
OpenDesk – Open Source Furniture - mauricesvay
https://www.opendesk.cc
======
phreeza
This is great but not open source in the OSI sense, the license seems to be
restricted to non-commercial use. edit: The license is CC Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

The idea is titillating though. I would love to have a toolchain to go with
these plans that enable me to tinker with such plans. Would love to come up
with a standing/sitting desk combo for example.

Trying to find out what this kind of thing would cost to have done in Berlin
now...

~~~
irickt
The intent of the license is not clear. My interpretation is that the plans
may be remixed and republished non-commercially, while the production of
furniture is expected to be commercial. To limit or charge royalties on the
production of furniture would require a more restrictive license.

~~~
thruflo
Our license is here:
[https://www.opendesk.cc/license](https://www.opendesk.cc/license) \-- it is
CC Attribution-Non-Commercial (we dropped the Share Alike as an unnecessary
restriction).

Our intent is to allow anyone to download, adapt and make the designs for free
whilst retaining the right to charge a markup on commercial manufacture /
distribution. I.e.: we're not just about Open Source but also about a local
making marketplace that (transparently) we make a cut from, in exchange for
value offered in QA and ease of purchase.

What we have definitely found is that it is not clear what exactly "Non-
Commercial" means. On the one hand, we want to approve makers who commercially
re-sell OpenDesks. On the other, we don't want to stop you taking a design to
a local CNC shop yourself and asking them to cut it. We'd welcome both legal
instruction on the validity of that position and any steer on appropriate
license text.

N.b.: if you're interested in a "purer" effort to create a public domain
library of CNC-able designs, check out the next stages of the WikiHouse
project:
[http://www.wikihouse.cc/community](http://www.wikihouse.cc/community)

~~~
phreeza
I think you could achieve this best by dropping the NC clause and enforcing
the approval process by licensing the OpenDesk brandname? I think that is how
Arduino works, for example. As it stands this is really not open source
because you are trying to regulate how the actual information gets used, which
in my opinion stifles innovation.

~~~
thruflo
That's an interesting suggestion and an interesting distinction -- thank you.

I agree that any and all license restrictions stifle innovation / building on
each other's work. I also think it would be nice to limit the application of
"open source" so that in a perfect world, you don't get the kudos if you don't
encourage the innovation.

On the other hand, the literal meaning of open source is pretty clear: that
the source code is available for you to view, tinker with and re-compile.
Which with OpenDesk is, I hope, the case -- despite the NC license
restriction.

Aside: `license the brand` vs `license the design` reminds me a touch of the
What colour are your bits article re-posted yesterday
[http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23) A name
is just a tag that can easily be snapped off...

~~~
caboteria
According to the Open Source Definition[0] "Open source doesn't just mean
access to the source code." Clause 6 requires that to be Open Source "The
license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific
field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being
used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."

[0] [http://opensource.org/docs/osd](http://opensource.org/docs/osd)

~~~
thruflo
Fair enough -- thanks for the reference. On this point their rationale[1] is:

> to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used
> commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel
> excluded from it.

Unambiguously opposed to a NC license being defined as open source.

[1] [http://opensource.org/osd-annotated](http://opensource.org/osd-annotated)

~~~
jamesmcbennett
@thruflo

I have a mild knowledge of open source, but never felt Opendesk nor Wikhouse
ever truly embraced open source despite using the name for kudos, nor do I
feel the team operate with a true open source mentality. The Creative commons
site is explicit that the CC BY SA license is their license that is closest to
open source and do not say that all CC licenses are open source. For me, the
precense of the NC tag has always torn me in different directions wondering do
I understand this stuff well enough as my understanding is that Opendesk is
not actually open, (nor is wikihouse).

With my own separate endevour, I have thought alot about this and wonder what
parts of our furniture and the furniture of our community should we open
source and what parts should we be opposed to. Opensourcing the design project
is fundamentally destructive to the current model of design of which they are
pro's and con's to that project, the main pro being that you potentially
enlarge the size of the design field which would have be proven, the con being
that you discount the value of the design where designers are potentially
unable to pay their cost of living which is not a glorious project.

Opensouring CNC joints in a beautiful collection is much closer to what I
intend to mean by open source, i.e that the components are open sourced so
that community and other communities can create great designs. I believe that
primitives should also be opensourced that are not attributed to any designer
such as square table with no design thought, much of what may be perceived as
classical woodworking designs that have been around for decades if not
centuries. But as for opensourcing the final design of the desk you guys have
designed, I am fundamentlly against, nevertheless you haven't open-sourced it
yet, merely used open source in name for now.

