Ask Slashdot: Should An Open Source Hardware Project Support Clones?

Long-time Slashdot reader Ichijo has a question about "(not quite) open source hardware": One hardware project that calls itself "open source" doesn't want to make its hardware design source files publicly available because doing so would, in their words, "make it very trivial for e.g Chinese companies to start producing cheap clones... we'd be getting support requests for hardware we had no idea of the quality of." This answer was in response to a request by a user who wants to use the design in his own projects.

Have any other open source hardware projects run into support issues from people owning cheap "clones"? Have clones been produced even without the hardware design source files?
Leave your answers in the comments. Should an open source hardware project support clones?

Comments

Re:GPL vs BSD-etc.

[janoc]

No we can't. Circuit schematics is generally not copyrightable, because it only documents the workings of something else - a physical circuit. It is not considered a work in itself.

Even if it was, then the only thing that copyright license would do is to protect the schematics - not someone reproducing the actual circuit. For that you would have to patent it - which may not be possible (circuit is well known, for ex.) or not practical (patenting costing more than the widget itself). Not to mention that patents are not likely to stop an Asian fly-by-night cloner.

That's not an authoritative citation.

[tlambert]

http://www.tiplj.org/wp-conten...
Ref section 99.

That's not an authoritative citation.

It's the opinion of David G. Luettgen in a journal article, which claims computer programs are also not copyrightable. It also claims in its conclusion that electrical circuits are a creative expression, while computer programs are not.

The guy is kind of talking out his arse.