Inverted OSHW Project Funding - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2019, 09:22:27 pm
content: Lately I had an Idea how to foster open source hardware projects. It is often said, that the concept of open source software projects is superior with respect to open hardware as instantiation of the artifact is practically free. So it is easy to participate. However, to instantiate a hardware design, one needs resources. So far, so good ...The idea seems so obvious to me that I'm pretty sure I'm not the first one to come up with.Anyway, here we go - Let's assume that there are people that have a little spare time (say maybe like me) and at least some amount of money for their hobby as well as a decent lab but lack the good ideas for innovative/cool/valuable OSHW projects. And let's further assume that there are people with excellent ideas that don't have the resources to actually materialize their ideas.How about a model where people would offer their time, equipment and some money for prototype hardware in the presence of good ideas?All non-material artifacts could be created as any other open source project in collaboration to anyone interested in participating (GitHub, GitLab, Sourceforge, whatever). The people with time/lab/money would then materialize, debug and improve the designs with their prototypes.In the end no money, material or products would needed to be transferred. There will also be no contracts or obligations of any form (except the open license, of course). Everybody acts free and independently and completely on their own.The collaboratively created output would be open and validated designs with full documentation that everyone could replicate with a good chance to get a working and valuable instance of it.What do you think? Would such a model help?

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2019, 09:47:06 pm
content: Electronics hobby is pretty cheap nowadays for basic stuff, so anyone with an idea can try to realize it. It starts to get expensive when you get into RF and other high frequency and high performance stuff. But debugging stuff like this remotely is going to be a nightmare anyway.Also, ideas are a dime a dozen.

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2019, 06:26:05 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on June 20, 2019, 09:47:06 pmYes, true - for a blinking LED with some microcontroller on a breadboard that doesn't make sense.Remote debugging is not strictly necessary. The people that build the projects can debug them locally. But hey, a collaborative, livestream, remote debugging session might be fun after all ...Exactly - ideas arn't worth that much per se and that's exactly why I think that a lot of good ideas never materialize.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2019, 11:06:37 pm
content: It doesn't really make sense to me, but mind what I am -- I'm a professional engineer, so while I have all the capability to make things, I don't particularly want to. That's the most boring (not to mention, least lucrative) part of what I do.Plus, most ideas are frankly junk. My time would at least be better served critiquing or fixing such a design, and letting someone else build it -- but again, that's up to my whims, and mostly I'll spend time doing projectsIfind interesting (or, of course, lucrative).Not to mention the (ugh) interpersonal and (double ugh) political challenges of delivering such criticism or updates to a team, that may not be interested in such input, whether it's actually in their best interests or not.Perhaps the proposal is a scalable solution under conditions of brain-drain -- I am rather giving away the problem here, after all: my input would be valuable, but that's just the problem, it is valuable, and these activities aren't very valuable to me, so I don't have much reason to provide it. In the extreme low-budget regime, you don't have such services available. To that end: to some extent, incompetent engineering can be solved through competent management -- this would be the goal of low cross-section crowdsourcing, where people (who may or may not be themselves competent) contribute a few minutes or hours of their time to a task, and those contributions are reconciled into a (hopefully) coherent whole.But the criticism applies recursively: competent management is itself valuable, so you're unlikely to get much volunteering in that direction. Perhaps an algorithm can be devised to administer these things more automatically; but again, someone's time is required to implement it. Maybe someone's already solved this problem, but it still needs to be applied, instantiated.So, Idunno. There could be some valuestill, despite all of this -- but more generally, you're looking for an optimizing and priority sorting system that works better thanexisting mechanisms-- namely, the marketplace. If we're talking simple things, there's Tindie and such; or bigger products, get investment and commercialize it yourself, or sell the IP to a company to commercialize.These all have inherent costs in them, but that's really what's at the heart of it, isn't it? It shouldn't be easy to commercialize a product if it stinks, right?Another question to consider: if you're volunteering your time as an open-source assembler, are youreallysatisfied with building everyones' hello-world blinkenlite project? You will necessarily see a lot of banal, repetitive, incomplete and malfunctioning projects that way. At zero cost (full volunteer service) and no prioritization, I would guess you'd be making >90% duds?And, would your timereallybe better spent doing that, versus say, offering your time on a labor marketplace? You could offer the exact same service, but you're bidding on (or being bidded on) for some market value, which will introduce some priority.Money isn't an inherently bad thing. An open source project that's popular enough to get some following, very likely has some amount of budget available, even if it's by contributors/followers sporadic donations. A $50 proto run isn't much of a threshold, but serves to dissuade most trolls and low-confidence tinkerers from wasting assemblers' time.Tim

