On 5/21/06, Terry Hancock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hamish wrote:
> On Tuesday 16 May 2006 03:15, Terry Hancock wrote:
> > So ... 'free hardware' is a selling point. But I also acknowledge
> > that a company needs to protect it's proprietary edge if it is
> > investing in card or chip production. There are a number of
> > well-defined strategies for implementing that balance though:
> > license-delay schemes, proprietary enhancements (but with a solid
> > free-licensed reference design), etc.
>
> At the risk of being shouted down, I say BULL.
Hmm. To which bit?
The point I was making here is that *open hardware* (well-documented
interfaces) is a requirement, but *free hardware* (completely documented
implementation) is not. OTOH, free hardware *is* a selling point -- given
a choice, and a price which is not extraordinarily high, I'll expect to pay
more for that privilege. But I see it primarily as "future-proofing", so if
the information is guaranteed in some way to be published in 3 years, that
works about as well as immediate publication for me (for me, the issue
with delayed publication is not the delay, but the doubt -- will the company
follow through on that promise?).
I'm not in the business, so I can't honestly judge the viability of
publishing
your complete implementation right away. If there's a strong reason to
keep enough secret to recoup costs (and a reasonable profit) before the
product is opened up to view, I can live with that.
Actually, it's a double-edged sword. Without putting GPL on the RTL,
I can't get enough community support, but many people who would buy
our products would shy away from them on the grounds that someone may
legally copy our design and put us out of business. A vendor need
staying power, and it's hard for them to have that when they "give
away" every detail.
Like I have said, I'm doing what people asked me to do. But if that
is the cause of Traversal going out of business (as opposed to a
myriad of other catastrophes that are more likely), then they'll have
proven themselves foolish and shown the GPL to be not the gospel they
thought it was.
"Open" means I've got all the information needed to use the
device (to write a driver, say).
I have been calling that "open architecture", but whatever. :)
> But this
> thread is gettign annoying. If you don't like the OGD, build your own
> competing product & sell that.
Well, I can't speak for anybody else, but I'm personally talking about
the OGD project. I'm saying that if Traversal Tech needs to delay
implementation design publication, I can live with that (but to be honest,
I was until quite recently confused about the status of the project and
had "Traversal" and "Tech Source" confused).
Too many changes. :)
OTOH, since OGD has become a 100% community project, it seems
unlikely that such a trade is necessary, so my point is probably moot
anyway.
We did get some valuable help with OGD on the list, but unfortunately,
we don't see to have many PCB designers. This is why we haven't
published the artwork and won't until we have the time to spare.
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