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Why We Need Free Digital Hardware Designs
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.
I copy all kinds of designs with ASICs. It's like the Wild Wild West of hardware.
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.
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.
Is there some new point to this?
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.
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)?
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.
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.
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.