Markus Hitter on non-commercial hardware licenses

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davidc

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Apr 2, 2012, 3:58:47 PM4/2/12
to Open Manufacturing
Hi all,

I came across Markus Hitter's comments on non-commercial licenses
recently. Read here: http://reprap.org/wiki/User:Traumflug .

Markus is the author of the Generation 7 electronics for Reprap (it's
a single-board solution - one of the few reprap PCBs which can be
milled with a Reprap itself). He has licensed recent versions of the
the hardware under a Creative Commons non-commercial license.

He refers to an increasing phenomenon in the Reprap community, whereby
developers do the vast majority of work, and then a larger entity with
commercial clout and better facilities makes a bee-line for their
design and starts selling it. They make a few thousand euro; the
developer sees little or none of it.

He explains:
"Currently, every few days an new copy shop springs to life, selling
this and that for RepRappers. The unfortunate thing about this is:
these shop owners rarely do development. They do nothing but copying
and selling and make money with that. Lots of money.
Now guess, where this all important money goes. To these shops, or to
the developers?
You guessed right. Copy shops make the money, developers do the hard
work. Because developers can never ever run a shop better than a
person running a shop only. One day lasts 24 hours only, for
everybody.
This is where a more open licence, like the GPL, starts to hurt. Each
hour of development is an hour of lost sales. Accordingly, doing
development is unattractive for anything else than filling in leisure
time."

I wanted to raise the issue here, because - not only do his comments
highlight the discourtesy with which developers are often treated, but
because - the phenomenon is also a reflection of the complacency
amongst users (and even other developers) on this disparity. If we
want talented developers to be a part of open-source projects in the
long run, I think we need to acknowledge this issue and do something
about it.

The "copy shops" (as Markus refers to them) might make one or two
trivial changes, but they don't necessarily add anything to the
functionality. As Markus explains:
"For now, however, we live in this traditional world. A world where
money rules, almost more than anything else.
Quite a number of RepRappers think of RepRap as a project with the
goal to put out as many machines as fast as possible. At this point
another artefact of the RepRap project joins the game: copy shops.
They grab RepRap designs, send them to some manufacturing facility,
sell the result."

He concludes:
"There are benefits of having an all open licence, but the drawbacks
weight in a lot more. If RepRap wants to keep being attractive,
developers need some form of compensation. Short of having such a
compensation in place, putting a licence with non-commercial clause
onto a design is a disappointing step, but the best compromise a
developer can do at this point in time."

I don't think this is a black and white issue - but I find his views
very compelling.

Here's the link again: http://reprap.org/wiki/User:Traumflug .

I would be interested in people's thoughts.

David

Windell H. Oskay

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Apr 2, 2012, 4:11:56 PM4/2/12
to openmanu...@googlegroups.com

> I don't think this is a black and white issue - but I find his views
> very compelling.
>
> Here's the link again: http://reprap.org/wiki/User:Traumflug .
>
> I would be interested in people's thoughts.


This is all a bit unclear to me. He says that he's using a non-commercial
license, and yet everything seems to be documented on pages that say
"Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2" and with
the RepRap GPL license info ( http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRapGPLLicence ),
with additional content hosted on github, and I don't see any notice
(except on his personal page) that he's using a non-commercial license.

This seems kind of wrong, if he's putting all this stuff out there like
it's open source, and then privately saying it's actually non-commercial.
Regardless of his choices, he should apparently advertise them better.

Anyway, his goal is "Wealth Without Money" -- he seems to be succeeding,
right? :P

John Griessen

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Apr 2, 2012, 7:29:23 PM4/2/12
to openmanu...@googlegroups.com
On 04/02/2012 02:58 PM, davidc wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I came across Markus Hitter's comments on non-commercial licenses
> recently. Read here: http://reprap.org/wiki/User:Traumflug .
.
.
.
> He [Markus Hitter] concludes:

> "There are benefits of having an all open licence, but the drawbacks
> weight in a lot more. If RepRap wants to keep being attractive,
> developers need some form of compensation. Short of having such a
> compensation in place, putting a licence with non-commercial clause
> onto a design is a disappointing step, but the best compromise a
> developer can do at this point in time."
.
> I would be interested in people's thoughts.

[jg]I'm not so bothered by the NC license from him. I bet if I developed
a derivative with improvements, he'd license it to me to sell also,
and he'd be sharing the improvements as they happen, and if it made
sense based on physical location, sharing an order minimum for
Asian fabbed components. I doubt it has any drag on development at all.

As to Hitter's comment: "There is no attitude among RepRappers to encourage compensation,
much less a mechanism to enforce it."
[jg]I believe that. I was interested in
helping with some rep rap development, then sensed that, and decided not to.
I need money compensation too.

As to Hitter's comment: "Arduino" being trademarked. This is the model I try to mimic with a NC licence. Restrict usage where it
hurts, be as open as possible."
[jg]I'm not so sure the NC license will have as much effect as the trademark and
publicity route of Arduino. Coolness seems an easy way to get a small monetary return
along with a product offering, so use it. Don't expect a bare circuit board to thrill anyone.

As to Hitter's comment: "RepRap-Fab nozzles, Phillip's carbon heated bed, R2C2 Electronics, GSG Electronics, the OKKA extruder
and a lot more. For all these, RepRap apparently isn't the project to contribute to, but the project to generate customers from."
[jg] Are customers so bad? They drive proliferation, at least. Rep Rap is not like Arduino, it is a deeper concept.
Arduino seems big for entertainment uses, where rep rap fab machines are about economic survival more than
entertainment in many cases. If you get into prolific self replication that is inevitable and should be welcome.