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2019, 04:26:30 am
content: Hardware and software are totally different animals. If you treat one like the other, you are doomed. Changing software can take seconds and costs nothing, whereas hardware changes take weeks and cost many dollars.I don't see OSHW working or thriving. It's the occasional one person finishing a project that you see. Afterwards they're so burnt out the project gets orphaned with no maintenance or updates.The way to do OSHW has not yet evolved on the Internet.Your world would be a pool of talent willing to do free design and prototype work, amongst a sea of idea people.I don't think ideas are a limiting factor, there are plenty of ideas out there. Making something concrete out of an idea is very difficult and takes tremendous leadership, which does not exist on the "open" community.Who would be the project's Linus Torvalds?

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2019, 09:19:08 am
content: Thank you all for the good and critical arguments!Quote from: floobydust on June 23, 2019, 04:26:30 amThat would be the very reason for that idea - to separate cost from idea.Quote from: floobydust on June 23, 2019, 04:26:30 amThat also happens to open source software. There are ALOT of orphan GitHub repositories out there that haven't been updated in years.Quote from: floobydust on June 23, 2019, 04:26:30 amExactly! The hope would be to engage and pool interested people so that this kind of leadership would be equally likely to appear in OSHW as it is in OSS.Quote from: T3sl4co1l on June 21, 2019, 11:06:37 pmI'm not sure that "market" would be the right way to conceptualize prioritization for OSHW. Why should the projects need to be commercialized at all?And no, I don't want to build silly hello world crap in my spare time - the same as I wouldn't to build/assemble random stuff for any other company. Here, the value (and hence the prioritization) would be utility, personal interest and achievement for a specific topic/project - even though it wouldn't make ANY economic sense. Frankly as most hobbies don't ...You know the old saying of hobbyists: "Why should I buy a product if I can make it myself for twice the price?" So true as it expresses all that intrinsic motivation to make things.The idea was not to pool people to build random stuff - rather people would offer their resources and SELECT from a pool of ideas. To add to your argument - yes, it might be a very good idea that everyone should add valuable resources to the pool. So either management or engineering capabilities.

author: OwO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2019, 03:15:03 pm
content: I don't think the exchange of ideas is the bottleneck at all. Anyone who is skilled enough to do engineering has no shortage of ideas, and even if you are really out of ideas it just takes a quick browse through the forum or youtube to find something people wish existed.The real bottleneck is the fact that people need to make a living and the vast majority of dayjobs take up all your time and energy. I faced this dilemma a long time ago; I was working a software engineering job but didn't feel like this is really what I want to waste away my life on, so I eventually quit. Now I design and sell electronics products for a living (sorry can't go into more detail), but because I work for myself I can devote a big chunk of my time to unprofitable projects (such as that FPGA FFT core or that zynq based software defined radio, both on GitHub under username gabriel-tenma-white). I don't do these projects for some altruistic purpose, I do them because I feel like it.Really I think what we need is lower barrier to entry to electronics entrepreneurship, for example easy access to low cost prototyping and manufacturing services, access to parts, and being in a country with good infrastructure, logistics systems, and lax regulation

author: bloguetronica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2019, 09:17:34 pm
content: To put it simply, why would I invest time, money and equipment for a project that is not mine (and will never be mine) to begin with? What is the motivation? Most of all, what keeps me motivated? It would be a good idea to invest time for money, or equipment for money, or money for equipment, but not all three for essentially zero return. Even an unfulfilling day job, where you work for money but for zero recognition, is better than your idea. Don't expect people to work for free (some people in this forum seem to expect that, at least of me, often in situations when I'm trying to sell finished products where my time, money and materials were invested on).On another note, the true fun of DIY is to see one's own ideas working. At some point in time, I've got tired of building someone else's kits and decided to build my own.Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2019, 09:43:59 pm
content: Quote from: bloguetronica on June 29, 2019, 09:17:34 pmHm, then OpenSource would not work in general - which is not the case. But it's a personal thing. If you don't want to contribute to a community then simply don't do it. Nobody is expecting anything here ...The point was not to build random stuff without any return. The value would be progress of the design that you care about. Nobody would stop you to build your instantiation of the design at a later point in the project where the design is known to be working.The idea remains simple. Why don't we build OSHW design communities where the expenses are distributed along the members. If one prefers to only provide ideas for designs and improvements and others would provide their equipment and material. No need to share financial resources which makes everything very simple. Of course - only people that are actually interested in the design would participate.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2019, 11:09:55 pm
content: Quote from: ataradov on June 20, 2019, 09:47:06 pmThere are far more people who are able to implement a decent design for an existing idea, compared to people who can generate viable ideas. Good Example is Steve Jobs. After he passed away Apple is stuck. They're the biggest company in the world. They have practically unlimited access to design resources. Yet they cannot produce anything really new.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2019, 11:17:08 pm
content: Quote from: homebrew on June 29, 2019, 09:43:59 pmIt's the opposite. Trade was extremely difficult until people invented money. Then they could get paid for the contributions they made, and they could spend they money to pay for the contribution's of other people. This facilitated the trade enormously. It still works OK nowadays. No need to return to prehistoric relationships.

