what's your definition of 'open source hardware'?

A recent post on the Make blog about my controller project, the Stribe, was modified by the Editor and the words "open source" were stricken-out. The explanation: "...Not actually open source it seems, non-commercial license..."
(http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/10/maker_faire_austin_the_st.html#comment-96956)

Also, there is a comment: "...the stribe is very cool but unfortunately it isnt in fact open source due to the 'non-commercial' license it uses. see http://www.ladyada.net/library/openhardware/license.html for more detail..."

I've carefully read through the linked article, and it basically says that if you include the "Non-Commercial" caveat in your license, this means your hardware isn't open source. Though interesting and well-argued, the article seems to me to be the opinion of one person rather than an authoritative definition of open source hardware.

On my website (http://www.stribe.org) I post complete documentation, including circuit diagrams, plans, drawings, software code, firmware code, photos, videos, detailed how-to-build instructions, bill of materials, etc. To protect myself from someone simply manufacturing my boards and selling them, I licensed the overall project under "Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License" (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/), and the firmware under the GNU General Public License. This is the same scheme used by a variety of open source hardware projects, including monome.

Should protecting my work from unfair exploitation disqualify it as open source? In my mind the spirit of open source is to encourage new development, enhancement, experimentation, and learning... not to allow unfettered production and sale of another's work without permission.

I certainly wouldn't have been inspired to make the Stribe if the monome hadn't been so thoroughly documented and open. And without the monome being so open, it would never have occurred to me to open my own work so others could learn from it and build their own devices. I worry that such a re-definition of the term "open source hardware" might discourage people from opening their projects, stifling this community and others like it.

I'm very interested to hear what people think.

i believe that what you are doing is opensource no matter what the dictionary states.

the argument against 'non-commercial' use in the mentioned article focuses on the fact that it stops COMPANIES from having a positive input to your project. I think that in terms of small-scale DIY hardware, corporate involvement is probably the opposite of what we are trying to foster in this area.

my thought is that whilst software like mysql and firefox are most benefited by large user involvement due to the long hours of programming required, hardware development is better aided by organisation where there is a central meeting point and not where development is scattered.

unlike the aforementioned software, monome and stribe are both very much niche markets and therefore it is true that it would be unlikely for a medium to large corporation to attempt to develop it. we should as a result, not focus on what the licensing model does in the corporate realm, but rather how it impacts the individuals who choose to be a part of this community. we need to be encouraging participation within the project, and it is apparent that by using non-commercial licensing it discourages the individual with dreams of becoming the great monome under-cutter. instead encouraging that person to be part of the community itself rather than creating an offshoot which distracts the movement.

for these reason i believe what you are doing is as beneficial as can be in our niche hardware and accompanying software situation. we are not creating for mass consumption, but for community involvement, and i believe the current methods being used (including donations to developers) are the ideal approach.

if being 'anti-corporate greed' is not 'open-source' then i don't want it anyway.

hey josh, i'm pretty much with you and enjoi.

according to ladyada, there appear to be three implicit tiers pertaining to the "openness" of one's source.

at one extreme, you have closed source. itunes, internet explorer, your home stereo.

on the other extreme, you have open source a la linux.

on the software side of the gray space, you have something like max/msp which allows programmers to open up their source to other programmers, but requires the programming interface (aka an engineering tool).

on the hardware side of the gray space, you have the notion that non-commercial licensing impedes the project's openness.

the biggest flaw with ladyada's assessment of the situation, though, is that she fails to address the single most crucial characteristic about hardware: it cannot be freely duplicated like data can be. if this point is not entirely obvious, think of this example. you make a song with your monome, and send the track to a friend with a text file indicating an open source license allowing the friend to do whatever they please with the sound file. both you and your friend now have the track. this is how software works. scenario two, you send your monome to a friend. now your friend has a monome and you don't (owch!). this is how hardware works. the consequence of this characteristic is that producing and using hardware each have their own set of requirements. to produce hardware, you need tools and components. to use hardware you need, well.. the hardware! software is unique in that developers and end users must each have a computer. platform might make a slight difference, but i do not think that the platform dependency issue relates to the physical uniqueness of hardware.