I think the rep rap concept is moving along well enough and feel no need to subsidize developers, but
then, I *am* one.

Hardware developers seem to be more rare birds than software developers, and they don't flock.
I thought a little like Hitter expecting collaboration, but so little has happened with potential
collaborators because of personal style differences, I think it is the way of the world. I expect little
collaborative help on my missions and plan to keep using the monetary system to value products for
a while longer.

John Griessen

davidc

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Apr 3, 2012, 11:42:04 AM4/3/12
to Open Manufacturing
Hi John,

On Apr 3, 12:29 am, John Griessen <j...@industromatic.com> wrote:
> [jg]I'm not so bothered by the NC license from him.  I bet if I developed
> a derivative with improvements, he'd license it to me to sell also,
> and he'd be sharing the improvements as they happen, and if it made
> sense based on physical location, sharing an order minimum for
> Asian fabbed components.  I doubt it has any drag on development at all.

Personally, I think there are at least two compromises a reseller
could make in this scenario. They could:
1. agree to give the developer a share of any income they generate
from selling the design in question, and
2. agree to limit their sales to a particular geographical region.
And if a non-commercial clause in a hardware license is necessary to
make resellers consider such compromises, so be it.

Furthermore, we could explore other options - such as helping the
developer with the costs of having the design/product certified under
the relevant standards or directives.

> As to Hitter's comment:  "There is no attitude among RepRappers to encourage compensation,
> much less a mechanism to enforce it."
> [jg]I believe that.  I was interested in
> helping with some rep rap development, then sensed that, and decided not to.
> I need money compensation too.

I think maybe it is partly a communications issue. I suspect there are
in fact a number of users and other developers who would be willing to
provide a degree of compensation (I know I would). As you have
probably noticed, discussion in the Reprap community just tends to
focus on the technical issues - but this doesn't stop us from
reminding people to look at the bigger picture.

Naturally, it's a difficult issue to broach, but I personally am
willing to raise this on the forums there if needs be.

Think of a commercial firm. The researchers and developers in this
context are compensated just as much as other members of the firm. In
the open-source community, there's the risk that the developer gets
nothing.

> Hardware developers seem to be more rare birds than software developers, and they don't flock.
> I thought a little like Hitter expecting collaboration, but so little has happened with potential
> collaborators because of personal style differences, I think it is the way of the world.

But, whether or not collaboration on hardware projects is as feasible
as on software, this doesn't preclude the possibility of developers in
some sense supporting each other.

Markus Hitter

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Apr 9, 2012, 5:53:43 PM4/9/12
to Open Manufacturing


On 2 Apr., 22:11, "Windell H. Oskay" <wind...@oskay.net> wrote:
> This is all a bit unclear to me.  He says that he's using a non-commercial
> license, and yet everything seems to be documented on pages that say
> "Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2" and with
> the RepRap GPL license info (http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRapGPLLicence),
> with additional content hosted on github, and I don't see any notice
> (except on his personal page) that he's using a non-commercial license.
>
> This seems kind of wrong, if he's putting all this stuff out there like
> it's open source, and then privately saying it's actually non-commercial.
> Regardless of his choices, he should apparently advertise them better.

This is a reception I see often. "Open Source" and Licenses don't
contradict each other. Stuff can be very well open source and non-
commercial at the same time. Non-commercial doesn't stop you from
making your own -- modified or unmodified -- copy either. Also not
from making copies for giving away for free. Not even from being sold
in a shop (see paoparts.com), but the later requires a dual license,
which is handed out as needed.

The Gen7 license is given in the box at the top right of the Wiki page
as well as in the design files. The design it's self is unter the NC
license, the documentation for its usage is under the GNU FDL.

> Anyway, his goal is "Wealth Without Money" -- he seems to be succeeding,
> right?

To some extents. Developers receive (modified) Gen7 boards for free
and RepRap in general prefers to make parts for them selfs instead of
buying stuff. A loooong journey to go until you can build that $10
machine by just buying some raw material, though. Linux & Co. weren't
born in a day, either. :-)

Windell H. Oskay

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Apr 9, 2012, 6:25:55 PM4/9/12
to openmanu...@googlegroups.com

> This is a reception I see often. "Open Source" and Licenses don't
> contradict each other. Stuff can be very well open source and non-
> commercial at the same time.

[citation needed].

So far as I know, there are exactly *zero* approved open-source licenses
that permit non-commercial restrictions. Do you have an actual
counterexample to give?

I don't think that you do. The meaning of the term "Open Source" is well
established. The first clause of the definition of "Open Source" (
http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd ) spells it out pretty explicitly:

"The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the
software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing
programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a
royalty or other fee for such sale."

And, from the OSI's FAQ on Open Source:
( http://www.opensource.org/faq#commercial ):
"All Open Source software can be used for commercial purpose; the Open
Source Definition guarantees this. You can even sell Open Source
software."

See also, discussions here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4558546/opensource-noncommercial-license


You can put any kind of license that you want on a project-- free,
restrictive, non-commercial, or so on. That's all up to you, and I
respect your right to choose how your project is presented and licensed.
But what you DO NOT get to do is call your project "Open Source" if it
also has noncommercial restrictions.

Jordan Miller

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Apr 9, 2012, 9:14:31 PM4/9/12
to openmanu...@googlegroups.com
it reminds me of techzone, where their electronics were extremely derivative and then at makerfaire all they did was bash all other bot makers and say theirs was better. sheesh.

alls we can do is vote with our dollars at this point.

also keep in mind that if the licenses were never open to begin with, then the community would never have grown as fast as it did.

jordan

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