author: bloguetronica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2019, 01:58:24 am
content: Quote from: homebrew on June 29, 2019, 09:43:59 pmThat was precisely my angst. You say there is no need to share financial resources, but providing equipment requires money and certainly has costs in order to cover wear and tear. All for zero return.Mind that I develop my own projects and release them under OSHW, at zero return, which I don't mind. But providing equipment, and money, and time, on a project that depends on the goodwill of others in order for it to get somewhere... or else it will get orphaned. And most certainly zero return (zero money, zero recognition - generally, the credits go to the team leader, which is the guy who had the idea but didn't developed the project). That is an issue.Personally, I've seen many community projects starting with a big party (announcements and the kitchen sink) only to end up in vaporware. Horses by committee is not my thing. Of course I would never partake in such project, but I can always leave my two cents.Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2019, 02:20:04 am
content: It may be worth noting an economic factor, scarcity: when resources are poor, there is competition for them; when resources are abundant, there is cooperation and sharing.This can be seen in the marketplace all the time. It might seem strange that bitter rivals would ever cooperate, but this is why. For example, rival car manufacturers would prefer to have their own, say, electric charger systems -- and indeed, most of them have tried this, though it doesn't seem to be going well in practice, and the number of active standards is shrinking (this will take some years to work out in the marketplace, though). Or, computer manufacturers: they would prefer to lock in things as well, but with so many kinds of computer, hardware and peripheral in existence, there's really only one valid choice, and that's to cooperate on standards like USB, IEEE1394 and so on. I guess in these cases, the market itself is the abundant resource; they would prefer to divide and conquer, to lock in customers and raise prices, and they often do (or try to) in other areas than industry-wide standards like these.These might not be very good examples, but hey, I'm no economist...But conversely, when abundance is the norm, market relationships take on a more cooperative, open nature. It seems the incremental cost of software is actually very low (perhaps even negative), so cooperation and openness (including all the way to FOSS) are common. Whereas in hardware, there are unavoidable capital costs (education, test equipment), and material and maintenance costs. The incremental cost may drop in quantity, but it never goes to zero. While there is no shortage of any of these services (assembly, test, design..), those costs do make them scarce enough, and competitive.Tim

