free hardware.

    3. Re:Hello... 3D Printing...??!!!!!! by itzly · · Score: 1

      A 'trusted' low-speed CPU in FPGA might still have its uses.

      You can do that, but it won't come close to a hard CPU in terms of performance, price and capabilities.

    4. Re:Hello... 3D Printing...??!!!!!! by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      If you have a reason not to be using a general purpose CPU and doing the work in software, then there is no guarantee that they won't beat that general purpose solution with their FPGA. In which case, you're flat wrong. And since it varies for each case, and in many cases the FPGA will beat the same dollars worth of general purpose solution, we can say you're totally wrong too.

      And since you can use the same hardware description to program the FPGA and manufacture an ASIC later, if you end up needing a lot of them, it doesn't cost much other than the cost of having the ASICs made. Whereas if you'd done it all in software, you wouldn't have even started that journey yet, and you'd have to invest the full cost of designing both types of solution.

      The real questions are: is the unit cost enough to justify the expense of the FPGA hardware? If so, are there advantages over a software solution for your use case? These same 2 questions be used by a weekend hobby project, a small startup, or a big company. If they're both yes, FPGA should be considered.

      If your algorithm benefits substantially from custom hardware logic, then you might save a lot of time and/or money. That is true from the garage all the way to the boardroom. It is a wonderful new world where this is opened up at all levels.

    5. Re:Hello... 3D Printing...??!!!!!! by Wootery · · Score: 1

      we can say you're totally wrong too

      Steady on. Until FPGA can do a good job for real server or desktop use, it seems premature to just assume FPGA will win. You're right that they've proven very good at certain tasks, but we're not talking about your algorithm, we're talking about doing real computer tasks (GNU/Linux + GUI, say) on a trusted FPGA platform.

    6. Re:Hello... 3D Printing...??!!!!!! by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I always assume that the full range of possible use cases are the... range of use cases being considered.

      You're only interested in desktop computers, so rather than meaning "we're talking about..." that just means you're only thinking about a narrow subset of use cases. Therefore, you have nothing to add to what I said, even though to you whatever I said might seem off topic. But it is only off your own personal topic, not the topic of open hardware.

      If you want an open desktop system, my assumption is you'd use an existing open MIPS-compatible system, which are available. There was a story a few years ago about RMS finally being willing to own a laptop (he used ones owned by various legal entities before, he wouldn't own them personally because they were unfree) using these. There isn't actually a lack of that thing, and there is absolutely no need for a custom CPU for that. It isn't useful to make personalized hardware changes to the CPU in a general purpose computer. Almost any actual use case of open hardware CPUs is where you have a special purpose need. You're more likely to be putting that chip into an embedded environment, or else on a daughter board.

      Lemote sells MIPS evaluation boards for all the subsystems of their motherboards, and if you buy it they are in fact open source. And most of those have multiple FPGAs. If you were actually developing your own open CPU, you'd be using more FPGAs than almost anything else, just for the development process. In many cases you might be using multiple FPGAs to implement parts of your design, and the tests for it.

      The value in open hardware isn't that end users can print or fabricate their own stuff. And where there is value in that, the main value is in printing or fabricating non-commodity components. Then when you need something specialized you can do it yourself, or hire whoever you want to do it for you, without a bunch of barriers and gatekeepers. Open firmware: very important. Open circuit layout: very important.

      And if you're really ideological and just want a Pure Whatever computer, and don't want to buy one from lemote, you can build something similar to an Apple ][ or Z80 easily these days. And using modern parts, it can run on a small battery.

  9. Yes, all hardware should be free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Because a) hardware engineers don't need jobs and b) any idiot with a copy of Eagle is a board design expert.

    1. Re:Yes, all hardware should be free by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 2

      As a hardware engineer who gets paid for it, I don't worry a second about anyone using Eagle (or better tools) destroying my value. If I had a dollar for every person who created some schematics that, even if they were correct (and usually they aren't close), totally didn't understand layout and manufacturing and made a huge mess, I could retire.

      Before you can start to talk about open source electronics hardware, you have to talk about what kind of manufacturer you want to target. Some dude with a 3d printer is the wrong answer, even if his 3d printer could do PCBs (which I am sure will happen one day, and I'm excited about). One thing you learn real quick on the job, is that you will be limited by manufacturing capability, and you will do a lot of things to get around it or to live within it.

