Water canary (soon to be) open source spectrometer

[Jeffrey Warren]

Hey - a group called Water Canary has proposed an open source spectrometer for the Knight News Challenge this year, and are in the 50 finalists. This is very cool and I hope we can use each others' work. Actually it looks like they're not open source *yet* -- I asked where the design files were and Sonaar wrote back in the comments: 

Hi Jeff, thanks for writing, we're excited too. Our files aren't posted yet - we'll let you know when we share them along with the licensing details. We're eager to collaborate with people who share our interest in open source spectroscopy!

However as soon as they post them I look forward to some great sharing. Maybe they'd even be able to make it easy to upload data to our open source spectral database at http://SpectralWorkbench.org.

Jeff

[Jeffrey Warren]

oops, link: http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/19493588407/water-canary

[Jeffrey Warren]

I've asked Sonaar (in the comments, again) when they'll be posting the files. The Water Canary website, though, says:

The Water Canary’s exclusive use of patented spectral technology reduces to seconds the testing time for disease-­causing pathogens, lowering the cost per test to a fraction of current solutions.

That doesn't necessarily mean they won't release them open source, since actually having the patents allows them to then use an open source license, but it begs the question of why they got patents in the first place... since open sourcing would more or less invalidate them. (Speculating) Maybe they started proprietary but are thinking about moving to be open source? 

Jeff

[Adam Griffith]

I think we should stay the course.  You could be right, unless you're not.

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