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2019, 03:10:05 pm
content: Ideas are like buttholes: everyone has at least one.I have more ideas than I can ever hope to experiment on, ranging from human interface devices to programming languages to self-guided weaponry. As an idea, every single one of them is worth pretty much zero. Why? Because an idea is just aseed. It needs thought and research to develop into a preliminary plan; for example, finding out if similar solutions exist, or what kind of existing parts and modules can be used to implement the solution.Implementation is where time, effort, and resources are used to germinate the seed plan into a project, which may or may not produce harvestable fruit. If the project is unique -- and it basically has to be, for the thing to be innovative and worth the effort --, you cannot just use any old gardener to take care of it: you need someone with vested interest in its wellbeing, and fitness for purpose for the resulting fruit.This is why and how Free/Open Source Software works. A bunch of gardeners co-operate to develop the fruit, every one with an agenda for the fruit. Since duplication costs are near enough zero for everyone, the more there are good-faith suggestions (patches, requests for comments, and so on), and there is sensible guidance for the project, the higher the value of the resulting fruit. Of course, a LOT depends on the project guidance being good. To continue the analogy, if your head gardener is crap, your fruit will be wonky and low-value, no matter how popular.- - - - - - - - -Okay, so what am I yammering about, then?You need an active interest in the quality and fitness for purpose for the result of the project, to be an useful member of any open source project. The project also needs leadership committed to the quality of the result, otherwise all bets are off.On the software side, considerGit. A tool initially developed by frustrated programmers because existing tools did not scale well enough for a large distributed open source project. Or considerApacheandnginxweb servers, that have over 80% of the web server market; both open source. They are being developed by their users (in large part by corporations that sell services based on them), who know what they need and want.On the hardware side,AvEstarted a kind of a "town pump CNC". Check out the youtube videos on a couple of projects "done" already. Perhaps OP should contact AvE to say they have some resources for "town pump EE stuff" branch?Do note that "town pump" does not refer to the business chain, but to the ye olde timey single shared freshwater well in town. Everyone has a stake in its well-being (no pun intended), but it is also a place for people to gather around to talk about stuff. Their ideas, too.Also, don't forget that helping us newbies in the Beginner forum here is invaluable, if you have the experience.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2019, 06:22:18 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 03, 2019, 03:10:05 pmIf all your ideas are worthless doesn't mean that other's ideas are necessarily worthless too. The earth is covered with lots of worthless rocks, but there are golden nuggets and big diamonds here and there. Same with what you call "ideas" - most are worthless, and no amount of work can turn rocks into gold nuggets.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2019, 06:47:29 pm
content: Quote from: NorthGuy on July 03, 2019, 06:22:18 pmLet me rephrase: Ideas are less than seeds, since they have only a tiny, unknown, probability of germination. Ideas arepotential; the worth is in its development into a plan, to a project, to a product.Quote from: NorthGuy on July 03, 2019, 06:22:18 pmHogwash. Give me access to a few million large-scale particle accelerators, and I'll turn any material into gold for you. Transmutation is just fusion and/or fission, and horribly energy inefficient.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2019, 07:45:58 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 03, 2019, 06:47:29 pmIf you don't have an idea, you won't have a product.Ideas which can be developed into a successful product are very rare. Everything else is worthless.You say you have many ideas. How many of them would you be able to develop into a successful product (aka the product which brings you more income than you paid for its development, production, and marketing)?

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2019, 07:49:26 pm
content: I wouldn't even agree with that; look at how many companies "don't know what they're doing" yet succeed in spite of themselves.To repeat an ancient adage: you don't need to know how something works, to use it.Tim

