OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

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dondoodles
 
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OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by dondoodles »

Greetings and Felicitations;

I've been lurking on this forum for a while, and I'm now making a second go at getting a kitbiz going. I really appreciate all the info. I'm strongly leaning towards open-source hardware, but have a few reservations that I'll re-phrase as questions.

I'm terrible at marketing, so it would be great if I could sell mostly through established sites. I noticed that Adafruit has many distributors. Do they buy kits from Adafruit and re-sell? If anyone's doing their own PCB fab and kitting, does Adafruit get any $? I've noticed open-sourced designs selling at various other's sites too. A previous post mentions Adafruit is paying royalties to TVBgone, Drawdino, Fuzebox, andYBox2, so it sounds like everyone's been playing nice. The same prior post mentions “While it is true that there is no requirement to do so, I think its fair and good practice ..” to flow some royalties back to the originator. So I don't feel too alone in thinking it's only fair that if someone's making money off of a design the designer should get a cut. (Though if lots of people have joined in on various iterations, one of the reasons for having open-source in the first place, it would likely be impossible to try and figure out percentages.) But the new open-source hardware definition (0.3) explicitly says you can _not_ require royalties or other fees. And you must permit manufacture, _sale_, distribution and use from the design or it's derivatives What gives? Although everyone's been playing nice so far, it seems that anyone with volume production and high-visibility could out-market and under-price any individual trying to make and their own products. Even in niche markets business dynamics have a perverse trend towards winner-take-all. 'Sounds like a big disincentive to open-source. And the definition says that “The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the project documentation....” – but I've seen a _lot_ of open-source hardware with documentation that's cc non-commercial....

Anyone – thoughts, comments, howls of derisive laughter?

adafruit
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by adafruit »

dondoodles wrote:I noticed that Adafruit has many distributors. Do they buy kits from Adafruit and re-sell?
yes, resellers buy kits from adafruit and resell.
dondoodles wrote:A previous post mentions Adafruit is paying royalties to TVBgone, Drawdino, Fuzebox, andYBox2, so it sounds like everyone's been playing nice. The same prior post mentions “While it is true that there is no requirement to do so, I think its fair and good practice ..” to flow some royalties back to the originator.
this is how we work, others may not feel the same way or do this at all. many do not.
dondoodles wrote:But the new open-source hardware definition (0.3) explicitly says you can _not_ require royalties or other fees. And you must permit manufacture, _sale_, distribution and use from the design or it's derivatives What gives?
open source hardware has *always* been defined this way. attribution, share-alike, commercial use allowed - and you cannot force anyone to pay you anything if you release your works this way. if this isn't good for you, don't do open source hardware, it's not for everyone. there are companies and people making money from our designs and not paying us - that's part of open source hardware.

dondoodles
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by dondoodles »

Hi;

Thanks for the feedback. Asside from my business planning I find this all very interesting. It's the classic balancing between greater-good-of-the-group and fairness-to-the-individual. And sometimes they both go together. 'Sounds like the OSHW community is holding close to the FOSS/GPL mindset, and both are working out quite well.

onward!

pichenettes
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by pichenettes »

I have been pondering this after the publication of the draft, and came to the conclusion that this is not for me yet (for now I'm "only" cc-by-nc-sa). It seems to me that to make it work, some of the following requirements must be present:

- You already have a well-establish brand name or "fan base" -- that would make people prefer getting the "original" from the clone.
- You have an ace supply/manufacturing/distribution pipeline that would take some consequent efforts for a new player to match.
- Your products have a small development cost so that the competition is really happening in the distribution space. If the "clone" gets popular, you're losing potential revenue, but at least you wouldn't have wasted much on development costs.
- You have a portfolio of several, diverse, products so that you don't have the risk of having your unique source of revenue disappear if it is cloned.

I'd be curious to know about examples of hardware projects done openly/transparently and which eventually backfired and put their developers in a bad situation.

adafruit
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by adafruit »

pichenettes wrote:I'd be curious to know about examples of hardware projects done openly/transparently and which eventually backfired and put their developers in a bad situation.
none so far.

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chuckm
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by chuckm »

adafruit wrote:
pichenettes wrote:I'd be curious to know about examples of hardware projects done openly/transparently and which eventually backfired and put their developers in a bad situation.
none so far.
I agree that developer's are unlikely to get put into a 'bad' situation with open source hardware, however there are developers who are disgruntled to a lesser or larger degree by the success of others selling their hardware. The "risk" here, and I'm not sure risk is the right word, is that lots of people will make money off the hardware and the developer will come to resent that they are "living off his (or her) work." The apocryphal developer who is angry because, in his words, "if I knew it would make that much money I wouldn't have given it away." on his particular project without being honest in understanding that its success was in a large part due to its lack of encumbrances.

