A new bill Schumer introduced would subject fashion to copyright for the first time. The bill would protect only “unique” designs — those that are truly new and distinguishable. And only “substantially identical” copies would be illegal.
…But in the real world, the law will almost surely expand in a way that harms many designers and consumers. Expensive disputes will ensue over what is unique and who got there first. Lawyers (and those designers who could afford them) will be among the biggest beneficiaries. We like lawyers, but we don’t think this is good policy.
Which brings up an interesting question: why would Congress change intellectual property law in a way unlikely to help designers very much, but almost certain to hurt consumers? There are, after all, hundreds of millions of people who buy clothes, compared to a relative few who design them.
Fashion can’t be copyrighted, we’ll see how much longer it lasts… here’s what you can’t copyright now -
1. Ideas, Methods, or Systems
2. Commonly Known Information
3. Choreographic Works
4. Names, Titles, Short Phrases, or Expressions
5. Fashion
Mike Loukides over at O’Reilly Radar has an article about open-source metrics and how to quantify the open-source model. He writes:
Dana Blankenhorn’srecent ZDNet blog points to Accenture’s “hockey stick for open source” and notes that while 69 percent of the companies Accenture surveyed plan to increase their open source investment in the next year, only 29 percent plan to contribute back to the open source community. That sounds very plausible. But is it a problem? I’m not so sure.
First, I don’t think “all take and no give” is a failure. Or even a problem. If you’re giving, you shouldn’t be surprised if people take. If you’re taking something that’s been freely given, you shouldn’t feel obliged to give back. If you do, that’s great. And if you’re a giver, you should be glad that people are taking, whether or not you’re getting something back in return.
Second, “how many companies plan to contribute” isn’t the right metric. One of the things I’ve learned from my involvement in industry is that the most successful and effective groups are small. The right metric is “are there enough contributors to move the project forward?” For the key projects (like Apache), clearly the answer is “yes.” “Enough” is much more important than “how many.” The last thing we need are projects that slow to a crawl because of the bloated development-by-committee that characterizes many corporate environments.
Clearly, he’s talking here about open-source software, but the ideas are bigger than that, and can be applied to hardware just as easily. As OSH continues to grow, using the right metrics to provide meaningful insight will become more important, particularly for larger collaborative projects.
Are you a teacher that could use a MakerBot? It’s almost time to go back to school and so we’re giving 10 teachers each a MakerBot Cupcake CNC Deluxe Kit with standard MK4 Extruder and a bonus Heated Build Platform kit.
Before August 23rd send an email to learning@makerbot.com with the following info. We may publish the ideas/lesson plans on the blog or wiki after the contest ends.
Your name
Your school’s name
The address you’d like the MakerBot sent to if you are chosen
A paragraph describing how you would integrate the MakerBot into your curriculum. Include some description of the learning environment and what you teach
A lesson plan that you will implement if you get a MakerBot
The Open Hardware Summit is approaching, it’s the day before Maker Faire NYC – September 23rd. This is one the first conferences devoted to open source hardware (celebrating the draft of the OSHW definition). Like most “open” efforts the conference will rely on the community to support its efforts, it will be what we all make it. If you plan to attend, or just want to see open hardware evolve more here is the sponsor information for the Open Hardware Summit.
Sponsorship for the Open Hardware Summit is still open! By sponsoring the Open Hardware Summit you’ll be fostering the open source hardware movement. This is the first conference of its kind, where open source hardware producers are coming together to share knowledge about bringing open hardware to market, and solving issues around open design and licensing. Together we will gain momentum as a team, defining a revolution and signing a new definition. Special thanks to our sponsors who have already donated.
Please consider sponsoring this non-profit event. Here’s what you need to know about sponsoring:
Sponsorship for cash donations are capped at $1000. By keeping the sponsorship playing field open and accessible, it ensures that smaller companies can show their support too. If your company would like to sponsor more than $1000, we welcome in-kind donations such as lunch, name tags, a cocktail hour, etc. Please contact the organizers to discuss your donation.
Sponsors will be given love – we will thank you individually at the event, on the website, and your logo will appear at the entrance of the event. In addition, you will receive two tickets to attend the event.
This is a non-profit event. Extra funds from sponsorship will be put toward a scholarship for creating open hardware.
Disclosure, we just donated! If you donate $100 or more email us, we’ll figure out a special thing to send you. We can’t “match” funds – but we’ll send you something!