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2019, 08:29:27 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on July 03, 2019, 07:49:26 pmSure. Success is primarily determined by marketing. Marketers produce ideas, engineers implement. If the idea was bad, no amount of engineering will help. If the idea was good, even badly engineered product will be successful. You are amazed at how they managed to succeed while they "don't know what they're doing". They do, actually. But they do it on the marketing front. Engineering doesn't matter much.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2019, 02:50:38 am
content: Quote from: NorthGuy on July 03, 2019, 07:45:58 pmExactly. This means the intrinsic value of an idea is near zero.Knowing which ideas can be developed, or knowing how an idea can be developed, is the expensive thing.Quote from: NorthGuy on July 03, 2019, 07:45:58 pmThat is exactly my point. An idea of a product by itself is worth nothing, unless you have a plan for its physical realization. It is not that an idea by itself is valuable; it is the knowledge and effort needed to evaluate and realize some idea(s) that is valuable.Let me illustrate.For at least a century, humans have dreamed of flying cars. The idea of a flying car is worthless, because to realize it, one needs to solve a large number of physical and engineering problems first.If you have done some back-of-the-envelope calculations thatthis kindof a chassis withthisfuel/energy storage system andtheseengines would work, you have the seed of a plan -- which is much more than an idea.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2019, 04:33:39 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 04, 2019, 02:50:38 amThese are not ideas, these are dreams. Worthless indeed.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2019, 06:04:35 pm
content: Quote from: NorthGuy on July 04, 2019, 04:33:39 pmYeah, the language (terms) are actually not well defined at all here. (Besides, me fail English often.) Most people do tend to think of their dreams as ideas, though.To me, there are several stages in each "idea". Sketching off the cuff, I'd say:Dream or itch: Something is not working as well as it could, or some task could be done better. This is where my ideas breed.Flash of intuition: A suspicion, theory, or possibility of how that dream could be realized, or that itch scratched.Preliminary experimentation on the suspicions, back of the envelope calculations: Does the theory violate the laws of physics as we know them? Does this already exist? If implemented, is there need/use/demand for this? At what cost would implementation make sense?Idea: A rough model of what is needed to realize the initial dream, scratch the itch, or implement that flash of intuition. For inventors, this is theEureka!moment: the emergence of a rough idea or plan on how the idea can be implemented,how to actually do something. This is a description of function, not a description of the desired effects.Weak point experimentation: Experiments on the weak or fuzzy parts of the idea. In programming, unit testing of the core algorithms, unless already well known; scalability tests; comparison to existing solutions.Plan: A path to implementation. Knowing what needs to be solved, researched, implemented. What kind of expertise and skills are needed to make it into a project.Project: Experimental implementation, proof-of-concept. Writeup. Publication, if open or academic finding. Checking the t's, dotting the i's.Commercial implementation.A lot of people believe 1 or 2 is the valuable thing, with 8 following almost effortlessly. I am not referring to any posters here, but people I personally dealt with when I ran a IT company, especially when doing interactive CD-ROMs or web sites around the turn of the century, as very few people had any experience doing such stuff. The type of people talked about atClients From Hell.I'm sure many of the members here have had people approach with an "idea", suggesting that when it makes millions, the people that do steps 3-8 could get a nice cut, maybe up to 10% or even 20% of the profits -- after all, steps 1 and 2 comprise the million dollar idea, after all. I have. (No, I mean, I have not approached anyone with a dream and ask them to do all the work for me and maybe get a small fraction of the profits while taking all the business risk; I mean, I have had people approach me with dreams and "ideas" like that. It is doubly depressing, because I get easily excited about new ideas (step 4 onwards) and helping others realize them, and when I find out they have less than a drawing on a napkin, they remind me how stupid most people really are, and how much of my time they have just wasted.)(I do also like to talk about stuff in steps 1-3 over a beer among friends or colleagues, just for fun. Often they trigger something in my subconscious, causing me to wake up the next morning or a few days later with a new step 2 bright in my mind. I'm pretty sure a lot of scientists in the 60s and 70s did LSD for the same reason.)What I did propose, "town pump EE stuff", is collaborating with others lacking your abilities or tools, at various stages of that, well, ladder; and doing so with people like AvE who are already doing so in CNC machining. Thatisworth trying, I believe -- but it is really not "inverted OSHW project funding", in my opinion: just collaboration.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2019, 08:51:14 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 04, 2019, 02:50:38 amFurther, even for a viable "top-level" idea, about a million sub-ideas are needed to realize it, all of which may be essential for it to work out. Each of these ideas may be worth $0.02 alone, but together, they make up something big.This is the point that "idealists" tend to forget. Their top-level ideas are worthless, because they are usually not investing the massive amount of time to work out all the details. This applies even to the good ideas.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2019, 02:24:58 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on July 05, 2019, 08:51:14 amThis is an oxymoron. You cannot judge the ideas by implementations. Poor implementation doesn't make the idea bad.If you believe the ideas don't have any value, and you have millions of them, why don't you list here few of your hardware ideas that would lead to a successful business?

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2019, 03:54:00 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 04, 2019, 06:04:35 pmOk, maybe the thread name derailed the discussion in a way I didn't intend.1) I personally also don't believe that there is a value per se in any isolated idea. However, successful implementation of one, does provide value. That's why I believe that sharing of ideas in a collaborate setting is desirable. Further, ideas can exist on many different levels. Engineering for example is not a discipline of deductive rule application but rather includes creativity, imaginations and ... ideas at practically every stage of design. Also, I do believe that visionary people with good ideas can engage other individuals into collaboration. Although many engineers (sadly) seem to disrespect management oriented folks in a very arrogant way, these people do serve a purpose and bring value to any project.2) I don't believe that open hardware projects are (or even should be) economically viable. The same holds true for open source software. Yes, there are companies that make great money using or supporting OSS project but the open source paradigm is ideologically driven and not by market (except those shitty companies abusing OSS for pure marketing reasons with NO value to the community). When Linus Torvalds created Linux there was initially no market value in it. At the very beginning it was practically unusable in any commercial setting. Yet, people collaborated around the globe to create what Linux is today.3) Zero cost of copy ... is absolutely given with OSHW by definition. It is called open *source* hardware. As this source is typically resembled by design documents (thus information) there are the same costs of sharing involved as in OSS. Thus, everybody interested can participate without any investment. Participation could happen on the the EDA-level (circuit design, library maintenance, routing, BOM optimization ...), mechanical cad, documentation, artwork and whatnot ...4) Cost of instantiation for some specific forms of contribution: That would be prototyping, debugging, EMC-testing etc. Here, we have a genuine difference to OSS. While most people own a computer, not everyone has a decent (enough) lab to participate in that way and maybe not the financial resources to spend $100 or more on respinning boards. And that was the whole point of my proposal. That resources need to be liberated throughout the design process. And that can only happen purposefully in a collaborative setting. To me this is not just collaboration. It is collaboration + donation of resource.And no, not everyone has decent ideas. While (as some of you suggested) many people do have ideas, they are kind of boring. It is not so fascinating to me, to build the next suboptimal power supply again and again and again.... So yes - I think the lack of really good ideas that are put into a collaborative setting is the main barrier to OSHW. With traditional funding, this seems suboptimal and against the ideology of OSHW. I don't want people to pay to (maybe) get an instance of the design in the future. By that, they are interested in the outcome, not in the process, the learnings or maybe not even in any of the side aspects (like repairability, understandability, extendability ...). That's the reason why we don't see much (any?) successful commercialization of an open source oscilloscope, although this idea comes up every other month or so here. It is always beaten to death by the argument that you won't get any cheaper as the commercial closed source alternative. True, but that misses the entire spirit and thus the whole point.We should engage in OSHW for the sake of ...+ sharing design knowledge+ sharing the practice of designing and learning from each other+ offering an unrestricted right to repair+ offering a unrestricted right to improve and/or fork and adapt... with the goal of ...producing high quality, evaluated designs to equal standards as COTS offerings.Anyway, just my 2 cents ...

