An internal struggle between the "we" and the "me" on the community and IP

If you are capable of conceiving and implementing a moderately complex piece of software you are in an incredibly small minority of the world population. You are even an incredibly small minority of the people who are potentially interested in the subject your project addresses.

And if the general Open Source experience is a guide, you are also NOT the sort of person who enjoys spending several days writing useful documentation to explain the conceptual underpinnings of your project or even the instructions for using it.

Even people with proven intellectual capabilities (such as medical experts or mechanical engineers) usually have no concept whatever about the insides of a piece of software. Just like most people haven't a clue what happens under the bonnet of their car.

It is totally unrealistic for Open Source software developers to complain when only a tiny percentage of users file bugs and an even tinier minority take up the challenge of contributing to the code. Microsoft doesn't expect it's customers to do that, Microsoft expects to have to do the testing itself and live or die according to whether users like their products. Of course Open Source developers don't have Microsoft's resources, but telling users that doesn't make imperfect products acceptable. (Which is not to suggest that Microsoft products are good - just that millions of users don't know the difference and haven't the competence to change to a non-commercial product). And, surprisingly, lots of people judge the value of something according to its price!

I use Linux and Open Source software all the time. But I haven't the competence (or the interest in gaining it) to become a contributor to the Linux kernel or to Open Office. I asked some questions on this forum about the "why" of some of the software and hardware concepts (in the absence of documentation) and nobody appeared interested in providing an answer - it seems like there isn't an answer, or at least the stuff evolved without anyone ever expressing the answer as part of the design spec.

...R

Quote
NormandC

Quote
Traumflug
No need to be a programmer to report issues/bug, but this is --pardon-- a typical excuse.

I'm not sure how to take this.

Take it as in "I've heard this as an excuse so many times I can't hear it any longer".

Excuses don't help. If there's a bug tracker or documentation or whatever missing, it's an excellent opportunity to jump in and fix it. No need to understand a project from A to Z to start a wiki page. If you expect a developer to do everything, it's no longer a community, it's more like a request to the developer to go closed source. Because with closed source you can save a lot of this work, easily allowing to double development speed. Documenting is about 80% of the total work to be done, especially after the initial design was released. Closed source^[1] developers can invest this time into new designs instead.

Actually, I consider documentation done by those who approach a project newly to be typically much better than the one written by the knowing. Because newbies make clear where's something missing, where something isn't obvious.

That said, please don't feel insulted. I'm sure you do what you think is right and that's fine. I also know I currently struggle to write in kind, charming words.


^[1] An often seen compromise approach is satisfying the "open source" checkbox by plunking down the design files as-is somewhere. Many of RepRaps' open source evangelists act this way. Almost futile for a community, because this isn't sufficient to continue development there.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Quote

Microsoft doesn't expect it's customers to do that, Microsoft expects to have to do the testing itself

Sounds like you propose the Microsoft business model Or do you expect to get Microsoft quality freely downloadable, because there's a "open source" tag on it?

Quote

I asked some questions on this forum about the "why" of some of the software and hardware concepts

Only few RepRap developers are in this forum. Why should they? In many cases, copy shops are making money with their design and their possible gain to answer questions is extremely close to zero. Zero, like in zero contributions, zero dollars, zero popularity, wasted time. Check the most popular and cash-cow-ing electronics, RAMPS, Sanguinololu, Melzi ... can you even remember who designed them? IMHO, this doesn't exactly look like there's a connection between community participation and business success.

Maybe a chicken-and-egg problem, of course.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Maybe i shouldnt hammer it, my point earlier was that companies can hire a bunch of people with varying skills, but with voluntary open source projects, you can just hope to attract people that round off the skillset. Maybe an (technical)improvement might be not to leave documentation so much to the original makers. This has already happened of course, for instance in wikis. (the place where this could be extended is man/info pages. Viewing them needs to be modernized too though, so they work properly with a browser `man --html firefox` does work but links dont and replacing `-` with `−` for no apparent reason is a pita)

As for 'commercial open source', maybe an obligatory mention of the hold up problem, also open source avoids the alternative of 'vertical integration/cooperation' which would create bigger(less flexible?) organizations, and centralization of power.

Quote

open source avoids the alternative of 'vertical integration/cooperation' which would create bigger(less flexible?) organizations, and centralization of power.