the OSI was written with software in mind, and criteria 8 and 10 (license should be product non-specific and technologically neutral, respectively) seem quite ill-suited towards hardware. with those in mind, i think even the monome would not be considered open source. the 40h design calls for an ATmega32. go ahead and stick a freescale s12 in there and see what it does. is that technologically neutral? sure, you could design a monome out of TTL and put it over TCP/IP and make it send /press 0 0 1 messages. it may conform to the protocol and be considered derivative use, but both are technologically independent and non-neutral.

thinking about technology brings up another relevant point about how "open source" max/msp is, but i'll save it for later.

the final and most important thing to realize is that licenses were all written by people. people as creatures are generally pretty inclined to talk and listen and participate in all sorts of social activities like negotiations and agreements. if someone makes their schematics and gerb files and source code available, but puts non-commercial in the licensing, and you want to use it for something commercial, give the person a call! talk about it. be rational individuals, and don't try to exploit anyone or anyone's work.

or maybe we develop a new open hardware standard that follows the Qt dual licensing model (http://trolltech.com/about/open-source-business-model) and call it Open Coarse and get all nit-picky when people use our term to describe something that fits 99% into our bucket but isn't officially certified.

The Arduino is a great example of true open source hardware, anyone can copy, modify use and sell the hardware. The fact that it's a versatile microcontroller dev board that can be used for 100000's of projects makes it very suitable for this open source licence. I recently read that the estimated number of Arduinos (and compatibles) reached 100.000 units, so there's a very large global user base and market which can easily be served by multiple commercial organizations.

These numbers are totally different for hardware such as the monome, the Stribe and Aurora. These projects serve a niche market segment, due to technical skills required to get things up and running. I think it's no more than reasonable that the makers protect their projects by using a non-commercial license to prevent unlimited distribution of their circuits, but they do allow anyone to hack, modify and tinker with the open source files of the project for personal / community use.

A monome can be made from many different parts that people can source themselves, but the unique parts (alu faceplate, wooden box, silicone keypads) are hard to find, so I think that also contributes to the success of this device, as people want to get their hands on the real thing. The Arduinome is a good example of a non-commercial spin-off made from parts that people sourced themselves.

I think it's time for a true non-commercial open hardware licence that fits these types of projects and benefits both the community and the inventors. There's always room for a business partnership or license deal if there's serious interest from a company that wants to use the open source files commercially or redistribute locally.

Edit: Josh, did you get the e-mail I sent you?

It might be semantics, but it seems that preventing commercial use _does_ in fact drop you out of the Open Source™ bracket. At least according to the people who own the trademark...

http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

With that being said, why be concerned that you're not being called Open Source in the article. Why try and be something you aren't. I don't think it's a bad thing to not be open source - I think it's a great thing to be non commercial. Maybe a new phrase needs to be coined for "non commercial open source".

The word hoover is often used for vacuum cleaners, yet many aren't Hoovers™.

The word open source is often used for projects with open source code, yet many aren't Open Source™.

I think being open source with a lower case O and S is still a great thing.

I personally think that Open Source™ overreaches. If I was picking a new name for what that is, I'd say Free Source™.

To me, Open doesn't require that you give up all rights. Free does.

oh shit...
sorry ultra...
i meant Make was kinda burning bridges...
i think that you ARE open source in every aspect of the word....
and the stribe RULES
i just didnt understand why make would get weird about it....
sorry if im not followable (usually)haha
sting!

i apologize for that incredibly convoluted post.

one last thought-- it's worth examining the parallels in the music world. the pcb design vs. the manufactured pcb compared to music files on a pressed cd. then consider the production and distribution of each physical product and how it affects the musician/designer respectively.

It's a good thing there's a conversation about this subject as we're somewhat pioneering in the grey area of open source hardware. I have also been looking for an appropriate license for the stuff I'm currently working on and I feel like there isn't a license that's really 100% suitable... Very much the same problem that Ultra encountered with the Make folks... Maybe it's time for a new licensing model that covers our problems and would be something between the OHL and the non-commercial creative commons license...

Maybe introduction of "openness" levels would bring more clarification..
So to distinguish between firmware, software/drivers, cad drawings/technical documents, schematics, pcb layouts (gerbers), pcb source files (eagle/kicad). And the allowed usage: non commercial, for personal use, for community use, commercial, public domain, etc..