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2019, 04:13:12 pm
content: I am personally much more in the software side and hobbyist electronics projects, but here's two that I came up with one morning this week:Arduino-programmable 32-bit ARM programmable graphics processor board for ribbon-connected ILI9341 320x240 display modulesArduino-programmable 32-bit ARM programmable audio processor for headphones, line out, or 8Ω or 16Ω mini speakers (configurable in hardware)Both are designed to operate as a I2C or SPI slave, or via UART. They are multi-purpose development modules. The closest equivalent to 1 are the Digole display modules, but they use a PIC18F. The closest equivalents to 2 that I know of are the various audio carrier boards, like the Teensy Audio board, but they usually don't have an on-board microcontroller.The key to commercial success is in the firmware. Or, libraries rather, as they are intended to be user-programmable.The first one has two example firmware/library implementations. One is a simple serial/VT200/xterm console for debugging microcontroller projects and hacking Linux SBCs and embedded systems like routers and switches. The other is an SDL-like graphics library with tile/sprite support, color LUTs, and a simple blitter. This can be used to create old style handheld games, or nice UIs. The ILI9341 is used in 16-bit color mode (R5G6B5), and a 32-bit microcontroller with hardware multiplier is needed for alpha support and blending. The main issue is the amount of RAM a good implementation would prefer. (I have a lot of the firmware/library details worked out already, and am familiar with efficient routines and algorithms to do all this.)The second one has two example firmware/library implementations: a MOD/S3M/XM/IT tracker, and a MP3/AAC player. Again, having a 32-bit microcontroller with fast hardware multiply is a key. It may even be possible to merge the two into a single library/firmware. The tracker is basically the audio module for old-style games, and for sound effects. The MP3/AAC player would best be illustrated with a SPI Ethernet module (although the audio processor would have to be SPI master in that case), streaming music from free internet radio sites.To explain why this idea makes commercial sense, we'd have to delve into existing use cases and implementations and their downsides, requirements for the above hardware modules (for example, you definitely want the MCU in 2 to have two hardware SPI channels, for obvious reasons; and at least one must be slave-capable), and so on. If you are interested, I guess you have to come to Finland and buy me lunch, and I'll answer any of your questions on it, as I am not interested in developing it any further. Not because it does not have potential, but because I've already burned out twice, and keep away from the business side completely, to retain whatever sanity and capabilities I have left; I am just not a business driver type of a person.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2019, 04:39:58 pm
content: Quote from: homebrew on July 05, 2019, 03:54:00 pmI disagree. Even your description is in contradiction with your initial sentence there.Open source is economically viable because of, and through, market competition. Let that idea sink in a bit, and I'll elaborate.If your commercial plan is to mass-produce a widget, and sell it for less price but more value for customers than your competitors can, open sourcing it makes absolutely no sense. However, that is not the only way to do business. It is just one of the ways of doing business that is not compatible with open source. And, as we have seen from the Chinese manufacturing abilities, it is not even a long-term viable way of doing business: someone will eventually find a way to mass-produce an even better version of the widget for smaller price.The "ideology" in Open Sourceismarket competition: various ideas and implementations are tried and tested, and the "best" ones are incorporated into the common pool everyone can use without draining it. The currency is not about the end widget price, but about the usability and worth of the common pool.(To go back to the town well analogy, keeping the water pure and flowing is good for everyone. If you think the only way to make market sense of such a well is to sit on it and charge money for access to that water, you are an idiot, and will find out the town will eventually just simply move somewhere else, making your investment worth nothing in the long term. Instead, you can for example bottle that water, and sell it outside the town. Or, you can provide water quality monitoring services for the town. It is very hard to think of new business models when you've only sold widgets or charged rent, but that does not mean doing so is the only, or even the best, business strategy.If some of your fellow townspeople are happy to piss in the well, you have a problem. If someone installs a pump and pumps away all the water, you have a problem. If someone spreads rumours that this well is poisoned, you have a problem. If nobody cares about the water table level, you have a problem. This means, you need careful management of the well to keep it viable in the long term. Unlike wells, FOSS and OSHW projects are easily forked; they key difference is that the underlying resource cannot be depleted, and reproduction costs are essentially zero.)A proof of this is the Apache HTTP Server. Its license allows proprietary closed-source derivatives. There used to be those around,but they could not compete with the open source version, or even keep up with the development of the open source version and its features. License cost (for the proprietary closed-source versions) is not an issue, because those who really need a good web server and advanced features, often make a LOT of money from the service; and license costs are neglible compared to the related hardware and network traffic costs when implementing such a service. In fact, as far as I can tell, Microsoft IIS and LiteSpeed Web Server are the only proprietary web servers still actively developed (Apache and nginx covering over 80% of the market). IIS is strictly tied to other Microsoft products, and LiteSpeed seems to be preferred by QUIC users; they are both effectively niche products.If your theory of FOSS/OSHW not being economically viable was correct, Apache and nginx -- or Arduino! -- would not exist.