Not intentionally, but yes, it looks like this happens. There's apparently not enough gain for the individual to support the community, so forking happens all over the place.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Traumflug Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>

Quote

Microsoft doesn't expect it's customers to
> do that, Microsoft expects to have to do the
> testing itself

>
> Sounds like you propose the Microsoft business
> model Or do you expect to get Microsoft quality
> freely downloadable, because there's a "open
> source" tag on it?
>
>

Quote

I asked some questions on this forum about
> the "why" of some of the software and hardware
> concepts

>
> Only few RepRap developers are in this forum. Why
> should they? In many cases, copy shops are making
> money with their design and their possible gain to
> answer questions is extremely close to zero. Zero,
> like in zero contributions, zero dollars, zero
> popularity, wasted time. Check the most popular
> and cash-cow-ing electronics, RAMPS, Sanguinololu,
> Melzi ... can you even remember who designed them?
> IMHO, this doesn't exactly look like there's a
> connection between community participation and
> business success.
>
> Maybe a chicken-and-egg problem, of course.


At the risk of living dangerously, there are more than a few occasions where I prefer the quality and reliability of the freely downloadable open source item to that of the closed source and often very expensive Microsoft offering. As for what Microsoft expects or does not expect the customer to do, that's another very thought provoking scenario, having spent a couple of days last week sorting out an XP desktop that had run out of disc space due to Microsoft Update expanding a folder that is normally hidden from the user and leaving over 30 Gb of debris behind itself, the whole Microsoft scenario is one that at times raises my blood pressure to inappropriate levels.

The problem more often than not is that many of the open source languages are less than easy to understand without some serious notes in the sources, especially if the programmer has used short form file and field descriptors, which is the norm, if for no other reason than typing x9$ is a lot quicker than typing working-storage-variable-input$

OK, that's overstating the case perhaps, but having programmed in a number of flavours of Basic, and C, Delphi, and machine code, and COBOL, in terms of self documenting, I know which I prefer, but unfotunately we can't use COBOL on Arduino and the like.

I've worked for long periods of time over many years with programmers at all levels, and it can be interesting, to put it mildly, and there are indeed some very precious individuals in some areas, and even the suggestion that there might be a better way of doing something, let alone the possibility of a bug in the code will on occasions provoke a fire storm of biblical proportions. There are also others, to be fair, who are delighted to get a meaningful user report, especially if it has some detail that makes it possible to debug the error, and of course, there are all manner of points between those two extremes.

I have not yet submitted any reports here re 3D printing for one very simple reason, I'm only just getting into this area, the hardware and related items are just about complete to allow me to build a Rostock Pi, and once I've built the basics, that's when the fun starts, and I am expecting to ask a lot of very specific questions, of all natures, about all manner of things, some complex, and some probably very silly once I get the answer, but I know that I have no real alternative, as I've not found any active users groups in this part of Ireland yet, and a problem shared is more often than not a problem solved, let alone halved.

What a lot of people don't fully understand is that the 3 disciplines of programming are very different.

Specifying the product is the first challenge, and more often than not, working out what the product has to do is the easy bit, working out what the product has NOT to do if it gets wrong input, and how to correct it, is often a lot more time consuming and frustrating, in that if the basics work, the temptation is to move on to the next bit that's needed, and leave a sub routine jump in the code for "go sub error check x", where x increases by 1 for every different variation of checking, and in the intitial iteration, the sub "error check x" is simply a return, with no code in it, on the basis that the fine tuning and error rejection code can be put in once the core is working. I've done it myself, especially in machine code, put a jump out to save the location for the check routine, and then either not had time, memory space or processor horse power to be able to put in all the bells and whistles that would have been nice, and to take out the jumps at a later stage may cause more hassle than it's worth, so sometimes, a jump to nowhere and return gets replaced by a simple No Op code or a code that's the same length as the jump instruction but does nothing critical.

I learnt very early on that the best solution is to have bullet proof input and validation routines that assume nothing at all if the user is involved in entering data from a keyboard or other device, and to only pass the data to the next stage when it has been 100% confirmed that the content, structure, format, range and validity of the input has been absolutely proved as valid.

The importance of that was brought home to me very early on when we found ourselves programming a new multi user machine that could use a cursor left key to remove a character from the input string, (as far as the screen was concerned) but the data passed to the program still contained the cursor back key hex code, along with the keypress that on the screen it had removed. It came to light when we had users complaining bitterly that they'd entered a new product, but then couldn't use it, and on in depth investigation, we found that what was supposed to be (for example) CODE123 was actually on the disc as CODFChr$27E123, where chr$27 was a hex character that represented the cursor left key from the keyboard. The fix was easy, once we knew what the problem was, examing the input string for the hex code from the cursor left key, and if found one, strip it and the preceding character out of the string, and repeat that check until no cursor left key codes were found. We had to do that at user code level, as it wasn't part of the operating system code, it was a LONG time ago

Having specified what the program has to do, coding it is sometimes the quickest task of them all, especially if the coding spec is good.

