Bruce Perens On Problems With the Open Hardware Model (arvideonews.com)

Bruce Perens writes: At the TAPR conference this year, I did a talk on why Open Hardware licenses don't actually work, and how it would actually hurt us if they did. I'm not saying you should stop making Open Hardware, I just want to make sure you don't assume the license works better than it actually does. Also, I explain why my latest project is 100% Open Source but the hardware design is more restrictively licensed than the Open Hardware Definition would allow. The video is here. There's a long prelude of talk about Amateur Radio stuff before the Open Hardware part. But you'll probably find it interesting. Gary didn't succeed with the Kickstarter to fund recording the entire conference this year, but he made the trip and recorded it with a multi-camera shoot anyway, at significant personal expense. If you like the video, please help cover his expenses. Even $1 would help.

Comments

Summarize it

[Anonymous Coward]

No one wants to sit through a video. Just summarize the issues. I'd love to hear the convuluted logic on why Open Source works, but Open Hardware doesn't. After all, information wants to be free.

Re:Summarize it

[BarbaraHudson]

Selfish is bad. Sharing is good. Sharing without rules is better.

If you are so ADD that you cant watch what is a very informative video then we need to boil it down to the 3rd grade for you.

Videos are the web equivalent of PowerPoint presentations. If you can't put it down in writing, maybe your idea isn't fully formed yet, or you're too lazy to.

Re:Summarize it

[RabidReindeer]

A text summary you could read in 30 seconds would not work, and it would actually hurt us if it did.

So does the video only run 30 seconds? And is it faster to rewind and repeat to digest the hard parts that it would be to re-read a document? And what about annoying co-workers by playing something with audio on it while they're trying to work? We don't all have headsets at work.

Also, while I'm not a big fan in general of "simple" explanations, there's a limit on how complicated an explanation should be when applied as a blanket statement.

Re:Summarize it

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. I'm at work, so I can spare a minute here and there to pop in and read something and make some comment, but I sure as hell can't sit through a video here. WTF are these morons thinking? Honestly, this YouTube generation is really annoying; have people forgotten how to type or something? I can read a whole wall of text in a fraction of the time it takes to sit through some stupid video. Maybe we need to be teaching kids speedreading in early grades.

Re:Summarize it

[PostPhil]

Kind of like how the ARM platform is a total flop that no one uses, right? Open Hardware is basically doing what already happens with customization of ARM today, except people wouldn't have to pay ARM Holdings for the privilege. Also, AMD and Intel use compatible instruction sets despite very different underlying architecture. (Even Transmeta chips from back-in-the-day could still run the same software.)

Openness and experimentation DOES NOT necessitate incompatibility. Closed designs don't necessitate it DOES have compatibility (e.g. vendor lock-in). If a new design does become incompatible when people expect it not to, then that design naturally won't get widely adopted.

The entire issue is overblown. Let openness allow technology to evolve and improve. Standards and compatibility will arise when the market demands it, and variation/deviation/special-purpose will also arise when the market demands it. That's the way it's SUPPOSED to be.

Hardware is being construed too narrowly here.

[sbaker]

The original article, and almost all of the posts following that are construing the word "Hardware" very narrowly.

* An "open CPU architecture"
* An "open silicon design of some kind"
* An "open ASIC design"
* An "open FPGA design"
* An "open PCB design"
* An "open design for a 3D printer"
* An "open design for a modular house" ...all of these are "hardware". Sure, an open CPU design is problematic because you need massive software infrastructure to maintain compilers and such. Sure, an open silicon design is almost impossible for any of us to reproduce. Sure, most of us are not going to be making custom ASICS. But we *can* all program an off-the-shelf FPGA - or have a PCB manufactured - or figure out how to assemble a 3D printer from stuff you can buy in Home Depot.

So this conversation needs to be sharply narrowed if it's going to be about the difficult stuff at the top of the list without shutting out the very successful projects at the bottom of the list.

Re:Let's truncate this diversion

[Zontar The Mindless]

OTOH... Bruce could have just let you get trolled.