If you can avoid stepping into that trap I think most people would find OSHW to be a viable option for their projects.

--Chuck

mikeselectricstuff
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by mikeselectricstuff »

open source hardware has *always* been defined this way. attribution, share-alike, commercial use allowed
By who exactly?
Open source is a generic term, covering a variety of license conditions, and if I decide to publish something but not allow commercial use, it is still open source by most people's understanding of the term, and still has most of the benefits with less risk that someone is going to profit from my work at my expense in lost sales.
Attempting to narrowly constrain the type of licensing can only cause division and end up hurting the overall goals of open-source hardware.

mikeselectricstuff
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by mikeselectricstuff »

I'd be curious to know about examples of hardware projects done openly/transparently and which eventually backfired and put their developers in a bad situation.
none so far.
I recall hearing mention of a UK guy that ripped off TVBGone - this wouldn't have happenned if the code wasn't available.

Possbly more tenuous but I'm sure it will happen - there is also more potential scope for trouble from patent trolls - if they don't know what's in your hardware it's harder to claim infringement of their lame-ass patent.

adafruit
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by adafruit »

mikeselectricstuff wrote:By who exactly?
phil here, here's one to get you started with some specific people and how they define OSHW. i would say this represents a large percent of people who ship OSHW on a daily basis and make a living doing so.

http://www.openhardwaresummit.org/license/

David A. Mellis, MIT Media Lab and Arduino
Limor Fried, Adafruit Industries
Phillip Torrone, Make and Adafruit Industries
Leah Buechley, MIT Media Lab
Chris Anderson, Wired and DIY Drones
Nathan Seidle, SparkFun Electronics
Alicia Gibb, Bug Labs
Massimo Banzi, Arduino
Tom Igoe, Arduino, ITP/NYU
Zach Smith, MakerBot Industries
Andrew “bunnie” Huang, bunniestudios
Becky Stern, MAKE
Windell Oskay, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
John Wilbanks, Creative Commons
Jonathan Kuniholm, Open Prosthetics Project/Shared Design Alliance
Ayah Bdeir, littleBits.cc/Eyebeam/Creative Commons

and many many others:
http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW
mikeselectricstuff wrote:Open source is a generic term, covering a variety of license conditions,
*open source* and *open source software* is very specific. it's defined here:
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html
mikeselectricstuff wrote: and if I decide to publish something but not allow commercial use, it is still open source by most people's understanding of the term,
that's not open source hardware - they would be incorrect to assume it's "open source".
mikeselectricstuff wrote: and still has most of the benefits with less risk that someone is going to profit from my work at my expense in lost sales.
there are not any examples of this, in fact i would say the opposite is true. open source hardware isn't for everyone. if the fear of "lost sales" because someone else might make it is going to stop someone they likely shouldn't do opens source hardware, or make anything and show it publicly to anyone.

release something as OSHW and then you "may" have facts and evidence to claim "lost sales".
mikeselectricstuff wrote: Attempting to narrowly constrain the type of licensing can only cause division and end up hurting the overall goals of open-source hardware.
that does not seem true, there are more companies doing more OSHW than ever, by every metric in terms of sales, revenue, new projects and anything else the OSHW is doubling and tripling is some cases each year.

we have a presentation on this:
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/05/03 ... -millions/

dozens of companies thriving, not a single one is claiming "lost sales" because of OSHW.

we (adafruit) are cloned all the time, check ebay - does it hurt our sales? no - ipods are cloned all the time too, does that hurt apple? no, that customer was never going to buy a kit from us or a real ipod from apple.

we sell more than hardware, we provide value here and beyond - support, videos, forums, tutorials. in the end, we are more than the atoms.

adafruit
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by adafruit »

mikeselectricstuff wrote:I recall hearing mention of a UK guy that ripped off TVBGone - this wouldn't have happenned if the code wasn't available. Possbly more tenuous but I'm sure it will happen - there is also more potential scope for trouble from patent trolls - if they don't know what's in your hardware it's harder to claim infringement of their lame-ass patent.
that was over the *commercial version* assembled of the tv-b-gone, not the open source hardware kit. the person in the UK ripped off mitch's trademark and copyright (and lost in court). had they made the OSHW version (kit) and not called it "tv-b-gone" it would have been fine.

so again, there aren't any examples of OSHW being bad for the makers. it's likely to happen, but as you can see protections like copyright, trademark and even patents do not matter if someone wants to violate them. our goal for OSHW is to put more value in to the world than we take out.

OSHW isn't for everyone, it doesn't sound like it's for you *and that is OK* - there are many ways to release hardware, this is just one.

mikeselectricstuff
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by mikeselectricstuff »

I still don't understand why there appears to be a consensus that allowing commercial use and/or not requiring a royalty should be a requirement to call something OSHW.