Testing, ahhh now here's a horse of a very different colour. Getting it to work with valid input is usually easy, getting it to validate the input, and remove all the errors in that input, both of form, and logic, that can sometimes be a lot more time consuming.

Once that's done, then leaving behind some hints on what it's doing, and why, so that someone else, (or possibly even me, if it's complex) can actually understand what it's trying do do, and why, and how it is meant to be used, that's another challenge that can defeat even the most dedicated of programmers, again, possibly because time pressure, or client pressure, or just simple it's not finished yet so I will do that when the basics work, all of these can combine to arrive at a position that when looking at the code again maybe 12 or 18 months down the line from writing it, the first reaction is "what the *** was I trying to do here, and why". If I wrote it, and that's my reaction, imaginr the problem for another person who may not be a programmer who just wants to use the end result fo run or control a device, they may not even be able to work out if the issue is a parameter that's been coded wrong in the config file they have spent maybe several hours setting up. without fully understanding what the parameters are actually for, or is it a bug.

It's even more complex if the code is an all embracing package that is being used for a number of different devices, in that it is altogether possible that while the code is capable of being used for the application, the programmer may not have been able to exhaustively test the software on that device because they don't have one, and building one is not what they really want to do, their motivation is to get a piece of code that works for their device.

Then add in complications like different compilers, operating systems, communications protocols, hardware variants, firmware variants, and it is at times nothing short of a miracle that some of the things that do work do so as well as they do.

So, I guess what I'm saying is let's cut both the programmers, and the users, a little slack here. Some of the programmers have achieved little short of amazing results with limited resources, poor information and unreliable parameters, while aiming for goalposts that have an annoying tendency to move with the change of date, let alone other reasons. Equally, some of the users have also made the programs do things that they were never ever supposed to be capable of, and in some cases, despite the shortcomings in documentation, or other supporting information, and they have managed to provide a much wider use of the product as a result.

As to if that then results in a benefit to the developer, that's another aspect that becomes even more complex, regardless of open or closed source.

It's been like that for a very long time, ( I was producing machine code for a Burroughs mini computer 40 years ago, scary) and I suspect it will remain thus for the forseeable future.

---

Shore, if twas easy, we'd all be doin it

Irish Steve

From a company standpoint, experience is quantized and discrete (10 employees with half of the skills each does synergize to make one good freelancer, and vice versa). Some of those people that work on your open source projects have been working for Nasa for 20+ years and would not only be unobtainable for help to a company from a monetary standpoint, but would also not want to work for them. So there is a unique and difference talent pool in open source, I think.

@Irish Steve: to be honest how you describe programming seems extremely ancient and outdated.(no one uses COBOL if they dont have to anymore..) And they'll burn people at the stake for using jumps. No subroutines or routines, functions(/member functions), throwing/catching stuff.(Not that 'modern' languages are that good overall)

Also open source programmers dont program like that. They work more along the lines of semantic versioning. All versions 0.*< API/standards may basically change arbitrarily, it is a largely experimental change, and basically the specification is made during writing. Otherwise they may change as described there.

Most APIs do not try to 'correct' wrong input they just spit at you. An api may throw an error. Unless it is some interactive/ad-hoc use, it should, otherwise it promotes programmers not knowing what is going on.

Traumflug Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> A bigger problem is, many open source addicts
> frown upon -NC licences. That's a real threat.
> They consider you to be a jerk for just this, no
> matter how good the design is.

Well yes, that's because an NC clause is not Open Source. It is just Closed Source with a published design. It's the same as any traditional business model.

The real threat to Open Source is if people try to turn it into a Closed Source model with a fake "Open Source" look.

It's ridiculous to talk about "RepRap copy shops" as if that is a bad thing. The whole point of RepRap is that it is to be copied!

It is a pity that some people can't get past the "what's in it for me?" thing and appreciate that Open Source is about giving, not taking.

You have your Closed Source business models, and you are welcome to use them. Please don't try to screw up Open Source by mixing it up with Closed Source!

Seems that there are as many opinions as posters,
few can say they have had a truly origonal idea, we all
stand on the shoulders of others.
Some people like to tinker, and share what they are doing,
whilst others are constantly thinking of "how can I make money",
and a fair few in between.

