open hardware directory

[ben lipkowitz]

One thing that bugs me is the lack of a reasonably complete, annotated
directory of open hardware designs, preferably with some sort of license
description or "what makes it open in the first place"

I've seen these two lists, but they aren't even close to complete:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_hardware
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Product_Hacking

both lists lack the first two open-design computers i thought of (LART and
beagle-board) and contain stuff that I wouldn't consider open at all,
like "c,mm,n" (which gets bonus points for having the worst name ever)

So, what makes something Open anyway? We really should start drafting some
kind of set of principles like these:
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

That's what mailing lists are for, right?

> Could somebody PLEASE talk about a chemical process, a new gadget, or a
> practical way of building houses? Thank you.

saw this today - miniature laser video projectors, needs no focusing:
http://www.microvision.com/pico_projector_displays/embedded.html

now this looks fairly simple in concept, three-color laser bounces off
vibrating mirror, so why haven't we seen these before, even in monochrome?
reminds me of the Private Eye P4 head mount display, which used a row of
LED's and a vibrating mirror. where's my borg-o-vision!