      The one thing the world will learn from this experiment, should it be performed, is exactly how much time and energy goes in to a proper design even if the schematics don't change a bit.

    2. Re:Yes, all hardware should be free by MadShark · · Score: 1

      Manufacturing constraints are a big one. There are a number of other big ones people rarely take into account. Things like ESD protection, robustness over a wide temperature range, parts going obsolete, emissions and susceptibility, regulatory requirements. I spend a huge chunk of my time dealing with these kinds of concerns and I am mostly on the software side of aisle.

    3. Re:Yes, all hardware should be free by Wootery · · Score: 1

      Because a) hardware engineers don't need jobs

      So we shouldn't try to make Free hardware because it might put someone out of a job?

      As Austerity Empowers says, these engineers aren't a charity-case.

      any idiot with a copy of Eagle is a board design expert.

      No-one's saying it's easy to design a CPU competitive with Intel's latest, but working Free and Open CPU designs already exist.

    4. Re:Yes, all hardware should be free by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 1

      Absolutely, I had a sentence that I chopped out that was something like 8:4:1 Test:Layout:schematics. ESD & environment are a big part of test and a large part of layout. But it's frequently hard to express these topics to non-HW engineers, it sounds like black magic or mysterious bugs.

      ESD has the whole topic of "latent defects", a device shocked but still works and ends up with a radically reduced lifetime that will often be blamed on the user.

    5. Re:Yes, all hardware should be free by itzly · · Score: 1

      working Free and Open CPU designs already exist.

      Now we just need 5x5 mm programmable devices with SRAM, Flash, ADC/DAC, that can run off a single voltage, and cost less than a dollar.

  10. Tools for modifying open hardware designs by Change · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OSHW has a bit of a difficulty associated with it, and that's the tools used to view/edit the designs. Many proprietary PCB CAD packages are offered in free-as-in-beer versions for boards up to a certain size or pin count, but then you're locked into that package. If you want to take that design and expand it beyond those constraints then you're stuck buying into the next step up of the software, or you have to fully re-design (schematic capture and layout) in another tool. Fortunately KiCAD (http://www.kicad-pcb.org/) seems to be picking up a bit of steam, but for those already using other tools, unless they're deep believers in the full open toolchain philosophy, what incentive do they have to switch packages (and re-implement their existing designs in that new package)?

    1. Re:Tools for modifying open hardware designs by dbc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sorry to tell you, but you and I are about the only two people in the world to believe this. I use gEDA, BTW, which is another free-as-in-speech alternative to KiCAD, and much older. So far, I have been very frustrated trying to make the case that open hardware designs need to be "elephants all the way down" -- FOSS from the hardware design, to the DA tools (and file formats and libraries), to the OS. In fact, I once had a several-post-long exchange with Limor Fried over at AdaFruit's forums where she finally closed off the thread with: "Tools don't matter." I think her opinion is outrageously misguided and short-sighted, but that is an example of what the leaders of the Open Hardware community are thinking. SparkFun must feel the same way, because all of their designs are released on cripple-ware tools, too.

      I think we need an open hardware license that includes a clause about openly documented file formats at the very least, and I would push for a license that calls for design files released on open source DA tools. Imagine where the Linux ecosystem would be today without gcc. Gcc isn't a great compiler, but it is open source, and it got us where we are today.

    2. Re:Tools for modifying open hardware designs by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      There's also gEDA which is an open (GPL'd) EDA suite including a schematic editor, PCB layout tool, and a bunch of other EDA tools.

      The big thing with open hardware is simply getting the hardware - RPi and Arduinos are popular because it's easy to get the hardware for minimal cost, and many people make it on behalf of others (well, not the Pi, but that's because of Broadcom).

      Open hardware requires the ability to make money (i.e, commercialize) the design. This is not the evil "we will sell your design to make millions" theme, but more so companies can take Open Hardware designs and build them for you. Or at least assemble you a kit.

      Nothing screams "useless" more than seeing an NC label slapped on an open hardware design because it means if I wanted to build it, I have to source it all myself instead of being able to go to some company to get it all kitted up or even assembled and I just click "buy it now".

    3. Re:Tools for modifying open hardware designs by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      but for those already using other tools, unless they're deep believers in the full open toolchain philosophy, what incentive do they have to switch packages (and re-implement their existing designs in that new package)?

