Fwd: Open Source Hardware Summit Debrief

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Bryan Bishop

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Oct 2, 2010, 10:56:38 PM10/2/10
to Open Manufacturing, Bryan Bishop
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: .alyn.post. <alyn...@lodockikumazvati.org>
Date: Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 9:55 PM
Subject: Re: Open Source Hardware Summit Debrief
To: "English Qi Hardware mailing list - support, developers, use cases
and fun" <discu...@lists.en.qi-hardware.com>


On Sat, Oct 02, 2010 at 07:19:24PM -0700, Ron K. Jeffries wrote:
> I found this discussion[1] about open source hardware thought provoking.
>
> [1] http://goo.gl/ePbv
> ---
> Ron K. Jeffries
>

Thank you for this, I found it very thought provoking.  Thinking
about my own motivations, I'd say that access to the community as
the agent that creates and manufacters the device to be one reason
I'm drawn to participate.  Its something we're doing together.

My long-term vision most certainly involves reproducing the
manufacturing process--creating the infrastructure that allows
communities like this to replicate.

At any rate, thank you!

-Alan
--
.i ko djuno fi le do sevzi

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- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
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Bryan Bishop

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Oct 3, 2010, 2:07:52 PM10/3/10
to Open Manufacturing, Bryan Bishop
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Shiloh <michaels...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: Open Source Hardware Summit Debrief
To: discu...@lists.en.qi-hardware.com


I was at the OHS and found it wonderful. It would have been extremely
appropriate to have Qi Hardware represented. I would have been willing
to do so but as I've not been terribly active thought it was
inappropriate. Perhaps I should have taken more initiative. Perhaps
next time.

On 10/02/2010 07:19 PM, Ron K. Jeffries wrote:
>
> I found this discussion[1] about open source hardware thought provoking.
>
> [1] http://goo.gl/ePbv
> ---
> Ron K. Jeffries
>

> _______________________________________________
> Qi Hardware Discussion List
> Mail to list (members only): discu...@lists.en.qi-hardware.com
> Subscribe or Unsubscribe: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailman/listinfo/discussion
>

--
Sent from my ASR-33

Bryan Bishop

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Oct 3, 2010, 6:59:10 PM10/3/10
to Open Manufacturing, Bryan Bishop
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Allin Kahrl <oso...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 5:47 PM
Subject: Re: Open Source Hardware Summit Debrief
To: mic...@michaelshiloh.com, "English Qi Hardware mailing list - support, developers, use cases and fun" <discu...@lists.en.qi-hardware.com>


When I was a kid the school library was still full of do-science-at-home books from the three decades prior. These books suggested you could get really interesting chemicals at the hardware store or pharmacy, and magnesium filings or spring steel from any local machine shop.

Along with access to a lot of diy-inclined adults, I really grew up with the impression that knowledge existed to be shared. That was really borne out at my first serious jobs in the early aughts, manufacturing reproduction hand tools whose patents had expired before my father was born. Anyone could have built those products, and we could talk all day about how we did it. It benefitted our customers enormously to know certain details, and without the infrastructure or skilled labor we had, nobody really competed with us.

That's the sort of world I want to live in but each day I see the corporate manufacturing world trying harder and harder to keep a tight grip on their "IP" and thus keep consumers beholden. I know for a fact that people do not require exclusivity to do innovative things, but will not be shocked if I see lobbying to have patents renewed indefinitely in my lifetime.

Open Hardware feels like the best way to create goods which can be fixed, can be taught, can be extended at the discretion of their owners. In theory, even if open components are used in proprietary assemblies, the original openness can never be appropriated. Changes to the open design must be published, so they don't need to infect their host hardware with openness in order to provide hooks of understanding for able owners. So I suppose my interest grows at least partly out of nostalgia.

[allin kahrl]

Paul D. Fernhout

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Oct 4, 2010, 7:58:54 PM10/4/10
to openmanu...@googlegroups.com

Over the past week, I've been working on a long post in relation to open
manufacturing and historical societies that touches on similar points from a
different direction -- suggesting that historical societies are, for the
most part, full of people who are natural allies with most of the open
manufacturing community. I'm not sure I'll post it both because it is up to
86K (so no one will read it :-) and it includes my usual digressionary
rambles, and I touch on specific issues in relation to the historical
society I'm a trustee of (and I don't know if that would bother others in
the society).

Still, a key idea related to that is that most new ventures tend to focus so
much on being different and proprietary, and also the focus is on creating a
new thing, not documenting in detail how it is made or the decisions that
went into it (which all gets pushed aside in a mad rush to get somewhere
first). When we look backwards, especially when techniques are now common
knowledge, there is usually more inclination to be open and sharing and also
to document various story-related aspects of things.

Why should those old books (or at least the information in them) not still
be accessible in some structured way? Some are, like on archive.org; example:
"Things To Make" by Archibald Williams
http://www.archive.org/details/thingstomake14664gut
But even if such books are accessible as books, we can do better now in
terms of having better tools for linking the information together and
connecting it up to 3D models, CAM paths, simulations, discussions,
structured arguments, to do lists, and so on.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.

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