Any thoughts about that?

hiya, pt from MAKE here - josh emailed me just now so i'm going to pop in and try and join this great discussion.

first i should say that my comment on the project was just to clarify for our readers, when folks see "open source hardware" they assume they could take the schematics, source, everything and if they wanted - and manufacture for profit. since that's exactly *not* what josh wanted, i added it to the post that another author put on the site.

so i hope you can tell that it wasn't "pissing on the project" or anything even remotely close to that. to be even more clear - i've been a huge fan of this project, josh has been at my place in nyc, i've covered the project a lot, stribe was at maker faire, it's a fantastic project from a cool maker. there was a stribe fan club, i'd be in it.

i'm bummed that a lot of people piled on and assumed the worst, that josh didn't email me or chat at maker faire, that's how it goes - stuff online gets intense --- but i'm glad i can hopefully clear up some stuff now.

the problem that many brought up is that this is all very new. i'm not sure what open source hardware is going to evolve to be. i don't think anyone knows - there isn't a linus or stallman of osh either (maybe that's a good thing?) - we are all figuring it out as we go along.

i've tried to catalog what everyone is collectively calling "open source hardware" in a series of articles, and it's evolving. i think that a lot of makers are using creative commons and i personally think that's the way a lot of projects are going to be released because a lot of makers want to get everything out there, but they're worried about someone doing a knock-off and making tons of money. that hasn't happened yet, but that's the thing most folks tell me they're worried about.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/04/open_source_hardware_what.html

if you look at the linux world, anyone can make money with linux and that basically changed the world of operating systems, programming, etc. some makers have done that with hardware, chumby, adafruit, arduino...

"open hardware" might be a better term if some or most of the project is released, but at some point as a community we should try and figure out a way to say exactly what you can and can't do. josh did and i posted that, but someone how got spanked for clarity.

when folks talk about open source, they usually refer to this:
http://opensource.org/docs/osd

==No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor==
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

microsoft can release "open" projects, but they're not going to call vista "open source software" since everyone for the most part agrees "open source software" means you can make money from it.

but hardware is different in a few ways, and here we are.

at make we certainly don't have 100% open source everything, we follow what the makers want and ask for - there are many many levels of "open". the stribe is an open project, but the maker said don't make money from it, we have makers that make kits that say the same thing, there are also copyrights and trademarks on things (arduino for example is trademarked by the arduino folks). it's not "evil" or "bad" like some have suggested, it's what the maker wants, there's no club or certification for open source hardware, it's all new and i'd only like to see more projects like the stribe.

i'll check this thread and hopefully can answer any questions or comment more, great discussion!

cheers,
pt

phillip torrone
senior editor
MAKE magazine

hi, ultrajosh just email me (& phil) and i made an account so i can answer any questions.

first off, let me introduce myself: im limor (aka ladyada) i run a small company out of my living room where i design & sell 'open source hardware' electronics and kits. you can see them at www.ladyada.net/make and adafruit.com . Everything i design is completely open source - firmware, software, hardware schematics and layout, cad files. anyone can build them for any reason whatsoever (including selling them on ebay, and those sellers have my blessing)

i'm very open to dialogue and discussion but i do want to make it 100% clear that i have never ever disparaged the stribe or ultrajosh. in fact josh emailed phil & i earlier this year when he was interested in selling the stribe and came over to our workshop where we talked about the project, how he could make a living from it, and i offered to help him in his endeavor no-strings-attached. in fact i think the stribe is f'ing awesome & told him so.

i also want to make it 100% clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with people publishing their projects as not fully Open Source. in fact its still incredibly cool that projects are published and i support those projects (& sometimes build them for my own pure electronixy pleasure). such projects help the community and have a strong following. if you have a project and you want to make to make absolutely sure that people don't make money on it without asking, then open source is probably not for you. If you want to make sure that your project is not manufactured in China, or India, or New Mexico then open source is probably not for you

On the other hand, I dont think that Open Source is a tool of evil corporate greed. its possible to have a balance!

The question as to what open source means when talking about hardware is still kinda up in the air. Its a very tough question because as some people mentioned, with software theres just code. with hardware there are about 6 layers. each layer can be open or closed. when i talk about open source hardware i look at it like the legal system in the US where new decisions are based on old ones. Open source software, for example, is very well defined as the links above note. I'm also basing my definition on other work such as TAPR, Teuthis, Chumby, Arduino and BugLabs. Not everyone is in 100% agreement but we are trying to work towards a common definition. how many layers must be open for it to be OSH? what is a good way to communicate this?

basically this entire thread is about phrasing. that means it is easy to resolve! my argument is you oughtnt say "Open source music controller" unless the whole thing is, in fact, open source.

