IN WILLIAMSBURG, Brooklyn—the hippest part of New York’s hippest borough—you can pick up a seat for $750 made from the redwood reclaimed from an old water tower; or fork out $3,200 for a “Bilge” lounge chair, crafted from bourbon barrels and truck springs. Alternatively, if you are trend-conscious but cash-poor, you can download the free designs for strikingly similar items, get them cut at a local shop, and assemble them at home.
Designers are beginning to go “open source”, allowing users to download tweakable templates for everyday objects like furniture. “Ship information not stuff!” declares the website for AtFab, which is spearheading the trend along with SketchChair and MakeMe. Both AtFab and SketchChair specialise in homewares that can be put together from flat interlocking pieces of wood or acrylic. They are cut from a digital file by a laser-cutter or a computer numerical control (CNC) mill—machines which are becoming increasingly cheap and common. SketchChair also offers software that lets you draw-on components like legs, and test the physics of the chair against a manikin sized to the proportions of your body.
“The idea of a ‘factory’ is, in a word, changing,” writes Chris Anderson, a journalist and entrepreneur, in his new book, “Makers: The New Industrial Revolution”. “Just as the Web democratised innovation in bits, a new class of ‘rapid prototyping’ technologies, from 3-D printers to laser cutters, is democratising innovation in atoms.” Mr Anderson is an advocate of the “maker” movement, a community that champions the digital and the do-it-yourself. He believes that mass customisation could re-energise manufacturing, create environmentally responsible jobs, and empower consumers to surround themselves with objects uniquely tailored to their needs.
What is your opinion of open hardware and does it have a role in a for-profit company?
Haven’t seen it work yet and I think it is a myth. Successful hardware is designed, perfected and then mass produced – open software can be fluid and change dynamically and released and re-released without much of a cost to redeploy. In hardware once you lock into a design any change can cost a lot and require all sorts of tooling and certification changes. An open design is about rapid iteration and a pseudo crowd sourced level of participation. Who pays for the tooling, the prototypes, the certs? Who gets to choose that this is the design that will sell in the market? I’m not saying it is impossible – just haven’t seen it work.
The move towards DIY digital fabrication–from MakerBot to Fab@Home–is an undoubtedly great development for consumers. But one thing it’s missing is a standard system for modeling and exchanging components. If 10 people upload a design for a replacement bolt for a chair, odds are you’ll get 10 slightly different designs. While the world has the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) devoted to regulating specifications, tolerances, and standards of consumer goods, the digital fabrication community is fractured when it comes to a universal standard.
Enter OpenStructures, a Belgian project that aims to establish a standard grid for developing and sharing models. OpenStructures is “a modular construction model, where everyone designs for everyone on the basis of one shared geometrical grid,” the OS team explains. “It initiates a kind of collaborative Meccano [an English Erector Set--eds.] to which everybody can contribute parts, components and structures.” Simply put, OS offers a universal language for people who design and fabricate objects, ultimately leading to a cleaner, faster user experience.
The Open Source Hardware Association will be an advocacy group, mostly educating people on what open hardware is, the benefits, and best practices, as well as being a roof for all the various items built by the community so far, including the Open Hardware Summit, the open hardware definition, and our logo.
There are a lot of excellent things done by the community that don’t really have a cohesive web presence to live under. We hope to give the community a bit of structure by organizing information around open source hardware under the Association. The other reason is that currently a lot of our knowledge about open hardware is colloquial… We hope to create a resource to make all these things more transparent and provide a formal entity that can answer questions about how, why, what, and the best practices of open hardware.
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The board of the Open Source Hardware Association currently consists of Alicia Gibb (President), Danese Cooper, Catarina Mota, Windell Oskay, Nathan Seidle, and Wendy Seltzer. We are in the process of electing more board members with public nominations, but haven’t worked out the details yet. Please stay tuned!
All donations and membership dues (beyond the cost of providing specific benefits) will be used to support the Open Source Hardware Association’s public-interest purposes. [Dues may be tax deductible as permitted by law if our tax status is granted.] Memberships are valid for one year and priced in USD. Please review the membership levels below. Not ready to become a member? You can also donate to our cause! We are designing a corporate membership for similar levels. Current membership is for individuals only.
Join if you’d like to support the OSHWA. We are excited that a group is going to represent, help and educate regarding OSHW. Most of all, they’re going to represent and celebrate open source companies like Adafruit
Today we have some really big news, which is going to mean a lot to many programmers in our community who have been asking about it ever since launch. This is one of those announcements that has been in the pipeline for quite some time, but we haven’t been able to talk about it until now.
As of right now, all of the VideoCore driver code which runs on the ARM is available under a FOSS license (3-Clause BSD to be precise). The source is available from our newuserland repository on GitHub. If you’re not familiar with the status of open source drivers on ARM SoCs this announcement may not seem like such a big deal, but it does actually mean that the BCM2835 used in the Raspberry Pi is the first ARM-based multimedia SoC with fully-functional, vendor-provided (as opposed to partial, reverse engineered) fully open-source drivers, and that Broadcom is the first vendor to open their mobile GPU drivers up in this way. We at the Raspberry Pi Foundation hope to see others follow.