~~~
thruflo
Hi James,

I agree with the substance of your analysis on OpenDesk. I don't accept its
extension to the WikiHouse project.

On OpenDesk, our aim has been to let people cut and customise the designs
themselves. We weren't aware (before this thread) of a contradiction between
NC and open source. We'll have to address this in our narrative.

On WikiHouse however, the project truly is and aims to be open source. All
designs are released public domain. The goal of the project is to create a
collaboratively developed open commons resource.

On both projects, I don't doubt that the design files we release aren't
componentised enough and aren't in enough formats. However, we've carefully
mastered the OpenDesk designs so they can be both cut from and re-modelled,
and you can already see many structural components, as well as whole designs,
in the WikiHouse library[1]. That there aren't more (and perhaps that designs
aren't modelled more intelligently) is a reflection of our capacity, not our
intention to restrict use.

See the WikiHouse constitution[2] and development goals[3] for more. Plus see
an example OpenDesk download here[4].

James.

[1]: [http://www.wikihouse.cc/library](http://www.wikihouse.cc/library) [2]:
[http://www.wikihouse.cc/static/doc/968a0b62b832d8a2661616e36...](http://www.wikihouse.cc/static/doc/968a0b62b832d8a2661616e36c8fdebba80050c0-Constitution_draft_v4.pdf)
[3]:
[http://www.wikihouse.cc/static/doc/c977861f2bd29b1a53532f4f1...](http://www.wikihouse.cc/static/doc/c977861f2bd29b1a53532f4f1d5f911def61b3da-
WikiHouseDevelopmentGoals.pdf) [4]: [https://s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/opendesk-assets/gfx/desig...](https://s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/opendesk-
assets/gfx/designs/edie_set/c88a41f1c574e9051725429348bffbf99337477e-OpenDesk.EdieSet.130718.zip)

------
AlexMuir
[Slightly OT, Sketchup is the standard for sharing woodwork designs now.
Thanks Google, and Trimble]

What other open source designs are there for functioanl furniture? I need to
build shelving units for a warehouse, and I'm experimenting with a few designs
for modular partition walls. I enjoy playing with plywood.

There's some cool stuff in Ken Isaac's book - Living Structures.
[http://popupcity.net/featured/free-classic-how-to-build-
your...](http://popupcity.net/featured/free-classic-how-to-build-your-own-
living-structures-by-ken-isaacs/)

~~~
twelvechairs
[slightly further OT] don't thank Google or Trimble for SketchUp. Both have
done hardly anything with it since purchasing it from the few small developers
who originally built it (I believe they were ex autodesk).

~~~
ics
McNeel (Rhino and OpenNURBS developers) was ex-Autodesk, is that who you're
thinking of? I'd be interested in knowing if the Sketchup team was too.

~~~
twelvechairs
Brad schell and Joe esch. a quick Google confirms ex autodesk

~~~
ics
Where'd you find that? I found some LinkedIn and G+ profiles that gave no
info, and everything else I found suggested that they sold their first company
(CadZooks) to Autodesk and then started @Last, but otherwise had no relation
to them.

~~~
twelvechairs
[http://www.borealisventures.com/news/portfolio-
news/google-b...](http://www.borealisventures.com/news/portfolio-news/google-
buys-software-firm.aspx)
[http://techstars.hypersites.com/site/page/pg5887-as691.html](http://techstars.hypersites.com/site/page/pg5887-as691.html)
[https://plus.google.com/113992345638105725394/about](https://plus.google.com/113992345638105725394/about)

for example. Looks like Schell sold Cadzooks and was absorbed into Autodesk.
Not sure about Esch

------
VLM
The site is 404 for me... Is there a repo? Google didn't find anything useful.

Needs an ecosystem not just free downloads. If you want free downloads the
competition already has that. Woodsmith Shop is a PBS network show with free
plans downloads, some of which look pretty nice, although I've not tried to
actually build anything from those plans.

As an amateur wood butcher I don't need to download someone else's design to
make a very basic boring desk. (whoops edited to make clear I'm not implying
their desk is boring, just my simple ones are) What I would benefit from is a
simple script that given some criteria such as desired tabletop height, or
load limit, or wood thickness, or whatever, out squirts a file with artistic
proportions and stylish artistic design and reasonable engineering that I
could then cut.

Or squirts out an error message. "warning: 5/8 plywood for a 8 foot wide desk?
That exceeds wobbly limitation. Use --force option if you are crazy"

I want to run a script "opendesk --height '40 inch' \--toplong '48 inch'
\--topshort '24 inch' \--woodtype '5/8 plywood' and pipe the output into a
laser cutter file. Or, frankly, just output a PDF for me to cut manually.

