Power, Memory and Schematics


btw&imho:
I don't think there can be a thing like 3/4 Free software. A software either is or is not Free. And I'm fairly confident, RMS would agree with me if you asked him.

(Response only for the sake of historical accuracy: ;) )
At least in the past there RMS woudl have disagreed, he defined then indeed semi-free software. A classification which was later removed from the FSF terminology.
[doublepost=1481829388,1481829065][/doublepost](again, for the sake of historical accuracy)
I believe the FSF coined Free software with the definition it holds today, but that is beside the pointt
The RMS/FSF doesn't "coined" the Free software term, RMS took over, stole it, from the already existing public domain ecosystem.
 
That is open to debate,
English works like this, you put a word in front of another, and it qualifies that word.
I see no reason to patronize me for not being a native speaker.

I never said it was free software, i said it was 3/4 of it.
As I just pointed out, there is no such thing like being 3/4 Free software. Just as there is no such thing like being 1/2 pregnant.
A license might meet a subset of the required criteria, but if it doesn't meet ALL of them, then it's not a Free software license. I don't get why you even bring that up if you don't claim this license to be FS-compliant.

Open is not a specific word. It means access.
Does that mean you want to make your point based on Open Access declarations? That's a whole different story and I'd rather not go there if you don't insist on it.

And open is just that, and im a certifier.
No disrespect intended, but for being a certifier (of licenses?) you're being pretty vague here.

Edit: Btw, oshwa deals with hardware. 'Open hardware' is, albeit for the time being, a specific term. It is a social term, so you could hollow it out if you wanted to. That will probably happen, as the different open hardware licenses differ widely in terms of grasp, legality and protection.
Please show me such a hollowed OH license that's actually used in some project! Until then I'm just going to assume that the one from the OSHWA is the only relevant one, and that is pretty clear about openness with regards to commercial use.

You are cherry-picking organizations, and confusing it with hardware.
I can assure you that I do neither. I know the difference between HW and SW. Not only OSHWA, OSI and FSF reject NC clauses, so does the OKN [1]. I can only assure you that I'm not cherry-picking, but of course I cannot prove that, because whatever reference I might come up with, you could still call it another example of my cherry-picking. I might however have a limited knowledge of actually existing OS licenses. That's why I keep asking for examples of relevant OS licenses that permit NC clauses.

There are a whole lot of open source licenses that are non-commercial. The MAME-license comes to mind. At-least one open hardware license has been non-commercial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAPR_Open_Hardware_License#Noncommercial_license
Both projects dropped the use of these licenses in favor of clearly accepted OS licenses. The original MAME license wasn't even written or approved by a lawyer. [2] So I don't see the relevance here.

Even licenses not intended for software can be open, and non-commercial https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
Not even CC itself approves NC licenses for "Free Cultural works" [3] (which might be their closest thing to defining openness).


[1] http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/24/why-share-alike-licenses-are-open-but-non-commercial-ones-arent/
[2] http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Number=316273
[3] https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/freeworks/
 
Yeah, might as well lock it so it can continue somewhere else.

It is funny that almost everyone on the internet is wrong. ;)
 
Im not a native English speaker either.
I brought it up because proponents of free software want to see 4/4, right now they have 3/4. So adding one freedom more would get it there.
I dont want to make a point, im pointing out you dont have one.

Being zingu open doesnt rule out anything, there is no requirements other than being open.

Cern, OSHWA and tapr all have different terms. Anything that doesnt strictly use patent law in this day and age is hollowing out the term, because then it doesnt have the same legal backing. It isnt patent law to be funny, that is actually how sad things are. I could dig it up again, but if you want to discuss, read up on it first.

You can be relevant with a claim all you like, it isnt irrelevant that claiming it doesnt protect the word "open" invalidates it. Nor was it ever in defense of that. You go on about public-domain software, call the FSF ecosystem irrelevant, and now all of a sudden OSHWA is the decider in open hardware alone?

You are cherry-picking in the blind, and you have fallen down from the tree multiple times already.

The reasons Free software companies denounce non-commercial licenses is because 1. they dont work 2. they cause problems. and 3. they cause problems in the way they don't work, for stuff that does. Free software.