When the free software foundation started, I did not think it could last,
but boy was I wrong, OS is my first choice, not just because its free, but
it is often better, I donate to them because I appreciate what they have
done, I buy only genuine arduino, rather than clones, to support the creators.

Open Hardware is still evolving, and trying to find its place, some have tried
to steer it, but so far it refuses.

Maybe we need two distinct catagories, commercial and non commercial, but
how you do this is beyond me.

EDIT, here is a post I just read, this is the power of the community sharing things.

DaveS [ PM ]
POST IT Note glue, an amazing discovery ? new
September 30, 2013 06:47PM Registered: 20 days ago
Posts: 5
Hi all,..

here's a thing.
I was printing earlier today and while waiting for an upload (I always set my bed to hot, then kick off the upload, it uploads while the bed heats, saves me messing about removing / inserting SD cards)

I wanted to brush a few bits off my kapton tape over aluminium bed. I picked up a post it, intending just to use the paper to brush it off, and I accidentally wiped the gluey side on the bed ;-)

Guess what.. I've been printing all day on the same kapton tape.

I've just been wiping my post it note over now and then. Ok the bed does now look a *bit* smeary in places, but the prints are sticking nicely.

anyone tried anything similar ?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2013 03:37PM by johnrpm.

@bobc

I have been following along with this thread and I have to say that I agree with Traumflug and strongly disagree with what you just said.

First of all, I do not see how an NC clause is NOT Open Source. Think about the words: "Open Source" for a second. Open Source precisely describes a project where the "source" (ie. drawings, code, etc...) is "open" (ie. published in a place that is easily accessible to the public). Open Source does not mean you have to allow everyone to sell your design without them contributing to the development!

As for your take on RepRap copy shops, there is a difference between someone copying a design for their personal use/development, and someone making money off another person's design without contributing to said design. A lot of work goes into developing a piece of open source hardware (ie prototyping runs, time spent testing and documenting the design, etc...). The developers try to make back this investment of their capital by selling their design, but copy shops interfere with this. For example, the developer may have to charge a little more for the product to offset their initial investment of capital and the time they spend on updating the documentation and supporting the user base. On the other hand, the copy shop has so such constraints and can afford to offer lower prices as a result. I do not need to go into the details of this as it is all very obvious if you give it some thought. If you have doubts, try reading over Traumflug's user page where he outlines this problem very well.

Finally, yes Open Source is about giving, but not is the way you just articulated. Open Source is about giving/sharing ideas, information, designs, and developments, it is NOT ABOUT GIVING MONEY! Contrary to what people like you seem to believe, the Open Source model is much more Capitalistic than Communistic. The only reason open source actually works is precisely because developers are allowed to retain their hard eared capital and have their hard work recognized by their peers! Or else there really is nothing in it for them! Individuality is ingrained in our humanity and is not something that we are willing to just give up. If this was really the case, then we would living the world that Karl Marx depicted. For better or worse, our empirical knowledge has debunked this theory time and time again. Once again, there is no need for me to delve into this topic as it quite apparent, and has already been articulated much more thoroughly by others including Adrian Bowyer in his writings about: "Wealth Without Money".

I am currently developing an all metal hot end design that I hope will help RepRappers experiment with some of the hot end parameters that have remained fixed in conventional hot end designs. Once I make this design available, I plan on releasing it under an NC Creative Commons licence (CC BY NC SA 3.0 to be exact) as a direct result of the copy shop problem that Traumflug addresses. I am a strong advocate of Open Source, and I believe that protecting developers is an important part of the Open Source model.

In a perfect world, an NC clause would not be necessary, but unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world. There are many facets to our humanity, and ignoring a select few of those facets that work against our ideal does not make them go away. If you have any doubts about this, please reference the failures of the Marxist theory.

Eric

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2013 04:09PM by RP Iron Man.

Quote
bobc
It's ridiculous to talk about "RepRap copy shops" as if that is a bad thing. The whole point of RepRap is that it is to be copied!

It is a pity that some people can't get past the "what's in it for me?" thing and appreciate that Open Source is about giving, not taking.

Nicely said ... and a contradiction on it's own. The whole point of a copy shop is to take with a minimum of giving because everything else would reduce profit. For the community this eventually means standstill due to the hold up problem Jasper1984 mentioned above or dependency on outside injections, like scientific funding or easily copyable commercial products.

Quote
johnrpm
I buy only genuine arduino, rather than clones

That's the right attitude! And if this would be followed commonly, the point of a -NC licence would be moot. If we can get there, I'm all for it!

