A peek into open hardware: Motivations, Licensing, and Ecosystem
1. A Peek Into Open Hardware:
Motivations, Licensing and
Ecosystem
Tomoaki Watanabe
CC Japan/ Keio U.
2. About:
Me: CC Japan/ Academic/ ex-Wikimedian/ OK
Japan/ some other things open
Project:
Center of Innovation for the creation of
planetary fab society to expand creativity of
citizens by connecting sensibilities and digital
fabrication. (Led by Keio U.)
3. # of people/entities spoken so far
Hardware start-ups…2
Other creators in hardware/ fab …2
Associated service providers … 1
Interested in/ committed to/ have tried open
licensing of hardware
4. Motivations and perceived values
Branding
- positive image associated with open source
- alignment with community values
- wider reach
Network effects
- greater install base, leading to more associated services,
hardware, or data, leading to additional values
Impact
- greater use and impact
Experiment
- learning how to be open
#no big surprise here
5. Biz Models
- Sell hardware
- Sell a part essential for the hardware
- Give away hardware data, and sell something else
-- associated service
-- custom-made hardware
-- next gen. based on data collected
- See what happens/ not sure what’s best
# many were not clear on this
6. Concerns: not open enough
- Patent is so nationalized and expensive
- Parts and materials not accessible/ cheap/
free of charge, making “creation” difficult
- Without proper materials information, data
alone is not enough.
Therefore, some think, open licensing is not
worrying as much.
7. Concerns: Want more control
- Product liabilities arising from sales and use.
(product liability issues not avoidable when
providing physical products)
- Shape data openly licensed or not, 3D scanners
can produce data for replicating the shape of
an object.
- Legal but controversial use: military, indecent,
or other use. (covering reputation risk)
- RFID chip for embed license info& credits?
8. Implications for open licenses
CC BY/ BY-SA/ 0 serving as default open licenses &tools for
now
1. Need for alternative: moderate level
2. Strong point: open fab data is insufficient,
cf. open object code/ open data in proprietary format
3. Some biz have less apprehension about open licensing (b/c
they know it is not effective)
OD 5-star model (extra-license solution) or
OSS GPL model (intra-license solution)?
Cots/ benefits not immediately clear
9. License
License: Creative Commons BY 4.0. <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>
Additional information to help your use of this work: “copyright notice,” “a notice that
refers to the disclaimer of warranties,” and “a URI or hyperlink to the Licensed
Material” do not exist for this work. Creator is Tomoaki Watanabe
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License: Creative Commons BY 4.0. <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>”
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License: Creative Commons BY 4.0. <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/>”