Everything running on the ARM on the Raspberry Pi is now open source.
OSHW producers dispute the claim that their designs and products are strictly for hobbyists. As the so-called “Maker Movement” continues to gather momentum, OSHW enthusiasts are adamant that the practice will follow in the steps of open source software and move into the mainstream.15 Certainly adoption by Facebook indicates that serious players are now involved. The fact that the business model involves the production and logistics of shipping and servicing tangible items bodes well for companies who can excel in those activities. As for the licensing lawyer, open source hardware represents a variation on a theme that we have come to understand in the software field; however, the nature of the licenses and ongoing patent issues may present new challenges.
Following discussions about the Open Source and Open Source Hardware logos, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) have worked together to compose a co-existence agreement on behalf of their representative communities.
We are pleased to announce that the co-existence agreement has now been approved and signed by both organizations. This agreement means that each group separately has control of their respective logo and in particular that the Open Source Hardware community will be able to continue to use the Open Source Hardware logo.
As per the agreement, OSHWA will (in the near future) publish guidelines for the use of the OSHW logo, designed to promote its use in compliance with the Open Source Hardware Definition. Until then, if you are using the OSWH logo, please make sure that you are following the OSHW definition. And, to use the OSI logo, please refer to OSI’s trademark usage guidelines.
Working with other organizations is just one of the ways we serve the community. Through your membership support, both OSHWA (join now!) and OSI (join now!) hope to continue representing your needs.
So, anyone putting the OSHW logo on your boards, you’ve always been fine, you are fine and you always will be fine
This is the outcome we asked as OSHW makers for from the start and it’s great to see this happening and official two open source orgs working together for the benefit of all. For the folks following this story, last year Phil ask the previous OSI board if the gear logo was ok after there were questions if it was too close to the OSI logo (Phil contacted the previous OSI members and they said it was fine) but this year with a new OSI board this process re-started. In a fun twist, the OSI logo appears to be Phil’s logo he debuted at OSCON about 10 years ago. Below…
phd fellow, co-founder of @openmaterials and @altlab, member of @nycresistor and OSHWA.org, co-chair of the Open Hardware Summit, TED fellow
Catarina also listed out some great women on her Facebook page too!
Happy Ada Lovelace day. Thank you to the talented and strong women in the open source community who inspire me everyday: Alicia Gibb, Dustyn Roberts, Limor Fried, Leah Buchley, Ayah Bdeir, Sylvia Todd, Erin Kennedy, Amanda Wozniak, Hannah Perner-Wilson, Lenore Edman, Becky Stern, Lynne Bruning, Alison Powell, Alison Leonard, Kate Hartman, Kat Braybrooke, Gabriella Levine, Shannon Dosemagen, Liz Barry, Katherine Moriwaki, Louisa Campbell, Liza Stark, Margarita Benitez, Addie Wagenknecht, Myriam Ayass, Lizabeth Arum, Paola Guimerans, Jie Qi, Meg Pirrung, Benedetta Piantella, Ellen Jorgensen, Max Whitney, Ari Lacenski, Kelly McGuire, Diana Eng, Astrida Valigorski, Mimi Hui, Dia Campbell, Nina Tandon, Juliana Rotich – and so many others!
Today is Ada Lovelace day! Celebrating the achievements of women in science, art, design, technology, engineering and math! Ada Lovelace Day is about sharing stories of women — whether engineers, scientists, technologists or mathematicians — who have inspired you to become who you are today. The aim is to create new role models for girls and women by celebrating amazing women making and doing cool things. If you’re looking for a worldwide Ada Lovelace Day event? Please visit the Finding Ada events page. Be sure to check out all our posts today and from previous years here of amazing women!
Today everything in the Adafruit store is 10% off, just use the code ALD12 on check out, use this code to pick something special person in your life that will spark her imagination for a lifelong career or hobby!
Ayah (from littleBits) gives an inspiring interview with Entrepreneur Levant at the SHARE Beirut Conference, encouraging entrepreneurs to follow their passion and never give up.
Ayah bdeir is an engineer and an interactive artist, and the founder of littleBits.cc, an open source kit of electronic modules that snap together with magnets. Only 6 months after its creation, litteBits has been acquired by MoMA for the museum’s permanent collection, won best of ToyFair, been featured on TED, BBC, Forbes and Popular Science, and called by Bloomberg TV LEGO’s for the iPad generation Bdeir graduated with a Masters from the MIT Media Lab where she was a student in the Computing Culture Group. Prior to that, Bdeir studied Computer Engineering and Sociology in the American University of Beirut.
After the Media Lab (and a brief stint in Finance), Ayah got a fellowship and senior fellowship at Eyebeam Art+Technology center. She taught graduate classes at NYU and Parsons and taught numerous workshops to get non-engineers, and particularly young girls, interested in science and technology. Bdeir was a mentor in the regional reality tv-show Stars of Science (initiated by Qatar Foundation) promoting science and technology innovation in the Middle East.