Bug Labs, Creative Commons and MAKE invite open hardware advocates to submit a talk to the Open Hardware Summit. The Open Hardware Summit will be a venue to present, discuss and draw attention to the open source hardware movement currently happening. The summit will focus on hardware as a system, thus encompassing conversations of software, management, legal, and other factors surrounding open source hardware. Talks should focus on your research and insights in manufacturing, materials, licensing and hardware as a system, offering advice to foster and inspire new open hardware innovations. A panel will decide on speakers, however break-out rooms for mini-lectures and discussions will be available. Talks targeted toward marketing your product will not be accepted.
Talks will include topics of:
* Optimal paths to create hardware
* Open Source legalities
* Supporting derivatives and community interaction
* Manufacturing / Timeline advice
* Why Open Source Hardware is important
* Geographical hurdles in developing hardware
Submissions should be no longer than one page in length and be accompanied with a bio of the speaker (That’s you!). Tell us in two separate paragraphs the subject matter of the talk and what makes this talk significant to the open source hardware community.
Speaker abstracts and bios are due on July 31 by 11:59pm (EST). Submissions should be emailed to Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir with the subject line “Open Hardware Summit submission”. Talks will be be accepted by a panel of reviewers. Plan to speak for approximately 45 minutes. The Summit will take place on Sept. 23rd from 10am-5pm at the Hall of Science. Please direct questions and submissions to Chairs Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir.
If you could have one proprietary package/software released as Free Software, which would it be and why?
RMS: I have not made an effort to study the possible candidates, since unless a genie offers me a wish of that kind, the results wouldn’t enable me do anything constructive. Thus, I can only respond based on the few proprietary programs I happen by chance to know about.
Of the programs I know of, I think freeing Autocad would give the biggest boost to the free software community. It is used in a wide range of activities, and our CAD software lags quite a bit,
Building the first Open Source (inexpensive) Scanning-Tunneling Electron Microscope (STM) – With just enough electronics knowledge to be dangerous and a lot of helpful friends, I embarked on the design and build of an arduino-controlled, affordable STM with the intention of releasing the hardware design, firmware, and software via open source licensing. The goal of this project is to address the following two problems in the world of STM:
Problem 1: The Scanning-Tunneling Electron Microscope, capable of resolving individual atoms, is so elegant a device that it won the 1986 Nobel Prize in physics. Despite it’s simplicity, STM microscopy can be an expensive endeavor: commercial equipment, while truly excellent, costs tens of thousands of dollars – well above the budget of hobbyists and entrepreneurs.
Problem 2: Due to Problem 1, there is a rich history of graduate students building STM devices on modest budgets. However these devices commonly require expensive external equipment (storing oscilloscopes, signal generators, commercial data capture boards, etc.). This external equipment is common in research labs, but not necessarily common to hobby and entrepreneurial workspaces. Additionally, the design information for these graduate student-built devices is spread out amongst theses and dissertations with no central repository of information; therefore, problem solving effort is often duplicated.
Sacha has worked in and around chemistry and engineering as a technician, student, researcher, hobbyist, and entrepreneur for over 14 years. He is currently the president of Pumping Station: One, Chicago’s premier hackerspace where he mostly herds cats and hackers. He also runs chemhacker.com where he discusses the intersection between science, art, opera, creativity, chemistry, and scanning-tunneling electron microscopy. He has recently spoken at Notacon 2010 and will be presenting his STM project at the Open Science Summit in Berkeley, CA July 29-31.
They, the people of the open source hardware movement, in order to form a more peaceful community for sharing, establish bigger and cuddlier Chumbies, ensure continued Arduino creativity, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of hackery to ourselves and our posterity, have established the Open Source Hardware Draft. It’s a sort of 11 commandments for those who would share or use an open source hardware design, indicating what documentation is required, how derived works must be allowed and, perhaps most importantly, that each use must include attribution to those founding engineers who came before…
RepRap is much more than just an open hardware project: it is a *recursive* open hardware project, (almost) capable of producing itself. That clearly places it in a different class from other systems, because it opens up the possibility of spawning huge numbers of these machines, independently of current manufacturing structures – just as GNU/Linux provides a free software framework for producing yet more free software. In truth, RepRap is not yet completely self-replicating, but there are moves afoot to achieve this. For example, the Foresight Institute, whose mission is “to ensure the beneficial implementation of nanotechnology”, is offering a Personal Manufacturing Prize to help bring this abou
Open Source hardware advocates want a hard-core license – Within one day of the release of a definition for “open source” hardware, the document has garnered endorsements from 50 people, many of them affiliated with manufacturing businesses. The document is only in its 0.3 draft version, so it’s likely to change before being finalized.
AN OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE (OSHW) group has published an updated draft definition. It has issued version 0.3 to give developers guidelines when evaluating licenses for OSHW.