For example:
On the stribe page, josh says "monome 40h is an open project" and "I attempted wherever possible to use entirely free or open source tools" & "The idea is to keep it open so others will continue to improve the design"
he never says its fully open source. so thats all 100% true. monome is an open project. he does use free (expresspcb) & open source tools (arduino).

So in conclusion!
IMHO, saying "open music controller" is totally OK. Saying "open firmware music controller" is also also totally OK. saying "fully published and documented for non-commercial use" is totally ok. however, saying "open source music controller" i would argue, is not completely true.

let me know what you think, i am open to any & all discussion

limor
proprietress
adafruit industries

Thanks for chiming-in Phillip - it's great to see this discussed and it is definitely super-relevant to most if not all here. I didn't ping you directly right away 'cause I wasn't quite sure how to feel about it and wanted some input. Clearly this is a lava-hot topic! :) When I saw there was some (mostly good-humored) bashing going on I figured it was only fair to clue you in.

Edit: One idea I discussed with some friends was coining a new term that means "open" but doesn't fail the "open source" test. I didn't intentionally word my stuff as indicated above (in ladyada's post), but I agree the semantic distinction between "open" and "open source" does clarify things a bit. My only concern is that use of the term "open" might seem sort of like marketing jive. Like "dude, we're totally open" and the "initiated" will roll their eyes thinking, "everyone says that these days."

@pt: thanks for clarifying, and welcome to the community.

i think we may be confusing words once again. i know for a fact that commercial entities *use* our devices, for profit. musicians use our devices to make a living, scientists are using them in research, and they're being used in education. the contrast to linux in this sense is a bit off-- we're not preventing use of the device itself.

by non-commercial i mean (and most people mean) don't use our source files for commercial ends-- meaning please don't start your own humble business redistributing ours or others' work.

your assertion that nobody has made tons of money creating a knock-off of open hardware is true as far as i know, but you underestimate how many extraordinarily long e-mail discussions i've had reasoning people away from the decision to do as much. this is not an unreal problem or simply paranoia.

but most shockingly, i'm certainly hoping you misspoke when describing MAKE readers' interest in open source hardware partially driven by a desire to manufacture for profit. i thought MAKERs were all about building things for themselves. i thought MAKERs would be more respectful of the ethic of openness and not simply leech other designers' good will to make some money.

again, the difference again between hardware and software-- you can't really sell open source software that you didn't write. anyone can download it at no cost. you may be able to sucker someone into paying you $5 if you burn it to a DVD first. hardware is different. anyone can take source files and convert them into a useful object that has value beyond the sum of its components. some people may think that selling others' work is ok-- i think it's antisocial at best. this is why we need to clarify our licensing. we're not trying to prevent commercial use, we're simply hoping to prevent profiteering.

you make good points. these are questions i deal with too as i would of course like to keep doing what i do :)

perhaps, lets look at it this way:
stribe uses arduino. arduino is fully open source & there is no constraint on commercial use. if it was not, then ultrajosh could not sell the stribe (which contains and uses arduino IP) without prior authorization/licensing/etc from arduino. the beauty of the arduino project is that he doesn't have to do that. he can go forth and be creative in his own way knowing that as long as he fulfills the requirements of the open source license it is totally cool with the arduino folks. that means its more affordable for his end users and makes it more likely that he can live off of his labors

also, there is definitely profit to be made from open source software. for example, there are now laptops that ship with linux & firefox (in fact i was just checking out the asus eee yesterday). the laptop makers dont pay for the software but they get a free operating system. that means their margins are a lot higher than if they installed windows. while they are not directly selling the software they are certainly making more money because of it!

edit: i unfortunately have to log off, but in conclusion id like to say: open sourcing projects is not for everyone. if you dont want it to be manufactured by others freely then a non-commercial license is for you. its -your project- and you have the right to do with it as you wish! i am pro-documentation and pro-license-choice and i fully support more electronics hacking for all. i also like chocolate ice cream. if you have further questions complaints or comments, send me an email -> limor AT ladyada DOTTY net

@ladyada: re firefox and linux, very good points! though don't manufacturers pass a majority of the OS discount to the end buyer to encourage sales? i unfortunately can't find a clear correlation to end-product open hardware, however.

regarding the arduino in the stribe-- very good point as well. it's clear that non-commercial is inhibiting in some situations, particularly in products which facilitate other projects.

