[Arm-netbook] need help! getting a bit overwhelmed on lists.oshwa.org

[Xavi Drudis Ferran]

El Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 01:54:27PM +0200, Paul Boddie deia:
> Hardware people like to tell everyone that hardware isn't software. I was 
> looking at Verilog tutorials and resources a while ago and "this isn't like 
> programming" came up quite a bit. (I suspect that many people writing such 
> things haven't done the kind of programming that computer science graduates 
> will have done: we don't spend three or four years dabbling in C and Visual 
> Basic. They wouldn't write such things if they knew about logic programming, 
> functional programming, software specification languages, and so on.)
>

ACK
 
> But while I think that there is agreement (or acceptance) that the rules are 
> different with hardware, that patents tend to be used to limit "cloning" of 
> products, licences like the CERN Open Hardware Licence attempt to oblige those 
> using "open source hardware" designs to make and distribute products under 
> certain conditions. On the one hand, people say that you can at most only 
> infringe the copyright of the designs if you just take them and make a 
> "cloned" product (which is why they like patents), whereas the CERN OHL 
> actually seems to assume that you can impose conditions on the production of a 
> design through a copyright licence.
> 

I always thought this was nuts (copyright on the design having anything to do with 
the production of the designed thing) but then I came across one of those news
pieces that reveal the awe of human stupidity: 

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/uk-copyright-extension-designed-objects-3d-printing/

> Arguing about naming could be a waste of time. If "open source hardware" gets 
> some kind of message across without misunderstanding, then maybe it is 
> sufficient. However, having seen use of "open hardware" discouraged and "open 
> source hardware" encouraged instead, I predict a similar level of wider 
> confusion and uncertainty as the widely-debased term "open source" attached to 
> "hardware" gets used in all sorts of unintended ways. "Open" plus something is 
> also rather untrustworthy: it may have referred to interoperability a while 
> ago, but now it gives no guarantees at all; terms like "open standards" have 
> tried to retain their credibility, but there are still controversies about 
> "RAND", "FRAND" and other nasty traps that give claims of openness little face 
> value.
>

I don't really know if one can easily extrapolate from software to
hardware.  I would concentrate (if I have the time to investigate it)
in what are the definitions attached to the terms and what are the
uses around. If open source hardware sticks, and carries a definition
along the 4 freedoms, and people use it well it might even work
against "open source software" original intent. One day it might
backfire from hardware to software and might start expecting freedom
from open source software too...

I'd be more interested in thing like if an open source hardware
license or definition requires free software too produce the design,
or to operate the machine or something, that it is called free
software and not open source software.

The world "open" is too open to interpretation, I think we should treat
each usage independently "open source software" may mean something 
not really related to "open source hardware" and "open standards". 

And "libre hardware" can be as easily abused as "open source hardware"
if there is money to be made abusing it.