
Hardware Designs Should Be Free. Here’s How to Do It - CapitalistCartr
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/richard-stallman-how-to-make-hardware-designs-free/
======
asb
It's a shame RMS made no reference to the current activity around RISC-V
[http://riscv.org/](http://riscv.org/) a freely implementable instruction set
architecture with BSD-licensed reference implementation.

At lowRISC [http://lowrisc.org/](http://lowrisc.org/) we aim to produce a
fully open source SoC and produce it in volume. The aim is open source down to
the HDL - that is the Verilog (or in this case Chisel) that describes the
hardware. There is an extra step of place and routing the design for a
specific process, but ultimately this relies on a process design kit for the
process in question which comes with stringent NDAs. We are actually fortunate
enough to be taking part as a mentoring organisation in Google Summer of Code
in collaboration with a number of our friends in the wider open source
software and hardware communities, so if you're a student and open hardware
interests you there's an opportunity to get paid to contribute over the summer
[http://www.lowrisc.org/docs/gsoc-2015-ideas/](http://www.lowrisc.org/docs/gsoc-2015-ideas/)

~~~
bcg1
It was in Wired magazine, I'm sure that he needed to write with a certain
level of concision. You might want to email him at rms at gnu dot org ... I've
got to imagine he would support your efforts, and FSF has a hardware
certification program, so couldn't hurt to try to open a line of communication

------
TheOtherHobbes
It would probably help if RMS understood a little about how inventors of
hardware circuitry make a living instead of posting from a position of almost
complete ignorance.

Circuit topologies certainly can be patented. "Copyright" is an irrelevant
concept here. The IP doesn't reside in a copyable drawing or shape, but in the
commercial value of the topology.

What matters isn't the graphical or notional arrangement of the components,
but the fact that the arrangement provides a novel and unique solution to a
specific problem and/or implements a significant new capability.

Licensees can then pay for the right to use the topology in their own
products.

If you want to make your topology free, you can simply release it into the
public domain. Prior art rules will then make it very hard to patent.

The various CC/GPL licenses make little or no sense in this context, because
most hardware topologies aren't directly copyable without modification and
tuning.

Besides, a lot of designs already use standard topologies. There's no patent
on many standard digital and analog design elements because they're already in
the public domain.

Some of them have been in the public domain for decades.

~~~
cantankerous
So what you're saying is hardware is justifiably patent-able in the same way
that software currently is.

~~~
IgorPartola
I think that's the opposite of what the GP is saying. The thesis seems to be
that hardware is patentable because what matters is not the
schematic/topology, but the physically manufactured circuit board, whereas in
software you can directly copy an algorithm. It's the "you wouldn't download a
car" differentiation.

------
striking
Hardware designs require prototyping for any significant amount of complexity.
Prototyping requires a back and forth costing many thousands of dollars.
Obviously RMS didn't read this:
[http://www.mauve.plus.com/opensourcehw.txt](http://www.mauve.plus.com/opensourcehw.txt)

~~~
TD-Linux
>Prototyping requires a back and forth costing many thousands of dollars.

This is a problem that is being rapidly solved in the OSHW community, with low
cost PCB prototyping services such as OSH Park and similar. Something of the
complexity of a laptop motherboard may still be in the thousands of dollars
range, but a large variety of hardware is now incredibly affordable.

~~~
striking
Even something like a low-cost phone would fall under this. Unless you're
making a simple control board for a physical process, OSH Park won't cut it.
And of course RMS is talking about computing. Anything at the general computer
level is probably not going to work out unless it's really tiny.

~~~
bcg1
RMS thinks on much longer timeline than many of us.

------
TD-Linux
This was an incredibly well written article. I didn't realize who had written
it until it referenced the GPLv3. The arguments are convincing enough that I'm
going to use GPLv3 rather than the Apache 2.0 license for my future open
hardware work.

~~~
jck
Why is the GPLv3 better than Apache 2.0 for HDL?

~~~
TD-Linux
They are very similar. Both include an explicit patent grant. However, GPLv3
requires that redistributions keep the original HDL intact, which I prefer.
Also, the fact that one of the primary authors considers it a good choice for
hardware is also a factor.

------
madengr
If I released my circuit boards as "free", then someone would complain that I
didn't use KiCAD instead of Altium.

~~~
bcg1
People love to complain no matter what you do... let them, they're killing
themselves by doing that, not you. Just keep building the free world using the
tools you have, and the rest of us will surely appreciate it.

