
Free Hardware and Free Hardware Designs (2015) - BuuQu9hu
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.html
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my_username_is_
Out of curiosity, what sort of "useful, practical object[s]" are people
looking for?

And are there any hardware-centric sites where one can find an existing free
hardware project to contribute to?

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analog31
In my view, free hardware has been around forever, and it's all over the
place, but folks haven't created the kinds of organized group projects like in
free software.

Going back to before the computer age, scientific publication embodied free
hardware design: When you reported a result, you were expected to provide
enough information that a reasonably skilled person could replicate your
study. This is a principle of scientific methodology that I learned from my
parents, who are both scientists. I apply this principle to my projects, and
it seems like a reasonable model for folks who want to create reproducible
work but have not learned how to use modern project management tools like
revision control.

Starting roughly a century ago, people started publishing designs in
magazines, for instance in the ham radio literature. An informal tradition
(reinforced by the editorial policies of some magazines) was to publish the
design and parts list, but offer things like printed circuit boards, parts
kits, and even finished units, for a nominal fee. I published a handful of
articles in that literature, in the 1990s. By that point, hardware contained
code, and the magazine would maintain a source code repository at their
website.

Free software grew along the same lines: Magazines would print source code
listings that people could type into their microcomputers. I'm sure that
scientists shared code informally.

What I think is lacking in hardware, is the kind of organized group activity
that we've seen in software: Big open-source projects like Linux or Python.
Hardware people, especially hobbyists, just don't know how to create or manage
a project like that. I certainly don't. But if you look in the Arduino or
Raspberry Pi worlds, you'll find plenty of open hardware designs.

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mbanzi
I thought one could consider Arduino a "big open source project" we've been
working on open hardware for 11 years and we have millions of users. The big
question is : Does open hardware really matter to people? The Raspberry Pi
keeps getting mentioned next to Arduino but it's not open hardware but this
doesn't seem to matter. The original group of OSHW enthusiasts has been
diluted in the larger maker/hobbyist market which is very price sensitive and
buys the cheapest HW regardless of who makes it or if they are upstanding
citizens of the open source world.

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analog31
Indeed, those are some good points, and a good question. My impression is that
hardware hackers are largely oblivious to contemporary OSHW issues. For
instance, relatively few are even aware that Arduino is open and RPi isn't,
and what the actual issues are. I tend to be more concerned with being able to
use a design in the future if one of my vendors vanishes or a part goes
obsolete, and my solution to that problem is to make stuff that runs on
multiple platforms, or can be easily ported.

I doubt it's just a matter of price. The main problem may be that open design
evolved at a time when stuff was a lot simpler, and not driven by code. In
1980, I took a schematic for a guitar pedal in a magazine, and build one
myself, with no copyright issues. You can't copyright a circuit, and it's damn
hard to patent one. There was no EULA to prohibit me from taking my gear
apart.

An issue with software is that the author has to do something proactive, in
order to make it copy-able. That's probably an over-simplification, but at the
very least you have to negate the implied copyright by replacing it with
something permissive like the MIT license. So, there are "sins of omission"
that threaten the open-ness of software (and of hardware containing software)
that are only beginning to emerge in the hardware hobby.

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BuuQu9hu
Doesn't the Arduino use a proprietary microcontroller?

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analog31
Indeed, that's a good point, and I have to humbly admit that I don't
completely understand the fine points of "open source" hardware. AFAIK there
are some interesting differences between the Arduino and the RPi. Apparently
the RPi contains a chip whose full datasheet is not available to the public.
So it violates one "free software" principle, i.e., the ability to understand
and modify your stuff.

Granted, I use hardware that is not considered "free," and don't worry too
much about it.

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agumonkey
Wonderful, I often complain about the 'S' in FSF, and here it is.

Very interesting times.

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executesorder66
What's the $450,000 for? It seems like a very specific number. Can anyone
provide a link that gives more information on what it's for?

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mikegerwitz
They go into detail here:

[https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-
releases-f...](https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-releases-
fy2015-annual-report)

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executesorder66
Thanks.