author: bloguetronica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2019, 06:49:51 pm
content: I'm amazed that this thread is still alive and kicking. But anyway, judging by the opinion of all members except the OP, it is clear that this idea doesn't have any practicality. To put it simply, people don't want to work for freeloaders, with OSH or without it. It is human to expect something in return, that being money, recognition or whatever. What the OP is proposing is to someone work for free while the team leader provides the idea and takes the credit for it (this kind of communism frequently happens inside big tech corporations, BTW - just read the "About" box of any known paid software and see if you get an extensive list of names).If you don't have the means to realize your idea, then, either:1- Your idea is not practically feasible (contradicts laws of physics, or whatever);2- You don't have the knowledge and/or the means to realize it, which means that you'll need to acquire those (eg: by going to a library, buying equipment).The second hypothesis is the doable one, but requires effort. Success comes with a lot of effort, sacrifices, and a truck load of failures. If God intended the world to be free, there would be food falling from the sky and the climate control would be provided by an air conditioner. Life is certainly not a picnic and we are here to toil. Whoever is against this philosophy probably lives like a parasite.Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 05, 2019, 04:39:58 pmSecond that!Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2019, 07:29:25 pm
content: This entire thread makes no sense at all.OP's notion is the chef and kitchen staff cook up and serve for free whatever the customers (idea people) come up with. It seems a little unrealistic.Apache and nginx are not hardware. I think OSHW is a flop, it rarely churns something out and proof is the threads here with tons of energy about building X and then the one-man carrying the work collapses and the project dies.Crowd-sourcing and design by community in theory is a great way to go but it doesn't seem to work for hardware."A camel is a horse designed by a committee" should sound familiar.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2019, 10:35:56 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 05, 2019, 04:39:58 pmThere's no competition here. The "worst" ones are incorporated into the common pool just the same.Competition implies a limited resource, and the only useful consequence of competition is the death of the unfit which frees up the resources for survivors.