~~~
madengr
Funny thing is, before the age of throw away electronics, one could get
schematics for just about anything. Today I was fixing a Lambda (now TDK) high
voltage supply. The service manual has detailed schematics, parts lists, and
trouble shooting procedures. All Agilent and Tektronix equipment had service
manuals. One could even go to Sears and buy parts to fix the toys they sold.

I don't know if it's really manufacturers trying to protect their IP, or just
not wanting to spend resources on publishing schematics and dealing with the
questions from the public.

~~~
skaevola
I think it's related to both of those factors, but also the continued
miniaturization of parts, and the shrinking of package sizes. Rework on modern
day electronics is infeasible without somewhat expensive tools and a fair
amount of skill.

~~~
bsder
> Rework on modern day electronics is infeasible without somewhat expensive
> tools and a fair amount of skill.

Skill, yes. Expensive? Define that. A microscope, a heat gun, and a soldering
iron total to about $3,000 for quite good ones.

~~~
technomancy
So what, two orders of magnitude more than the gear you'd need to hack an
Apple ][?

~~~
bsder
I was being _very_ generous (good microscope, high-end Oki heat gun and
soldering iron which professionals would use).

Chinese imports are at the $100 range for the gun and iron. Microscope,
probably not unless you can get by with a USB microscope of some form.
Although, you can get by with the same stuff that jewelers use (glasses,
loupes, etc.)

And, I'm sorry, but good tools for doing anything cost actual money. Anvils,
sledgehammers, etc. all cost near $50+ or so.

However, you are _significantly_ underestimating the cost to hack on an Apple
II. First, the Apple II was damn expensive--it was almost the price of a new
_CAR_. Chips were way more expensive, and you needed a lot more of them. Edge
connector cards and edge connectors were very expensive.

There was a reason why so many people loved the TRS-80 Color Computer for
robotics and control applications for many years. It had analog ports you
could get at with inexpensive connectors and the connector on the side had
almost every digital signal and wasn't ferociously expensive (although, it
wasn't cheap. IIRC, prototyping cards for it were in the $70 range in 1981).

Things are _WAY_ better now for the hobbyist even with surface mount
technology.

------
intrasight
Things used to be much better. Nearly all early computers included complete
schematics. My first education about computer hardware came from studying the
schematics of the Apple II.

~~~
Sanddancer
Big, useful manuals scare neophytes. As such, the awesome schematics included
on a lot of early systems were removed along with nearly the entirety of the
manual because they just added bulk for the majority of users. Also, as boards
have gotten more and more integrated, the value of those schematics for
someone just getting into hardware has diminished. The boards are now 8+
layers, which means most of the traces are now hidden from view, and the
components themselves tend to be little more than a fairly simple power
regulator, big huge monolithic chips with hundreds of pins, a few filter
capacitors, and a few pull up/down resistors. There's too much "there" there
to really be useful for the beginner.

However, this is where the arduino is very useful. It's a small chip, and a
small number of components, which would increase the value of having a
schematic that people can trace, and keep in headspace what the various lines
are doing. More than a bit of me thinks that the ARM chips that are starting
to squish the 8/16 bit micro market from above may be useful here. A decent
number of pins, decent speed, and something you can hack that does more than
blink pretty lights. Perfect for giving a schematic that kids can follow and
get to really understand what's going on.

------
lifeisstillgood
For me the missing link in OSHW is proving the microscopic circuitry we depend
on is the same as the design published by the chip designer. It's a form of
hashing for circuitry.

Chinese intelligence agencies are convinced NSA pits back doors in their CPUs
and HDD, the NSA are convinced the Chinese are doing it to them. And every
other intelligence agency just throws it's hands up.

This situation could easily spiral downwards to a Halton of chip improvements,
and yet an "institution" such as verifiable open hardware could let everyone
trust again.

Bitcoin is not the only one needing global trust.

~~~
Taniwha
the solution here is to release the schematics, and the resaulting gate-level
netlists. People who want to verify designs can use scan/jtag to verify that
designs do waht they claim

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I understood that jtag was effectively trusting what the circuit reports back
- a bit like asking a binary to tell you it's own md5.

I am interested to know if I am wrong (it's not uncommon) and if scan chains
might solve that too.

A different approach might be to fingerprint different areas of the chip under
different inputs - so for example when this bus passes over a million zero
words, everything connected to it performs in a unique way that would not work
if the chip was physically different to it's schematic?

------
rebootthesystem
There are fundamental flaws in this idea of trying to treat hardware as
software. They are very different animals. A better designation might be
"physical products". It seems these discussions tend to ignore the fact that
physical products are not simply circuit boards with a handful of chips and
code.