In 2010, Bdeir was granted a fellowship with Creative Commons in recognition of her work, including spearheading the first Open Hardware definition and co-chairing the Open Hardware Summit at the New York Hall of Science in September of 2010 and 2011. Just recently, Bdeir was awarded the highly prestigious TED fellowship, as one of 25 innovators in 2012 from around the world.
Bdeir is also the founder of Karaj, Beirut’s lab for experimental art, architecture and technology. Ayah lives and works in New York.
Today is Ada Lovelace day! Celebrating the achievements of women in science, art, design, technology, engineering and math! Ada Lovelace Day is about sharing stories of women — whether engineers, scientists, technologists or mathematicians — who have inspired you to become who you are today. The aim is to create new role models for girls and women by celebrating amazing women making and doing cool things. If you’re looking for a worldwide Ada Lovelace Day event? Please visit the Finding Ada events page. Be sure to check out all our posts today and from previous years here of amazing women!
Today everything in the Adafruit store is 10% off, just use the code ALD12 on check out, use this code to pick something special person in your life that will spark her imagination for a lifelong career or hobby!
Hack Manhattan is teaching a KiCad class on Saturday, November 3. KiCad is an open source alternative to expensive commercial circuit board design packages, and supports 16 copper layers and unlimited board size. This workshop will assume working knowledge of circuit boards and what’s on them, but not any prior board design experience.
The “Respects Your Freedom” computer hardware product certification program encourages the creation and sale of hardware that will do as much as possible to respect your freedom and your privacy, and will ensure that you have control over your device.
Here are the requirements. It looks like if you use Eagle you can’t be certified, it’s a little unclear if you can use Mac or Windows to make the open hardware even if you use free tools, we’re going to check out the list of requirements.
Here’s an interesting requirement…
…the seller must talk about “free software” more prominently than “open source.
FSF & hardware seems to be diverging (or converging?) from past statements by FSF’s Richard Stallman.
Because copying hardware is so hard, the question of whether we’re allowed to do it is not vitally important. I see no social imperative for free hardware designs like the imperative for free software – Richard Stallman — On “Free Hardware”
Use this quick tool to instantly view two licenses mashed together. This will combine all of the attributes of the two licenses as well as display both of their summaries.
While someone like David Copperfield can fortify his grand illusions against larceny by making them too baroque and expensive to copy — to do the Appearing Car, you have to have a car, for starters — Teller has to rely on simpler defenses. In 1983, he obtained a U. S. certificate of copyright registration for Shadows. It was the first time he’d attempted anything of the sort. Teller knew that Houdini, beset by copyists, had tried to protect his tricks by writing them into one-act plays. (Pantomimes were, and remain, protected by law.) Teller wasn’t seeking to defend Shadows as a magic trick, but more as a piece of performance art. His filing even included a typewritten description of the trick in which he refers to himself as “the Murderer,” along with an illustration of a grinning Teller, clad entirely in black, carving up a rose by slicing into its shadow.
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Until Bakardy came along, Teller had never needed his copyright filings to stake a claim. “It’s not like good manners and generosity are inappropriate ways to behave in the world,” he says. When he has contacted light-fingered magicians in the past, they have always apologized and stopped performing the trick. For instance, he does a trick in which he spills handfuls of coins into a tank filled with water, and they somehow turn into living, breathing goldfish. It’s a throat-catching effect, and a magician in Sweden, who had seen Teller performing the trick on TV, studied the tape and finally lifted it. After Teller called him, the magician said sorry, boxed up his props in a crate, minus the fish, and shipped them to Las Vegas.
This time around, Teller offered to pay Gerard Bakardy several thousand dollars for the time he spent working on the Rose & Her Shadow. He had to promise only that he would stop performing and selling the trick. Bakardy, after asking whether Teller might help him bring Los Dos de Amberes to America, countered with a higher price. No one will confirm exactly what that amount was, but it was allegedly more than $100,000. “It really wasn’t possible for me to come to any terms,” Teller says. “It ended up having certain elements that reminded me of a kidnapping.”
Teller, who had already persuaded YouTube to take down the offending video, asked Bakardy whether his demands were firm. Bakardy said they were.
Teller had a decision to make.
Wow, interesting – copyrighting a trick as a one-act play.
The adage that ‘form follows function,’ seems simple enough, but putting it into practice involves a plethora of pitfalls, especially when applied to manufacturing hardware and getting a project out into the hands of users. This talk covers ‘design for manufacturability,’ and ‘ethnography of use,’ which are two key concepts that designers need to understand in order to maximize a project’s success. We’ll then reduce those concepts to practical tips, tricks, rules and guidelines for getting your hardware made correctly -and- made to be used.”
Scroll through to 42:30 in the ustream archive of her section to see her entire talk!
The Open Hardware Summit was held for the third time last Thursday in New York in advance of World Maker Faire in nearby Queens. This is the first year that it was held by the relatively new Open Source Hardware Association, which is now accepting members.
Speakers ranged in age from 11-year-old Super-Awesome Sylvia, who is in the third season of her DIY webshow for makers, to 77-year-old Pat Delany, who created a $150 lathe/mill/drill from scrap metal.
Printable catalog (PDF)
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