Re: [Trisquel-users] Open Hardware Architecture

[matt . ivie]

One remark RMS has made is something to the effect of "open source hardware  
doesn't make sense". His rationale was that you can't easily modify an object  
and make copies of that object to share with others. On the other hand you  
can design hardware and make all of the specs available so that anyone can  
build it. That's a different concept though. Imagine selling a computer you  
built and including the GPL with that computer; you can't make a copy of the  
computer so the ability to free distribute copies of the computer is  
irrelevant. You can't take a processor apart, improve it and then  
redistribute it. There are some things that are similar but overall the idea  
doesn't cleanly translate to hardware or to physical objects for that matter.

It would be great to have openly documented hardware that anyone could build  
and build addons for though, and I think that's what everyone means.