On Wed, 4 Oct 2006 01:04:51 +0200
Lourens Veen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Therefore I believe that we need an Open Hardware Definition. We need to
> know what it means, philosophically and in practice, for hardware to be
> open.
I don't think so,.....
> There are many people here, with widely varying views on issues like
> DRM, patents, free software vs. open source, copyleft, and so on. These
> need to be discussed, and we need to decide what we do and do not want
> to allow in open hardware. We need to decide which freedoms and rights
> we want to reserve for the public, and which freedoms and rights we are
> willing to give up to attract more (corporate) developers.
..everyone has his own believe and IMHO we should not touch them.
Do not force people into categories unless you really want get
rid of everyone but a few who, by chance, fit into the same category
as you do. IMHO the best way currently is to sit and wait what
will come up. Adress problems when they arise. Do not stir up things
just because it might become a problem in the future (as most of the
possible problems do never become a real problem).
> We need to
> know where the legal boundaries are in various jurisdictions, and which
> rights/restrictions exist in a legal sense.
To cite Linus Torvalds "Don't go there".
Yes, we might need to define what legal boundaries we have.
Yes, this might be a problem somewhen. But it is not yet.
And as long as we do not have a problem, we should not try
to waste our time, money and freedom to be legaly safe in
one little harbor.
Legal safety is an illusion, sold by magicians who call themselves
lawyers. No one can guaranty that you are legaly safe in one country,
let alone in the whole world.
Please also note, that there are very few legal problems in the
OSS world. I've only heard about a dozen or so legal skirmishes
in the last 7 years. Most of them about usage of a name or logo.
Very few were about copyright (and all but two about a company
breaking the GPL)
And we should not draw our own boundaries, neither legal
nor anywhere else. By darawing boundaries where they are not
needed we will only limit ourselves. And it might very well
happen that we would like to cross one of these as there is
greener grass overthere, but cannot anymore, because we bound
ourselves.
We should really stick to what we are best: engineering.
> We need examples and use
> cases. We need to consider open hardware business models and the kind
> of corporate ecosystem we want to have around the open hardware
> community. We need to consider that hardware designs are useless if no
> actual hardware is ever made, and we need to consider that there is no
> point in having open hardware unless it gives us more freedom than the
> proprietary hardware that we have now.
We neither need examples nor usecases. They'll apear by themselves
when the time is right.
Overall, you should not try to create work overhead for something
that has no clear benefit. Talking about how to do something will
not give anything. What needs to be done should be done though,
but we should not unnecessary create work.
Attila Kinali
--
Praised are the Fountains of Shelieth, the silver harp of the waters,
But blest in my name forever this stream that stanched my thirst!
-- Deed of Morred
_______________________________________________
Open-graphics mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics
List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