As an example, we developed an advanced high power LED light source. The
design took a year of engineering. During this time hundreds of LED's and a
myriad of circuit technologies and driving approaches were explored. Thermal
management alone required six months of iterating through a family of designs.
Initial designs were tested and fine tuned with thermal FEA tools and physical
test candidates were machined in our CNC shop for real testing.

Past that, some of the advanced approaches we used required designing and
building custom manufacturing tools and production test equipment.

Just think about the cost, not just in man-hours but also prototyping,
testing, materials, regulatory, etc.

So it is because of this and over 30 years in the hardware manufacturing wold
that I say, with all due respect, that the view being put forth is rather
myopic and naive. Fine for little Arduino type gizmos and perhaps even some
chips but it breaks down very quickly once you start to hit what I am going to
call "the real world". This is where reproducing or iterating a design might
require an infrastructure in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and
potentially deep multidisciplinary capabilities.

In the software world any 15 year old with enough motivation to dive into a
large open source project can do so armed with a $200 laptop. They can learn
and iterate at practically no cost. Not so in the case of physical products.

------
rgawdzik
Another fundamental fact to consider is the benefits of having open hardware.

When I make software free, it can easily be forked, contributed, and can scale
to thousands of contributors. Consider the cost in man-hours to write a patch
for Linux.

Now I make my hardware free. How do you submit a patch to a piece of hardware?
How many man-hours does it take? How do I test this said patch? How do I
accept pull requests? Can a piece of hardware have thousands of contributors?
It is definitely significantly less trivial, when compared to software,
considering the special equipment one needs to design physical hardware.

A lot of the free software movement revolves around improving software because
it is more open. If I release open hardware, I don't see how the same will
hold true for free hardware. Open hardware is just a giveaway.

I believe hardware is more akin to art; no one submits a PR to the Mona Lisa.

~~~
technomancy
I've gotten several pull requests to my free hardware design that I sell as my
primary source of income. Granted, a PCB change is difficult to test given the
minimum order quantity, but other physical designs like cases are easy to do a
one-off if you have access to a laser cutter or 3D printer.

[https://github.com/technomancy/atreus/pull/4](https://github.com/technomancy/atreus/pull/4)

[https://github.com/technomancy/atreus/pull/10](https://github.com/technomancy/atreus/pull/10)

[https://github.com/technomancy/atreus/pull/15](https://github.com/technomancy/atreus/pull/15)

As someone mentioned elsewhere in the comments, RMS thinks on a much longer
time scale than you and I. Prototyping PCBs is already dramatically easier
than it was ten years ago; I'm convinced the cost and MOQ will only continue
to drop.

------
schappim
It's also a shame this article made no reference to the open hardware
foundation ([http://www.oshwa.org](http://www.oshwa.org)) who've been doing an
awesome job promoting open hardware.

------
rboyd
I feel like this is essential in pushing humanity forward. Once it becomes
commonplace to build a business model around OSHW and drive freedom deeper
down the stack we will be that much closer to a post-scarcity world.

------
femto
An interesting article in light of a brief conversation that I had with RMS in
the early 2000s, after one of his lectures.

At the time I was involved with Opencores and asked RMS about his thoughts on
Free Hardware. He was dismissive, on the basis that it wasn't software, so the
four freedoms couldn't apply to it, therefore it was out of scope.

It's great that he has come around! I suspect that he hasn't so much shifted
his position, as gained a better understanding of hardware and can now see the
applicability. If only I had been able to give a better explanation at the
time!

~~~
technomancy
> I suspect that he hasn't so much shifted his position, as gained a better
> understanding of hardware and can now see the applicability. If only I had
> been able to give a better explanation at the time!

I suspect it has more to do with the improvements to fabrication technology
since then; in particular the dramatically increased accessibility to your
everyday hacker.

------
spiritplumber
I have a "You can build my design, but you must send me a picture of the
finished device, and let me post it on my blog" license for my stuff. It's
surprising how many people don't even bother to do that.

~~~
shiggerino
I'm curious, what's the legal mechanism for your license?

~~~
spiritplumber
CC Attribution Noncommercial Sharealike with the add-on that I want a picture.

~~~
shiggerino
No, I mean, what law would they be in breach of if they don't send a picture?

I'm guessing you won't take anyone to court over it, but if you did, how would
you do it?

~~~
spiritplumber
I personally wouldn't take someone to court over this, a slap in the face is
sufficient. But if I were to, my understanding is that it's copyright
infringment:

[http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2008/10/breach-
conditions-...](http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2008/10/breach-conditions-
free-and-open-source-software-licenses-may-constitute-copyright)