~~~
grey-area
_Needs an ecosystem not just free downloads. If you want free downloads the
competition already has that._

I believe that's exactly what they're building here. See the cached link to
their website from singold. I agree an ecosystem is important, but that's what
they're trying to provide.

Their desks are not at all boring, I think they're very nice thoughtful
designs, and they're set at certain proportions and with certain materials for
a reason - because distorting the proportions, wood thickness etc would mess
up the designs in various ways. Your request for a tool which you can fiddle
with all the parameters of a desk presupposes that design is some sort of
gloss that is added to a final product rather than a solution to a given set
of parameters, so I doubt it'll ever be realised. If you think it can be,
please do go ahead and make it, but setting up these concrete designs which
exist against a hypothetical tool which doesn't exist is hardly fair.

What I want is what this website delivers (or does when the site actually
works) - beautiful designs which I can ask someone to make, or make myself if
I'm so inclined. If I was furnishing an office I'd look here before buying
something from IKEA for example, these desks look sturdy, functional and yet
elegant - everything I'd want in office furniture.

My only hesitation is that it undervalues design somewhat, but they could
possibly introduce a marketplace for designs at some point too, if this takes
off - obviously the CNC machine owners would make money, so perhaps the idea
is that design shops could make their own furniture and sell it, as well as
giving away the plans?

~~~
thruflo
Thanks for such an insightful and supportive comment :)

I think you're right that the free design / pay to get made model does to some
degree undervalue the design. It only really fitted for us because we a) had
the designs and b) wanted to explore the local making proposition.

With other designers and ranges, we see a model where designers can name their
price for the use of their design / IP. In fact, with the current OpenDesk
system, a design fee is already included in the price to "get it made".

We're also interested in designers controlling their distribution: the
territories they want to sell to, with a price breakdown they control.

------
thruflo
OpenDesk dev here. Just spotted this thread and that the traffic had caused
the site to fall over.

I've removed some web service calls and allocated some more hosting resources.
Fingers crossed this will keep it up -- it's running OK for me atm.

------
singold
Cached page:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.opendesk.cc&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.opendesk.cc&aqs=chrome.0.69i57j69i58.1524j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

Its down for me

------
anotherevan
Would love to see a design for a height adjustable sit/standing desk.

~~~
wyclif
Yes to this, this line of products needs a standing desk.

------
antr
This type of initiative, open source platform, disintermediation, and
innovation is what makes me think that a very large part of traditional retail
will disappear in the next 10-15 years.

~~~
VLM
Its interesting that US retail brick and mortar is about 300% overbuilt aka in
a bubble at this time. All we need to do to revert to the norm is
close/bulldoze 2 of 3 CRE buildings, or triple our population without
expanding CRE.

You can google for "per capita square feet retail" or just try this link which
is reasonably good. The graph of "Square feet of retail per capita by gdp per
capita".

[http://improvingtheinherited.com/post/7351838533/is-the-
us-o...](http://improvingtheinherited.com/post/7351838533/is-the-us-over-
retailed)

Its also interesting to look at greater trends WRT income inequality,
destruction of the middle class, and permanent downward mobility, vs the
existing stock of CRE. Its looking like a bit of a mismatch. That future is
here already WRT "food deserts" in the inner city, etc.

~~~
pbnjay
Square footage is a pretty dumb metric. square footage of the US >> square
footage of Japan, Switzerland, UK, etc. We have more room, and it's much
cheaper - of course we use more of it.