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Regardless of the politics, I would like to take the opportunity to express a huge thanks to everyone who has contributed their time and effort to the reprap open source community, particularly those who helped develop and contributed to the software as well as those who selflessly made their design stl and cad files available. I think you have made an immeasurable contribution to the maker community. I, for one, am extremely grateful.

And, while I am not wealthy, I am comfortable and have little interest in trying to make money off my creations. On the other hand, I know many are struggling to make ends meet and I certainly don't begrudge them any earnings off their creations. The market place tends to sort these things out and it is up to each individual to decide what they want to do with the results of their efforts.

Chuck

Jasper1984 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @Irish Steve: to be honest how you describe
> programming seems extremely ancient and
> outdated.(no one uses COBOL if they dont have to
> anymore..) And they'll burn people at the stake
> for using jumps. No subroutines or
> routines, functions(/member functions),
> throwing/catching stuff.(Not that 'modern'
> languages are that good overall)
>
> Also open source programmers dont program like
> that. They work more along the lines of
> semantic
> versioning. All versions 0.*< API/standards
> may basically change arbitrarily, it is a largely
> experimental change, and basically the
> specification is made during writing. Otherwise
> they may change as described there.
>
> Most APIs do not try to 'correct' wrong input they
> just spit at you. An api may throw an error.
> Unless it is some interactive/ad-hoc use, it
> should, otherwise it promotes programmers
> not knowing what is going on.

OK, let's step back a little. COBOL may well be an old language, but it's not dead yet, albeit I've not written any now for over 10 years. There are still many lines of COBOL code out there in use, and it has one very big advantage, it's pretty much self documenting, unless the system designer used very poor naming standards.

You may well eschew jumps, or performs, just wait till you need the same routine 20 or 30 times in a program, and memory space is at a premium. That's one of the reasons I see for things like Microsoft becoming so bloated and hard to support, there is no restriction on the abuse of space, (sure it's cheap now so why bother). That's one of the reasons why I expect to be using performs or similar before too long on things like Arduino, it will be the difference between making it work, or not making it work in some cases, because the Arduino does not have unlimited resources.

A long time ago, long before PC's and the like, I did a payroll job on a programmable calculator that had the princely sum of 16 memories to accumulate totals. By some "interesting" programming techniques, we managed to produce a payroll that would do a complete build up to gross pay, gross to nett, tax and other deductibles calculations and store the new totals as well as a coin and note breakdown in those 16 memory locations. The product specialist in head office had told us it couldn't be done, boy did we prove him wrong.

As for API's and the like spitting, as long as they spit a message that means something sensible to the user, that's fine, but way too many throw their toys out of the pram with a message that only means something to the developer, and the exposure of the end user to messages that they can't do anything with because they don't make sense to the user is one of the biggest hassles that I get thrown at me from user groups on a regular basis. Yes, let the application report to the developer that an error occurred in as much detail as the developer wants, but as far as the user is concerned, the error handling needs to be simple, and accurate, and give the user a meaningful way to understand why the input is wrong, and how to correct the error. Returning the raw message out of some API's is useless to the user, they don't have access to the information needed to try and decode the error. Again, Microsoft are one of the worst in that respect, the app throws the toys out of the pram, so the user calls for help, and a techie looks in places like the application or system error log, and if they are lucky, there might be a meaningful message there, more often than not, all there is will be an obscure error number, which if then checked on line, is likely to come back with a cryptic message that the error message is unknown, and not in the database. Really helpful!

Maybe I'm getting cynical in my old age, realistically, there's very little really new stuff in programming, other than being able to use more memory, and do so a lot faster, the underlying fundamental is that everything on a computer is binary, zero or one, with no flexibility what so ever, and the result of comparing 2 binary values in some way or another produces an end result within the programme. Exactly how it does that is down to the individual language, and the constructs it uses or allows, but the end result is that at the lowest level, it IS all about zero or one.

I have to laugh when I see all the hype that is being propounded about "Cloud" computing. With different levels of usage, partly because processors were not as powerful, and comms link speeds were laughable, cloud computing existed 40 years ago, it was called bureau processing then, and relied on wonderfully challenging technology like paper tape or punch cards to transfer information from one location to another, phone lines were only capable of about 1200 Baud then, so real time processing was very limited, for all sorts of reasons.

It was as real time as the transfer medium allowed, and the risks of "cloud" are exactly the same then as they are now, and being ignored by way too many people now as they were then.