author: homebrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2019, 11:16:10 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on July 05, 2019, 07:29:25 pmThis is a strong motivation for a better system for collaboration. Exactly as you say - it is often too much for one person to chew on.Quote from: floobydust on July 05, 2019, 07:29:25 pmSeems to be a common theme here.Quote from: floobydust on July 05, 2019, 07:29:25 pmNow why would that be the case? I've not described it that way. No, of course not! If you won't believe in an idea you would OBVIOUSLY NOT participate and NOT invest ANY resources. Why would anybody seek out for collaboration if he/she is not interested in some aspects of the design?What I've read several times now is the opinion that only the person supplying the idea would earn the credit. For example:Quote from: bloguetronica on July 05, 2019, 06:49:51 pmBut who wants that? Just because companies often declare contributions like that, it doesn't mean that we can't do better. Of course credit must be liberated throughout the entire team.Quote from: bloguetronica on July 05, 2019, 06:49:51 pmWhat a great way of discourse! Cool - whoever is against your worldview lives like a parasite! Just wow ...Sorry, but many people clearly don't think that way. They do all sorts of things as engaging in foundations, associations, donate money, doing charity work and whatnot JUST because "the market" does not or cannot fix some problems in the world these people care about. It's about intrinsic motivation. Money can only provide extrinsic motivation ...Quote from: NorthGuy on July 05, 2019, 10:35:56 pmSecond that! Just look at GitHub and the metric ton of half-baked, abandoned and unfinished stuff. It is there, side by side, the same way as multi million dollar projects. The only limited resource seems to be people willing to engage into a project to keep it alive. Which brings us back to the topic that people collaborate and donate their resources if and only if they are convinced by the idea.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2019, 06:46:49 am
content: Quote from: NorthGuy on July 05, 2019, 10:35:56 pmNo. The "common pool" does not refer to all software that has ever existed, but to the set of actively developed software (with compatible licenses)useful to its developers. Just like the town well does not refer to any old puddle of dirty water.Quote from: NorthGuy on July 05, 2019, 10:35:56 pmQuite. With FOSS/OSHW, the limited resource is time and effort needed to maintain and develop a project.Fundamentally,the number of users a FOSS/OSHW project has is irrelevant. Only the developers matter, because they are spending the limited resources. The only sane reason to spend that time and effort, isusefulness-- useful to its developer(s), that is. These form the market: the limited resource, the value sought after, and the competitors.This is post-scarcity stuff, with basically zero reproduction cost. (The number of users might matter to some of the developers for various reasons, but unlike in commercial proprietary projects where an user corresponds to a sale, an user by itself in FOSS/OSHW corresponds to nothing.) Not understanding this has tripped untold numbers of people and businesses.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2019, 03:21:31 pm
content: Quote from: homebrew on July 05, 2019, 11:16:10 pmShort of a very few exceptions, this is the destiny of most open source projects, even those that were once popular, unless some big company/foundation comes in and keeps them alive thanks to some form of management, marketing and significant direct funding. Alright, you may say that it's still open source and doesn't change the philosophy of it - but that's definitely not projects that just live thanks to the good will of users and developers.Ideas are nice, but are not enough to keep developers interested in the very long run, and projects that are not maintained regularly end up abandoned by their users.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2019, 03:48:25 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 06, 2019, 06:46:49 amOf course, but open source projects, even taken all together, are incredibly small player on the workforce market. The majority of juicy developers get hired by companies paying real salaries. Others start their own businesses (if they believe their idea is worth the try). Whatever left for open source projects is just peanuts.Now and then, a group of people takes over an open source project with a commercial intent, starts paying money, so the project gets more (paid) developers. At the same time, the people who contributed to the project earlier are left behind - they don't get a penny and they cannot contribute to the project any more.Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 06, 2019, 06:46:49 amYou bet. Otherwise, things like Systemd (which is bloated, useless, weakens security, but must be fun to develop for neophyte programmers) would never take off.

author: bloguetronica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2019, 04:37:16 pm
content: Quote from: homebrew on July 05, 2019, 11:16:10 pmYou are a funny guy. Obviously, either you didn't read the post, or you didn't had the cognition to interpret it correctly, despite the fact that I was crystal clear and left no room for other interpretations. Well, I don't give a damn about your interpretation, or by the fact your ego got triggered. I'm not PC, anyway. And I had my share of freeloaders, so I stopped contributing to those a long time ago.Anyway, everyone in this thread disagrees with your idea. That should be evidence enough for you to start thinking that your idea is not feasible, let alone sustainable.Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 08, 2019, 04:52:30 am
content: Interesting thread. Also interesting that so many folks find (good) ideas easy to come by.I've got a decent lab, some free cash, some free time, and pretty good skills (digital and software, at least) and I have to say, I have a really hard time coming up with commercially interesting ideas that I can swing with the resources above.I've designed and sold a few simple devices. I found the effort to be pretty intense, honestly, and the returns meager. It pisses off my wife when I'm sweating the details of how I'll manage the BOM or assembly or testing or channel cost of X when she knows the chances of X materially changing our lives is practically zero! It's not good to piss off your spouse.Bringing something to market -soup to nuts- all by yourself is hard, and for it to have even a chance of being worth it (financially), the idea needs to not be good, but forking brilliant.Honestly, I've had more fun designing quirky things that entertain me, and just giving them away to friends and family. That can also be cheaper than building 5000 of something you think the world needs and finding out how wrong you were.