      Well, my board house recommended I switch from Eagle CAD to KiCAD, recently. It's picked up a lot of useful features like push routing and more importantly, plated slots. Why TF does EAGLE not have those? How do I mount a blasted USB connector!!!

      Of course I didn't switch because my design and land patterns are already in Eagle...

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    4. Re:Tools for modifying open hardware designs by itzly · · Score: 1

      I make plated slots in Eagle by drawing a regular pad, and then drawing the slot in the milling layer.

    5. Re:Tools for modifying open hardware designs by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but that doesn't specify if it's plated. I have to tell the board house specifically to make it plated.

      I so slots by taking a bunch of THM pads and putting them very close. My board house has a procedure in place where they replace chain drilling with slots. Since it's specified as plated holes, the result is plated.

      Both of these are ad-hoc procedures though and will require care going to another board house.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    6. Re:Tools for modifying open hardware designs by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Tools only matter to the tool builders. Oh wait, that means us. LOL

      You're not the only ones, btw.

      I've been suffering with substandard open CAD since the 90s. I just wish it had the quality of GIMP.

      Things are improving. Slowly, on the software side. But I expect some leaps and bounds soon, now that access to manufacturing is opening up.

      The companies making money off the movement don't care about these details, they care about what can they tell people to do that they will understand, what will be easier "for dummies." It is great they open their designs, but the value in open designs is the right to copy, not the right to re-manufacture without having to re-draw anything. Effort might be better directed at writing import plugins for the open tools, than pushing companies to use certain formats. There is clear "fair use" in whatever is needed to inter-operate, so file formats from proprietary programs aren't really proprietary unless nobody bothers. I personally don't want any more than the circuit diagram and the right to copy it.

      The people who should be pressured over formats IMO is the IC manufacturers, who should do a better job at including open reference designs. There is a strong case to be made that it would help sales.

    7. Re:Tools for modifying open hardware designs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The thing is that free CADs don't even come close to professional CADs. KiCAD and gEDA are all nice and you might even make a design or two with these, but you would never want to work with them day to day in professional work. They are just not good enough. Its the same deal in mechanics design.

    8. Re:Tools for modifying open hardware designs by trumpetplayer · · Score: 1

      Well, Zuken Cadstar is pretty expensive commercial software and I wish I could describe like "you would never want to work with it day to day in professional work, it's just not good enough" because it's actually just plain awful to work with.

  11. Free everything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While we're at it, why not have free everything: software, hardware, food, water, healthcare, entertainment, clothes, shoes, heat, cars, fuel.

    1. Re:Free everything by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Only a few things on that list are proprietary.

      Never agree to adopt proprietary food or water. You do not want to know what happens when it is time to renew your subscription.

      Only accept foodstuffs using an open interface.

  12. Systemd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Case in point: Systemd

  13. OpenCores by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It has been in existence since at least 2004, if not mistaken ...
    http://opencores.org/

  14. Overpaid professions by IcyWolfy · · Score: 1

    I think many people are severely overpaid.
    There is no reason Software Engineers should be making for than 50k a year.
    All professions should be starting out at minimum wage**, and go from there to a sensible, and non-greedy maximum for your location.

    THere should be an overarching downward drive on employment-based income; and more functionally put towards lowering housing and food costs for everyone. That way, everyone will then be bale to hold a job that enjoy and want to do, rather than choose one based on earnings potential. If earnings potential were levelled out and made even for every industry, there'd be no reason to not chase your dreams. And yes, there are people who enjoy sanitation work, or figuring out optimised solutions to problems otherwise not given a second thought, because minimum wage is too low to live off of.

    Minimum wage really should be up towards $20/hr.
    And highly paid industries need to have their gross compensation chopped aggressively.

    1. Re:Overpaid professions by itzly · · Score: 1

      There is no reason Software Engineers should be making for than 50k a year.

      Yes there is. It's called demand and supply.

    2. Re:Overpaid professions by lgw · · Score: 1

      Everything always ends up being priced by supply and demand, in the long run. If you distort the market too far, you get shortages and wastage, and a black market where things are priced according to supply and demand. Labor isn't an exception.

      Wage, as determined by supply and demand, is the signal for how valuable one more worker at some job is to the community. That is to say, it's a mix of how valuable the work is over all, but also how much the community actually needs one more person doing that work.