I now have a smartphone that has a chip in it that holds more on one chip the size of my thumbnail than used to be held on all the mainframe computers that were live 40 years ago, and it has more capacity on that one chip than all of the mini computers that I supported less than 20 years ago, but does that 64 Gigabytes really empower me to do more than it used to? In some ways, yes, but in some ways no, because although the usage of the space available has expanded exponentially in recent years, the result of that usage has not expanded with the same exponent, partly because of some of the concepts mentioned above.

I suspect we could argue about this area for a long time, and probably not agree,



Regards

Steve

---

Shore, if twas easy, we'd all be doin it

Irish Steve

So does this all boil down to NC or not NC, I must confess that I just can not decide
which is best, both arguments have merit.

Copy shops are cheaper, but do they do development and give help and advise.
Does NC allow companies to pretend to be open source but restrict others.

can someone provide a concise answer, with advantages and disadvantages of both so this simpleton can understand.

---

Random Precision

Quote
johnrpm
can someone provide a concise answer

No. Because it's complicated. Papers have been written about this (see for example The Intellectual Property Implications of Low-Cost 3D Printing by Bradshaw, Bowyer, and Haufe). Tons of legal books have been written about IP law. It's complicated.

A very important thing to remember about all these open source license options is that they were not designed for hardware. GPL was designed for software, and Creative Commons licenses were made for works of art. As an example, you can make a circuit. You can CC the "artwork" of the schematic, you can CC the "artwork" of the PCB layout, you can CC the particular files you release, but you can't CC the concept of the circuit itself. Someone else can look at the schematic, re-CAD the circuit, and sell it and that's fine as far as the Creative Commons license is concerned.

If you want to protect the functional characteristics of a hardware design, your only options are patent or trade secret.

So, trying to decide between NC or not NC for a hardware design is kind of a moot point - it doesn't matter either way because the CC license doesn't have any "legal teeth" when it comes to protecting the functional aspects of a hardware design.

(If I'm wrong about this and someone more expert can correct me, please do so! )

RP Iron Man Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @bobc
> First of all, I do not see how an NC clause is NOT
> Open Source. Think about the words: "Open Source"
> for a second. Open Source precisely describes a
> project where the "source" (ie. drawings, code,
> etc...) is "open" (ie. published in a place that
> is easily accessible to the public). Open Source
> does not mean you have to allow everyone to sell
> your design without them contributing to the
> development!

Yes it does, because it is in the definition of Open Source. I have thought about this for quite a bit longer than a second, I've also read the licenses and the background to why and how the licenses were created.

Open Source is a formally defined thing, it is not just a woolly concept that you or I might want it to be. All Open Source licenses allow "for any use". It is one of the defining features of Open Source that distinguishes it from Closed Source! No Open Source organisation will ratify a license as OS if it includes a "restriction on use" clause.

It's like saying you are vegetarian but occasionally eat meat as being the same as being vegetarian. It is not, by definition, even if the meat is free range and humanely killed. The type of NC license you describe already exists: it is called Shareware. You publish the sources, and stipulate it is free for personal use, but users should pay for a licence if used for commercial purposes.

You can publish as Shareware if you wish, it is your copyright. But Shareware is not Open Source.

I must admit I don't really get why people want to use the "Open Source" name, when they don't want to follow the principles of the definition. I guess that "Open Source" has some cachet that people want to rub off on what they are doing. It's like putting a "low fat" label on your double chocolate ice cream, even if it is not.

Traumflug Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>

Quote
bobc
It's ridiculous to talk about "RepRap
> copy shops" as if that is a bad thing. The whole
> point of RepRap is that it is to be copied!
>
> It is a pity that some people can't get past the
> "what's in it for me?" thing and appreciate that
> Open Source is about giving, not taking.

>
> Nicely said ... and a contradiction on it's own.
> The whole point of a copy shop is to take with a
> minimum of giving because everything else would
> reduce profit. For the community this eventually
> means standstill due to the
> [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-up_problem
> ]hold up problem[/url] Jasper1984 mentioned above
> or dependency on outside injections, like
> scientific funding or easily copyable commercial
> products.

It's only an apparent contradiction, because you are still conflating money with IP. Provided the copy shop is just churning out products, it is not restricting my ability to use the IP, nor does it prevent me modifying the IP and republishing it. I don't lose any IP rights due to the copy shops activities.

I am also not losing any $ profits - because I am not intending to make any. Sure, there is a virtual profit I could make if I did make my own products, but the exclusive right to that virtual profit is exactly what I am giving away by contributing my efforts as Open Source. If I intended at some time in the future to try to make a profit from my design, I have an easy option, don't publish it as Open Source.