Open Source Hardware Definition 0.3 Released by Bunnie. There’s been a flurry of blog posts today about the new Open Source Hardware Definition, which is currently on rev 0.3 (link), and a corresponding summit in NYC… It’s very exciting to see the open source hardware movement maturing to the stage where there is a flourishing and fecund community of participating innovators. As many of my readers know, I’m very fond of open source hardware and it’s nice that the field is getting less lonely and more credible by the day.
Hardware history in the making – An open hardware definition has been mulling around in a few emails ever since the Opening Hardware Workshop, put on by Ayah Bdeir. Tonight, a draft of the definition was released as well as an announcement for an Open Hardware Summit to discuss everything about Open Hardware.
Open Source Hardware Definition released, first Open Hardware Summit in NYC, Sept 23 by Cory Doctorow. The Open Source Hardware folks are making progress toward a unified movement. Today, they announced the first public draft of the “Open Source Hardware Definition” (mirroring OSI’s Open Source Definition, which sets limits on what is and isn’t open), and announced the first Open Hardware Summit in NYC for Sept 23.
OSHW and design tools – Finally, there’s some movement towards a unified concept of what “open source hardware” really is. Adafruit has posted their opinion on the matter for some time, and there have even been a couple of attempts to make an actual license to cover it.
Advancing open hardware with a few clear words by EMSL – Over the last few years we’ve been excited to be part of the rapidly growing open-source hardware community. One of the recurring issues in this community has been the lack of agreement on what constitutes an acceptable license for open hardware.
Draft Licence for Open Source Hardware published – A number of well known developers from the open source hardware scene have published a draft of a new licence under the name of Open Source Hardware (OSHW) for free hardware projects.
Announcing the Open Hardware Summit by Alicia Gibb – Bug Labs is excited to announce the Open Hardware Summit in conjunction with MAKE, and Creative Commons, and a little help from our friends at NYSCI, littleBits and Eyebeam!
Open Hardware Summit, Sept 23, 2010 by Tom Igoe. So what exactly is open source hardware? We’re getting closer to a consensus definition, thanks to Ayah Bdeir and Eyebeam.
Open source hardware defined by credit By Dana Blankenhorn. The idea is that innovations should build communities, innovators should get credit, but that the innovations themselves should be available. Just as with open source.
NEW YORK–There are 13 million-dollar open-source hardware companies, but there have been no standards governing what defines the still nascent field. Until now, that is. Unlike open-source software, because there have been no formal definitions, many people may not even be aware of the growing industry. But already some of those practicing its general principles have become household names among the geek set: Arduino, the programmable single-board microcontroller and software suite; Chumby, a popular Wi-Fi device; MakerBot, a low-priced 3D printer; and Adafruit, a maker of do-it-yourself hardware kits for things like MP3 players and more.
Today is a big day for anyone who designs (or builds) open source hardware. For about 5+ years or so the term “open source hardware” has been used more and more to generally describe projects in which the creators have decided to completely publish all the source, schematics, firmware, software, bill of materials, parts list, drawings and “board” files to recreate the hardware – they also allow any use, including commercial. Similar to open source software like Linux, but this hardware centric.
There were, will be, and are – many ways to define open source hardware but some of the leading makers and thinkers on the subject got together and I’m really thrilled to help announce that there is a draft of the Open source hardware (OSHW) definition version 0.3 and a summit this year, right before Maker Faire NYC.
Ayah Bdeir (Eyebeam fellow & coordinator of these efforts) has this to say about the first round of the definition and the summit. She writes…
I started getting interested in Open Hardware as a vehicle for innovation and social change while at the CCG group at the MIT Media Lab, and got fully immersed in it while a senior fellow at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York. Now, I am a (crazy!) strong believer in the power of Open Hardware. When I started littleBits, I jumped into the many challenges of porting the Open Source movement to hardware.
As I worked closely on legal strategy with incredible advisor, John Wilbanks, VP of Science at Creative Commons, we decided to create a venue for the community to interface with CC, and embark on a mission to help catalyse an Open Hardware license. The workshop, entitled “Opening Hardware: A workshop on Legal tools for open source hardware” took place at Eyebeam on March 17th and featured OH pioneers such as Arduino, Adafruit, Buglabs, MakerBot, Chumby as well as Jonathan Kuniholm (Open Prosthetics), Chris Anderson (Wired), Mako Hill (OLPC, Wikipedia), Jon Philips (Qi), Shigeru Kobayashi (Gainer), Becky Stern (Make) and Thinh Nguyen and John Wilbanks (CC) and us (littleBits, Eyebeam). Since then we, and an incredible group of OH stars (Evil Mad Scientist, Parallax, Sparkfun, Lilypad), have started putting together a definition that today, we are very excited to release in version 0.3 for public comment.