The major benefit of OSHW is that information is available to end-users. If people promote the viewpoint that "OSHW==must allow commercial copies", it will undoubtedly discourage some people from opening their designs at all, or even designing something in the first place, whether or not it is actually beneficial or detrimental to them from a commercial POV. They may or may not be correct in the assumptions thay make in arriving at their decision, but anythying that discourages people from opening designs has to be a bad thing.

If you ask the avarage geek in the street what they understand by the term Open Source , I'd suggest that the responses would more about publishing information than the details of exactly how it can be used.

Don't get me wrong, I think open source is a great thing and it is obvious that there is a good business in the way you and others have chosen to do it, however I just don't see why there is a need to put unnecessary constraints onto the definition of what is or isn't Real Open Source.

Of course in practice anyone can publish their project under whatever terms they dictate and call it Open Source, and users will decide whether it meets their particular criteria, so maybe it doesn't really matter how some sections of the industry decide to define it.

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richms
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by richms »

The problem is that words like "free" and "open" have different meanings to different people. The OSHW guys have come to a consensus that they believe is what open means.

If that doesnt suit you, then choose another CC license like a no commercial must attribute one and apply that to the design. Problem solved I would think?

adafruit
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by adafruit »

mikeselectricstuff wrote:I still don't understand why there appears to be a consensus that allowing commercial use and/or not requiring a royalty should be a requirement to call something OSHW.
the same reason you cannot require a payment/royalty and call something "open source software" - that would be a restriction that would stop adoption and sharing.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:The major benefit of OSHW is that information is available to end-users. If people promote the viewpoint that "OSHW==must allow commercial copies", it will undoubtedly discourage some people from opening their designs at all, or even designing something in the first place
they should not do open source hardware or open source software if they are discouraged in that way -they likely should never show their designs in public either. and that's fine, there are commercial developers of hardware and software, OSHW isn't for everyone.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:If you ask the avarage geek in the street what they understand by the term Open Source , I'd suggest that the responses would more about publishing information than the details of exactly how it can be used.
they would most likely also say "free". again, every major company/person who makes OSHW has agreed how it's defined, if there are people want to release hardware in their own way, they can, and should. the "average geek" isn't a real bit of data, please review our presentation(s) for real data, from real people and companies doing OSHW.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think open source is a great thing and it is obvious that there is a good business in the way you and others have chosen to do it, however I just don't see why there is a need to put unnecessary constraints onto the definition of what is or isn't Real Open Source.
mike, at this point if you don't see why - you may never. it's likely not for you, and that's fine - it's not for everyone. you can release hardware any way you choose - make a new license if you want - you can even put it under creative commons non-commercial (some have) - but that would not be OSS or OSHW - and in our opinion, it would be a dead end and ultimately your project would die, no sales, no community, less value going in than being taken out of the world.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:Of course in practice anyone can publish their project under whatever terms they dictate and call it Open Source, and users will decide whether it meets their particular criteria, so maybe it doesn't really matter how some sections of the industry decide to define it.
you can call what you do patented, that doesn't mean it is. if someone calls something open source and it's not, a community will tell them. right now everyone who is doing the majority of OSHW defines it very specifically as you've seen in the links and information posted here.

if you publish a windows app and call it "open source" but it's not, good luck trying to pass it off as open source somewhere, or trying to sell it without the source code available.

mikeselectricstuff
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by mikeselectricstuff »

mikeselectricstuff wrote:If you ask the avarage geek in the street what they understand by the term Open Source , I'd suggest that the responses would more about publishing information than the details of exactly how it can be used.
they would most likely also say "free".
Yes - free as in anyone can use it for their own purposes, however that does not necessarily imply the right to resell for their own profit. This is not likely to be an important aspect for the ast majority of individual buyers.
again, every major company/person who makes OSHW has agreed how it's defined,
I think 'major' is the key word here, and might give some the impression of the 'big guys' telling the 'little guys' what rules they need to follow to join their 'club'. OK maybe that's probably too strong, and I'm sure not (currently) the case, but I have heard this sentiment espressed elsewhere as something that may discourage new entrants to the OSHW world and agree that there are potentially negative connotations.
the "average geek" isn't a real bit of data,
Neither is the success of an OSHW business evidence that every aspect of that business is optimal.
please review our presentation(s) for real data, from real people and companies doing OSHW.
I have seen several, and again have no argument that OSHW works, but have yet to see much evidence indicates that allowing commercial copying is a major factor. I'd discount Arduino here as the hardware itself is pretty trivlal.
[/quote]
There is clearly no doubt that your definition of OSHW works as a business, however I don't see that this justifies claiming ownership of the term under unnecessarily restrictive conditions.
Is there actually ny evidence that the particular aspect of allowing commercial copies is a significant part of that? Has anyone tried offering different products under different terms and seeing if there is any correlation with sales?
mikeselectricstuff wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think open source is a great thing and it is obvious that there is a good business in the way you and others have chosen to do it, however I just don't see why there is a need to put unnecessary constraints onto the definition of what is or isn't Real Open Source.
mike, at this point if you don't see why - you may never. it's likely not for you, and that's fine
I never said I was averse to the concept myself - I've published various things over the years without particurly caring what people do with them, and it is quiite likey I will do some OSHW stuff in future when I get time.
and in our opinion, it would be a dead end and ultimately your project would die, no sales, no community, less value going in than being taken out of the world.
If you make a good product, and support it, it will sell. Making it more 'open' may produce more sales in certain markets. Adding restrictions on commercial copying is not in itself going to kill any product.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:Of course in practice anyone can publish their project under whatever terms they dictate and call it Open Source, and users will decide whether it meets their particular criteria, so maybe it doesn't really matter how some sections of the industry decide to define it.
you can call what you do patented, that doesn't mean it is.
if someone calls something open source and it's not, a community will tell them. right now everyone who is doing the majority of OSHW defines it very specifically as you've seen in the links and information posted here.
Not a good comparison - patented is a legally defined status. Although Open Source may have a 'formal' definition of it, in practice it is much less well defined. OK you may get some pople that take a religious standpoint on the details but in practice it will boil down to whether the product is any good.