So in neither case are the copy shops causing me to lose out. In fact, they are helping me. I design the products I want, which is what I am good at, they make things in quantity at a low price, which is what they are good at. We get our designs made, they get jobs. That's a win/win situation in my view.

Of course, anyone can publish as Shareware if they like, but those sort of NC projects usually become dead ends which disappear with their owner.

Quote
bobc
Open Source is a formally defined thing, it is not just a woolly concept that you or I might want it to be. All Open Source licenses allow "for any use". It is one of the defining features of Open Source that distinguishes it from Closed Source! No Open Source organisation will ratify a license as OS if it includes a "restriction on use" clause.

Just out of curiosity, about definition by what authority are you talking about? And in that respect, what licences are truly open source? Even GPL puts some restrictions on use, like you cannot modify the source and publish product without republishing source, right?

Sorry guys, I know that this is a personal preference type thing but do you really believe for two minutes that putting the NC licence rather than GPL on any of the creations in this community would stop the Chinese putting it on Ebay? Good luck trying to enforce that in China. You might be able to ask Ebay to remove the listings one by one if you are lucky and have a letter from your lawyer but you are mistaken if you think slapping NC on it will help. I worked for a firm that spent over 50,000 Euro per year having copies of fully patented and trademarked goods pulled off Ebay. Sure enough every month there were another 1000 or so listings breaching their IP that had to be removed. It never ever stopped and continues until this day. The Chinese excel at producing hardware very cheap, if you don't give the plans away so that they can copy it they will simply buy a PCB/product from you and reverse engineer it. You will never stop the Chinese electronics market. Your best bet is to sell the creation yourself at a modest markup and the buyers will come to you. If you overprice it then everyone buys from Ebay. I am sure that 90% of the people here would rather buy within the community than go to Ebay.
Regards
Mike

mikefiatx19 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sorry guys, I know that this is a personal
> preference type thing but do you really believe
> for two minutes that putting the NC licence rather
> than GPL on any of the creations in this community
> would stop the Chinese putting it on Ebay? Good
> luck trying to enforce that in China. You might be
> able to ask Ebay to remove the listings one by one
> if you are lucky and have a letter from your
> lawyer but you are mistaken if you think slapping
> NC on it will help. I worked for a firm that spent
> over 50,000 Euro per year having copies of fully
> patented and trademarked goods pulled off Ebay.
> Sure enough every month there were another 1000 or
> so listings breaching their IP that had to be
> removed. It never ever stopped and continues until
> this day. The Chinese excel at producing hardware
> very cheap, if you don't give the plans away so
> that they can copy it they will simply buy a
> PCB/product from you and reverse engineer it. You
> will never stop the Chinese electronics market.
> Your best bet is to sell the creation yourself at
> a modest markup and the buyers will come to you.
> If you overprice it then everyone buys from Ebay.
> I am sure that 90% of the people here would rather
> buy within the community than go to Ebay.
> Regards
> Mike


90% of you are buying 90% of what you getting came from China.
There is no such thing as a product that wasn't made in china.

If the product was made in USA, the bearings came from china.
If the product was injection moulded in the USA, the plastic came from china.
If the product you bought is competitively priced, it came from china.
That wood, used to make makerbots, and all other lasercut stuff? India I think. ("Lauan is a loose term that applies to a number of wood species coming from southeast Asia.")
Electronics? 10-50 times the price in the USA than china.
Plastic made in the USA? Guess where the oil came from.

There are of course products in the USA that can come out cheaper than any other place in the world, like small moulded parts, or sheet steel parts. Acrylic sign makers come to mind. If they are competitive, you'll still see them in business here. There are virtually no moulding or plastics makers left in the USA.

I'll also add the opposite is true. The chinese rich elite LOVE buying an expensive american product, and new ones too, and they pay 30-50% tax on it too. They also import tons of IC chip electronics, parts from the USA that are unique, parts from germany, etc, all the more complicated stuff it seems is imported to china, and sent back out.

My point is, its an increasingly global world, and there is no sense in hating the chinese for doing gruntwork no self-entitled american is willing to do at even 5 times the labor wage. We use them, we might as well not deny that on the auspices of "community."

One of the DHL global 5 big scenarios is that global borders tighten or close in the future, and that all things will be made and recycled within a country. I don't see that happening. Maybe it is best to accept these things and plan for it. Afterall, cheap parts are what you wanted, and now you are getting them. China LOVES 3D printers. More than all of us do even.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2013 06:45PM by Simba.