Recently, I have been appointed as Creative Commons fellow – a very important step which shows CC’s commitment to our community. And on September 23rd, Alicia Gibbs (buglabs) and myself are chairing a summit as part of MakerFaire: the Open Hardware Summit. We will be discussing the license, and hope to put version 1.0 out to the world! Please join us, sponsor us, support us, or just follow us!
Ayah Bdeir
July 14th, 2010
So, what’s next? Check out the open source hardware definition, help get us to 1.0 – for the last 4-5 years I’ve written up the hundreds of projects each year – and we’re finally arriving at some consensus from the people who make the hardware what it is and what the challenges are ahead. Open source hardware exists, it’s real – dozens of companies are thriving making millions of dollars creating great products and sharing the “recipe”.
The below is the license v.0.3 pasted from FreedomDefined. For the original, please go to: http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW
Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Draft Definition version 0.3
OSHW Draft Definition 0.3 is based on the Open Source Definition for Open Source Software and draft OSHW definition 0.2, further incorporating ideas from the TAPR Open Hardware License. Videos and Documentation of the Opening Hardware workshop which kicked off the below license are available here.
Introduction
Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is a term for tangible artifacts — machines, devices, or other physical things — whose design has been released to the public in such a way that anyone can make, modify, distribute, and use those things. This definition is intended to help provide guidelines for the development and evaluation of licenses for Open Source Hardware.
It is important to note that hardware is different from software in that physical resources must always be committed for the creation of physical goods. Accordingly, persons or companies producing items (“products”) under an OSHW license have an obligation not to imply that such products are manufactured, sold, warrantied, or otherwise sanctioned by the original designer and also not to make use of any trademarks owned by the original designer.
The distribution terms of Open Source Hardware must comply with the following criteria:
1. Documentation
The hardware must be released with documentation including design files, and must allow modification and distribution of the design files. Where documentation is not furnished with the physical product, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining this documentation for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The documentation must include design files in the preferred form for which a hardware developer would modify the design. Deliberately obfuscated design files are not allowed. Intermediate forms analogous to compiled computer code — such as printer-ready copper artwork from a CAD program — are not allowed as substitutes.
2. Necessary Software
If the hardware requires software, embedded or otherwise, to operate properly and fulfill its essential functions, then the documentation requirement must also include at least one of the following: The necessary software, released under an OSI-approved open source license, or other sufficient documentation such that it could reasonably be considered straightforward to write open source software that allows the device to operate properly and fulfill its essential functions.
3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original hardware. The license must allow for the manufacture, sale, distribution, and use of products created from the design files or derivatives of the design files.
4. Free redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the project documentation as a component of an aggregate distribution containing designs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. The license shall not require any royalty or fee related to the sale of derived works.
5. Attribution
The license may require derived works to provide attribution to the original designer when distributing design files, manufactured products, and/or derivatives thereof. The license may also require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original design.
6. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
7. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the hardware in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the hardware from being used in a business, or from being used in nuclear research.
8. Distribution of License
The rights attached to the hardware must apply to all to whom the product or documentation is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
9. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
The rights attached to the hardware must not depend on the hardware being part of a particular larger product. If the hardware is extracted from that product and used or distributed within the terms of the hardware license, all parties to whom the hardware is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original distribution.
10. License Must Not Restrict Other Hardware or Software
The license must not place restrictions on other hardware or software that may be distributed or used with the licensed hardware. For example, the license must not insist that all other hardware sold at the same time be open source, nor that only open source software be used in conjunction with the hardware.
11. License Must Be Technology-Neutral
No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.
Afterword
The signatories of this Open Source Hardware definition recognize that the open source movement represents only one way of sharing information. We encourage and support all forms of openness and collaboration, whether or not they fit this definition.
Endorsements
OSHW Draft Definition 0.3 is endorsed by the following persons and/or organizations. Please feel free to add (your own names) to this section. Listing your affiliation is optional for personal endorsements, and endorsements are presumed to be personal unless the organization name is listed separately.
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
Hardware’s not hard any more! In a world of sensors, wireless connectivity and location awareness, some hardware hacking skills are a must-have for any developer. Learn how to cheaply create special-purpose devices with Linux and plug computing, and enter into the fun and cost-effective world of the Arduino microprocessor.
It’s likely time for an open source hardware conference… stay tuned
Printable catalog (PDF)