adafruit
 
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Re: OSHW draft deffinition and the kitbiz ecosystem

Post by adafruit »

mikeselectricstuff wrote:Yes - free as in anyone can use it for their own purposes, however that does not necessarily imply the right to resell for their own profit. This is not likely to be an important aspect for the ast majority of individual buyers.
yes it does - open source software is defined very specifically. please review the link(s) we've posted:
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html
mikeselectricstuff wrote:I think 'major' is the key word here, and might give some the impression of the 'big guys' telling the 'little guys' what rules they need to follow to join their 'club'. OK maybe that's probably too strong, and I'm sure not (currently) the case, but I have heard this sentiment espressed elsewhere as something that may discourage new entrants to the OSHW world and agree that there are potentially negative connotations.
incorrect, if you review the list of names, again, it's pretty much everyone who is doing OSHW. there are not "big guys" telling anyone to do anything, the definition was formed by a community of people (you may want to consider getting involved before you say things that are not accurate).

if there are people who are discouraged by OSHW because there are "potentially negative connotations" they should not do it.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:Neither is the success of an OSHW business evidence that every aspect of that business is optimal
it would fair to ask that you provide *real* data that shows open source "non-commercial" is doing better/more optimal than open source hardware. or better yet, release your hardware the way you'd like, competing against an OSHW and show how your method is better, sells more and provides more value. we've done our part, if other want to do something else and compare it - they should.

mikeselectricstuff wrote:I have seen several, and again have no argument that OSHW works, but have yet to see much evidence indicates that allowing commercial copying is a major factor. I'd discount Arduino here as the hardware itself is pretty trivlal
since you do not make OSHW for a living you likely do not have the same perspective that all the makers of OSHW do. again, OSHW is likely not for you, that's fine - there are many ways to release hardware, this is one way.

if arduino is "trivial" make something like it or better and compete.

mikeselectricstuff wrote:There is clearly no doubt that your definition of OSHW works as a business, however I don't see that this justifies claiming ownership of the term under unnecessarily restrictive conditions.
everyone who does OSHW worked together to define it over the course of *years*, everyone who does it "owns it" - if you want to change it, join the groups and discussions and if you have a valid argument that's good for the movement perhaps it will be added.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:I never said I was averse to the concept myself - I've published various things over the years without particurly caring what people do with them,
"not caring" is not open source software or hardware, many projects are released and die - but no one can use them because the maker didn't care to say what is and isn't permitted, this takes value out of the world.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:and it is quiite likey I will do some OSHW stuff in future when I get time.
that would be great, we think you'll have a different point of view once you do so.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:Is there actually ny evidence that the particular aspect of allowing commercial copies is a significant part of that? Has anyone tried offering different products under different terms and seeing if there is any correlation with sales
all of our open source hardware products sell better than ones that are not (from other vendors) - there are almost 200,000 arduinos in the market, many have claimed it is selling better than the closed source competitors - there are many articles about this, search around. you have not reviewed the articles and links we've posted.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:Not a good comparison - patented is a legally defined status. Although Open Source may have a 'formal' definition of it, in practice it is much less well defined.
in practice OSHW is well-defined by the people doing it. and "open source" is also clearly defined.
mikeselectricstuff wrote:OK you may get some pople that take a religious standpoint on the details but in practice it will boil down to whether the product is any good.
and for many reasons people choose open source and open source hardware over the closed competitors. the market for electronics seems to indicate open source hardware is valuable.

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