@pt: good points. i agree, this is now about branding and education.

@all - i just posted this up on MAKE too so there might be some new folks here to chime in. great stuff here, thanks to everyone here who made this happen!

i'll keep this on my reader for a bit but also feel free to email me as new things come up.

So I shared a booth with Josh, demonstrating how to do Surface Mount Soldering, this weekend at Maker Faire and think his project rocks!

Alot of what I do is based on uControllers and other nifty projects and base alot of info gathered on the internet. Many of these sources are open source or provided by the manufacturer.

I personally find the "Non-Commercial"license very limiting. How many of you out that have had a truly "revolutionary" idea? Most stuff out there and in this community is "ëvolutionary" and that is a big difference. If you can't build or improve on something then why be involved? I think you could be turning away a lot of talented people simply because there is no money to be made.

I personally pursue my business as a side project that pays for itself. I would have a hardtime justifying it if it didn't. Am I the big bad man, or a sellout, because I make money from this stuff. No...in fact I give back even more to the community by making money (i.e. I was able to afford to go to Austin and teach people for free about SMT soldering). If you have been to MakerFaire and the MakerShed you will quickly realize the shed is there to make money. But can Make...make money and help the community/society, you betcha! If you never want to get beyond a "hobbyist" implementation or improvement then why choose non-commercial?

My biggest irk about non-commercial though is where do you draw the line? I have a laser and make cases for the stribe ? Does this mean I can't cut plastic cases for the stribe and make money? I resell leds for the stribe can I not make money now? If I make some blinky thing that makes noise and interfaces to my computer can I not make money? Does this mean if I make a spinoff device that maybe uses a portion of the source code cannnot I not make money? Does this mean if I use a stribe and have a concert where I make music and having a paying audience cannot I not accept their ticket money?

I have applied and pursued several patents (none of them worked out because as Tehn mentioned I'd never be able to afford to prosecute them anyway and couldn't justify the cost). But with a patent if you so much as tell someone about the idea that's outside of your IP circle of friends you have "publicly disclosed" this IP and it is public domain. All of it.

Really though, people are afraid that the big bad corporate man is going to come down and steal their idea. So far from my business I have made more money by showing that I can do stuff (open source makes this easy) and then making something entirely new for someone (contract work) than I have ever could have if I hadn't kept stuff open.

You all should read the latest Wired magazine and a good discussion about the arduino founder. Great stuff! They are on the right path if you ask me!

many good points here, but again we're mired in language.

some of us are simply trying to put forth that non-commercial means please don't sell reproductions. there is no restriction on use. my "narrow" view is based on running one of the few operations attempting to design/manufacture/distribute devices which could be considered open hardware.

the "legal team tracking down people" scenario is perhaps overreaching. how about, if someone started selling hundreds of kits based on our design, would we e-mail them? certainly. on the other hand, our forum hosts numerous group-buys for variants on our devices, and we encourage this.

arggggg, this forum logged me out and i lost my post! it was so much more eloquently put than my previous one!

here is my embittered attempt at reproduction:

Hey! make people! i would have loved to discuss this last night but had no internet =(

first, for pt and limor (who is/isn't with us anymore?), hi, i'm kevin from the blog thread.

@limor, your point about the josh using the arduino in the stribe and then selling the stribe is entirely convincing, and quite frankly, something i hadn't even considered when typing my previous post in this thread. thanks for that.

@pt, i'm not sure what phone you were talking about in your response over on the make blog, but now i am curious.

so what do we do about this terminology issue? it seems to me that "open source hardware" will continue to be defined as it is now, requiring no limitations on commercial use, a la the arduino.

it seems that while we have to come up with a new term to describe thoroughly documented and open projects which contain this non-commercial use caveat, we also have to address what types of commercial use are ok.

i think the term "open design" might be good, if properly defined, but then we'd have to agree on a definition. personally, i think the term should not consider commercial use in its definition, thus making an open source hardware project fit in the subset of open design.

i am still mad at the forum for logging me out as i tried to post this the first time.... grumble grumble..