On 05/10/13 18:37, Bob Ham wrote: > 'Access to the *complete* design is precondition to this' > http://www.ohanda.org/ (My emphasis)
Long time has passed since I post to this list. Dearest all, "open" software is something quite easy do define - it's written in common languages, so that it's purpose, function and behavior is pretty much easy to replicate. The "openness" refers to what the author wanted - he wanted *that piece of design* to be able to be used elsewhere, with or without some associated constraints. Hardware is a bit different, unfortunately, if you don't actually focus on the "scope" of the openness. It is not possible to actually design an hardware apparatus, such as the complex ones we're dealing with, and fully open all of the design. Objectively speaking, a fully open hardware design would imply all of the hardware components to be open. This means all of the design components (including the chemical components used for all of the process) would be disclosed. This is not feasible, is it ? An open source windows application uses components which are not open, and whose behavior is sometimes not fully understood. Does that make that specific piece of software less open ? An hardware design is open, as far as all of the design that actually can be made open is indeed open - as specified by the developers of that hardware part (schematics, so on). If I draw a diagram connecting two components whose purpose and functional specifications were made available to me by means of some NDA, that does not make my diagram less open - I just cannot disclose the information regarding some of the components on it (like there is no full information on the Windows API). And please, please, don't throw GPL/Apache and such as examples of open source. They impose several restrictions on what can be done with the design, rendering them less open than some of their counterparts (like BSD). Best, Alvie _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