Normalize square footage by some reasonable metric (price per sq ft in percent
GDP perhaps?) and maybe I'll take the "bubble" idea seriously.

~~~
VLM
Ah but that analysis assumes the only cost of retail area is initial purchase
price of the undeveloped land. I would theorize the cost of construction is
"more or less" the same and certainly the cost of labor to maintain and clean
it is very high. Also energy costs to heat, light, cool, ventilate... all
"about" the same.

Another failure of analysis is the cost of a sq foot at a reasonably constant
level of development. What I mean is a sq foot in Tokyo needs to be compared
to a sq ft in Manhattan, not a sq foot in New Mexico 100 miles from the
nearest Starbucks. What I'm saying is it doesn't matter if land in Wyoming is
cheap, if its empty and shopper-free.

There is also the inventory aspect... assuming a stable scenario (admittedly
unlikely) my annual purchases have to subsidize the annual costs of 50 sq feet
of "stuff" both inventory and maintenance whereas someone in .jp only has to
subsidize the annual costs of 10 sq feet of "stuff", therefore their standard
of living should be higher than mine because they don't have to support so
much deadweight.

~~~
pbnjay
Much of these costs will be "built in" to the price per square foot. Land in
Wyoming is cheap precisely BECAUSE it is empty and shopper-free - it has lower
profit potential. No one will pay $10k/sq ft for space in Wyoming because it
would take forever to make their money back. Simple economics - supply and
demand - there is ample supply in wyoming but no demand.

Inventory is also a bad metric, Wal-Mart for example makes much of its profits
by way of logistics (getting stuff onto the shelves as it sells), not by
keeping inventory in stores.

------
kamaal
I will need two things as a programmer, A desk and a chair.

Will be great if we can see a few designs for those.

------
proexploit
Pretty awesome. I eventually shelved a somewhat similar idea, of a more
modular, minimal desk for hackers that could be customized [1] (the original
concept included an open ecosystem for the modular components). I found that
all the work going into manufacturing and distribution were just a huge time
sink and I didn't have the drive for this particular project. Maybe a service
like this would allow me to resurrect my concept in the future.

[1] [https://vimeo.com/23515020](https://vimeo.com/23515020)

------
hugs
GridBeam is another open source furniture option that I like.
[http://gridbeam.biz/about-grid-beam.htm](http://gridbeam.biz/about-grid-
beam.htm)

------
e12e
Interesting. It's nice to see other ideas like Gridbeam flourish -- lets just
hope this one doesn't go away. For a quick overview of similar ideas, see:

[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/12/how-to-make-
everythin...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/12/how-to-make-everything-
ourselves-open-modular-hardware.html)

------
mathgladiator
This is fantastic; I recently got into wood working, and I love the spirit of
having open source furniture.

------
wildster
Is there anything like this for the architectural design of buildings?

~~~
ics
Yes. My work (not public as of yet) is in this area and the creators of this
are also the creators of wikihouse, which has produced modular units for
structures, some of which have been built as prototypes. If you're willing to
count the Whole Earth Catalog, then there have actually been many things like
it. Unfortunately phones suck for typing and trade shows suck for burying your
head into HN :)

------
lsemel
So how could one who's not already a product designer learn to design new,
workable designs for this type of furniture?

------
baruch
What would be an effective and relatively inexpensive way to get into
manufacturing such OpenDesks?

~~~
thruflo
We're actively building the OpenDesk maker network, specifically looking for
pro CNC makers with finishing capacity (sanding, oiling, etc). See the info on
the [https://www.opendesk.cc/contact](https://www.opendesk.cc/contact) page.
(Plus we'll be on the sketchup stand at Maker Faire next month).

If you're more looking to get into CNC making generally, you can build your
own CNC machine or maybe check out a local fablab, like techshop, etc.

The [http://wikihouse.cc/community](http://wikihouse.cc/community) group is
active with people who know more than me...

------
danielharan
On my wish list: a network of fabs overthrows IKEA with open-source furniture.

~~~
ics
On my wish list: IKEA turns into the Amazon/EC2 of fab labs. Just think of a
hacker space with _that much inventory_ of materials, etc...

------
kwestro
Application Error

An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please
try again in a few moments.

If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.