      None of us are entirely self-sufficient, so If you want to live, you must contribute to the community something of marginal value (that is, something there's value in even more of than what the community already has), to receive what you need. There's no escaping that: all there is is all we produce. And compensation is about the value you produce as judged by others.

      Wages for the most part stay pretty close to that ideal. I think people forget how important the "supply and demand" part is.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    3. Re:Overpaid professions by stackOVFL · · Score: 1

      Yes there is a reason, it's called college education, a lot of hard work and long thankless hours. If you want a big paycheck it'll cost you. Be prepared to work long hard hours. If you want to be a drag on society and expect entitlements that will cost you too - you get nothing and who cares if you like it or not. You want to win you got to play hard. You just want everything for nothing. We could do far more to give folks on the lower rungs a better chance with fewer people like you shouting FREE FREE FREE I deserve it for FREE. But if you insist on living in your socialist dream land you could simply move to say... France

    4. Re:Overpaid professions by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Who cares? If I code for free and release it, people can use it. If I make a boatload of money off my use of the code, and still release it, then people can use it exactly the same.

      Open knowledge separates the issues of pay and employment from having access to the shared set of knowledge.

      Knowing that, if you're worried about pay, utilize information theory and tie your profit centers to information about specific customers with specific or un-shared needs.

      Software is like plow design; it can't be expected to be an important occupational category for very long. When a society is first adopting a new plow technology, there will be a sudden demand for free thinking plow builders to incorporate the technology into local supply chains and adapt it to local needs and crops. But it only lasts half a generation, because those plows can be copied by other blacksmiths, and each one can be repaired for generations.

      Human hearing isn't going to change noticeably in the next hundreds years. Eventually consumers will have personal audio players they're attached to, that are neither too big nor too small, that has all the features the user wants, and then we don't need people to be employed redesigning them. There will still be some of that work, just as even established farmers can support a small amount of innovation and customization in plow-building.

      Pure software, right now there is a huge amount of feature thrash in everything, but that is driven by the new-ness of computers and the lack of existing consensus. Eventually there will be fairly stable "camps" with different mature platforms that have stood the test of time, feature thrash will reduce, programming jobs will reduce, and software tools will stabilize. Programming will about as creative as being a tax accountant.

      The good news is, you can't put the Maker genie back in the bottle. Open hardware based art will grow.

  15. upverter.com by zakhomuth · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Check out upverter.com, its a bit like github for hardware - they've got 32,000 open source hardware designs that you can fork, edit, download, or order all accessible online and all for free.

  16. Free software means source code, not object code by mr_mischief · · Score: 2

    Of course the free hardware movement isn't about actual physical devices. Free software isn't about being able to share the compiled code. It's about enabling the sharing of the designs in a specific enough way as to produce the final product; it's sharing the software in source code form. The hardware version would be about the same thing: specs, plans, and designs being open and unencumbered.

  17. Upverter is not open source friendly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They don't support the major FOSS design tools like KiCAD and gEDA, and they invented their own closed source PCB tool which is web-only and could disappear at any time. Putting your open design at the mercy of a proprietary website would be extremely foolish.

    Upverter's claim to be like Github but for hardware is false. They would be like Github if Github were not based around the open source Git SCM but had invented their own proprietary SCM instead. In those circumstances Github would have died. There's a moral there.

    Upverter should be avoided by the OSHW community.

  18. Richard Stallman wrote the article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stallman has belated become aware of "open source hardware", and has written an article to explain why all things "open source" are ideologically impure, and must be replaced by "free" (as in "libre"). So we must have "free hardware".

    (This is in response to all the posts explaining that we already have open source hardware.)

  19. Not new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check out the Caltrans Type 170 traffic controller. It was an open hardware AND software design, published by the FHWA to cover liability. The software was called Q5. The 170 is now the most common electronic controller in the world, because from the late 70's on, its design was freely available for any vendor to build to and sell to the State of CA. It's now used all over the world because it is very inexpensive and the control software very robust (for an 8-bit controller).

  20. 3D Printing by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 1

    I suppose it is well-nigh impossible to ever 3D print semi-conductors, but I hope someone is at least researching the concept.

    I think printing your own guaranteed backdoor-free hardware would be a far more important blow for freedom than 3D printing yet another killing machine.