Quote
MattMoses
So, trying to decide between NC or not NC for a hardware design is kind of a moot point - it doesn't matter either way because the CC license doesn't have any "legal teeth"

It doesn't have to have "legal teeth". It's sufficient when people respect the intention and that's what (to date) mostly happens.

Quote
bobc
The type of NC license you describe already exists: it is called Shareware.

Shareware typically (always?) comes without sources. A substantial distinction to open source with -NC.

Quote
bobc
I am also not losing any $ profits - because I am not intending to make any.

It's your liberty to do so. Copy shops would be substantially cheaper if they'd think the same way. But they do intend to make money and I'm not sure why many open source addicts apparently ignore this unequalness regarding profit. They should yell at copy shops or Kickstarter projects just as loudly as at friends of -NC open source.

If you feel good by helping others to earn their income, fine. Please help not only copy shops to make profit, help developers, too.

Quote
mikefiatx19
do you really believe for two minutes that putting the NC licence rather than GPL on any of the creations in this community would stop the Chinese putting it on Ebay?

Regarding Gen7, it works. Probably not only because of the -NC licence, but also because Gen7 is designed with DIYers in mind and there are designs much better suited for industrial fabrication.

Which brings me to another point: I consider the ability of a design to make copies without industrial equipment to be more important than of coming with a GPL. That's how RepRap printer designs become distributed. It isn't applied to electronics, yet. -NC or not, Gen7 is so wide spread because many people etch/mill and solder their own boards. And that's welcome. Thank you, guys.

Quote
miso
Even GPL puts some restrictions on use

Good point!

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Quote
Traumflug
It doesn't have to have "legal teeth". It's sufficient when people respect the intention and that's what (to date) mostly happens.

This reinforces my point that sticking an open source license on a hardware design is no different from politely asking people not to rip you off. It may work most of the time, it may make the designer feel better, but it is still kind of pointless. Ripping off the work (while sleazy) is perfectly legal.

In stark contrast the GPL does indeed have legal teeth when it comes to protecting software, and Creative Commons licenses have legal teeth when it comes to protecting works of art. In these cases, it is not pointless to use the license, since the license actually applies.

Why is this a stark contrast for you, @MattMoses, if it apparently works? I think legal issues kick in in when a dispute appears, only. And before it comes to lawyers, there's the reputation in the community. Severely messing up with the community, your customers, isn't exactly ideal for strenghtening a business.

That said, I wouldn't do a multi-million dollar investment on these weak feet, either.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

If it works, it works.

I say "stark contrast" because the GPL and CC licenses mean something when it comes to software and works of art. When it comes to a hardware design they mean nothing more than a polite request (which, as you point out, can be quite enough in most cases).

People seem to think that a CC or GPL license on their hardware design will offer them protection equivalent to, say, a copyright on a short story. It will do no such thing. I only keep blabbering about this in an attempt to get that point across.

As the crowd funding sites and mainstream commerce has shown, if an individual or organisation can come up with an innovation or incremental development that fulfils a need or want, adds value or reduces cost - then consumers are happy to pay for it.

If there portal - for profit, not for profit or consumer owned that:

(1) incentivised consumers to list their everyday needs, less obvious wants and niggling problems.
(2) allowed everyone to see this information - free of charge
(3) enabled individuals or businesses to list offers to fulfil these needs, wants and eradicate problems.
(4) enabled collaboration to create supply chains and distribution channels
(5) that collected monies for consumer purchases
(6) that distributed a share of those monies according to the wishes of everyone who conceived, produced and fulfilled the product they had bought.
(7) that had the critical mass to make it the best place to buy the best products at the lowest prices
(8) that allowed everyone to see the best solutions to date
(9) that allowed innovators to improve on those 'best of breed' solutions and publish their improvements
(10) that allowed consumers to buy - or not buy - the improvement
(11) that turned mainstream competition into collaboration
(12) that focused competition and efforts at just the cutting edge - saving time and money - reducing risk for investors - minimising waste

...then we would have a system that served everyone better.

The GPL puts restrictions on distribution, not use. With a GPL license one is free to use the software however they wish. It's only if modifications are distributed that the source publishing provision come into play.

You can't use GPL software to make your own closed source one.

Quote

You can't use GPL software to make your own closed source one.

For your entertainment: quite a number of software developers consider GPL'd software to be "not open source", mostly for this restriction. The typically prefer BSD-/MIT-style licences.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

miso Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You can't use GPL software to make your own
> closed source one.


You most certainly can. You just can't distribute closed source software that contains GPLed code -- which goes back to what vegasloki said.