Of course they don't want to tarnish the word Free, it is open that is a lost cause to the free software (as in libre) agenda. And we are discussing why the pyra license is open, and why that does not please free software folks fully. It could do, but then you would use a meaningful term, full of meaning, not devoid of almost all.

Have you read the GPL1 license? Original BSD? Not everyone is a lawyer.

https://opensource.org/licenses/NPOSL-3.0

Luckily public domain software and non-commercial licenses are as weak as they ever were. Not relevant.

Its just a not that clever thing to do, you can do it with closed source, you can do it with open source.

And this is where the venn diagrams overlap with free software and public domain and open, the latter also with with non-commercial. Free software doesnt touch that. Never the two shall meet. Highly relevant to the point free software is trying to make.

If you are going to shoot yourself in the foot, be it the copyleft foot by not being able to do that by doing libre software in the public domain, you can atleast pick yourself up by taking it back by expanding on it.
Dont shoot yourself in the other foot after that with non-commercial open source. You aren't going anywhere with that.

If you read the linked to article, it talks about free software as being an opposition to a free lunch, only in making it actually free beer, no strings attached.
It uses the term "public-domain software" and being free as an alternative to commercial, again, gratis.

Public domain is actually a curious concept, because things don't get there by chance, it takes ages. If you want to put something in there, you have to license it that way.
Putting something into a bbs and saying people can use it, isn't making it PD at all. You still retain copyright that way.
I am unaware of any important software licensed into the public domain from the time, but i could be wrong.

Point of the matter is free software was equally unknown and non-widespread at the time. To suggest they even knew about each-other by saying one stole from the other, begs the question as to what you can steal.

One is using it to mean libre software, and since the other has no mention of source, it is unappologetically talking about freeware. One favours ethical matters, and the other concerns itself with ability.
"Freeware is not exactly free, but it is not priced as a normal commercial transaction either"

Program for free, and then request a donation. That is just nagware.

Still doesn't use free as anything but a substitute for gratis

If the commercial guys dont wise up, it will wipe them out, they have priced themselves out. Yes, but earlier it said someone could take a program without even attribution, so clearly there is a few pieces missing here.

>"piracy is not the only way to get free software"
Well there you have it, 100% unmistakable use of free software indistinguishable from freeware.

The difference isn't the donations you ask for, or if you are IBM PC compatible or not. As we know today.

>"Strictly speaking" …Software isn't free, because phone bills and asking for donations. bla bla bla
Again using free as a substitute for gratis. Calling on third party costs as having something to do with what the software is, when it is inconsequential, and going on about ethics of asking for donations in the same sentence. Class act. Just above it its people struggling even when giving something away for free…

Turns out i learned something valuable:

Before 1974, when the US Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) decided that "computer programs, to the extent that they embody an author's original creation, are proper subject matter of copyright",[4] software was not copyrightable and therefore always in public domain. This legislation, plus court decisions such as Apple v. Franklin in 1983 for object code, clarified that the Copyright Act gave computer programs the copyright status of literary works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain_software#Early_academic_public-domain_software_ecosystem

Free software isn't important as a term in English, only as a cultural happening, and perhaps the greatest hack of copyright law to date. The freedom nature of it is important, not what you call it. This is why taking the time to say "as in freedom" is warranted. When talking to people who dont know, or are purpously unaware like you.

So people figured out how to take back control. Supported by the newfound provisions in copyright law. Old hacker is the new hacker.

Edit: History repeating itself with hardware this time around.
 
Last edited:
I fail to see why you keep talking in that length about software licenses when this is clearly a matter of hardware licenses. There are parallels but those are still two different things. Mixing those things brings us nowhere.
And yes, among others I've read all the GPL and BSD licenses.
I have no idea what "zingu open source" is. There doesn't seem to be anything online, that documents what this is. Is it relevant to Open Hardware? If so, how?

So far you're just beating around the bush. PD is totally irrelevant here and claiming that "open" is just a generic English word that can be applied any way you like defeats the point of legally defining licenses in the first place.
To shortcut this: Please simply link to a license applicable to hardware design that fulfills the following criteria:
1. It claims to define what "Open Hardware" is.
2. It states that an NC clause is ok.
3. It is actually and currently applied to some project that has the goal of creating "Open Hardware" (or has already done so).
 
The Pyra is not Open Hardware, was never announced to be Open Hardware and due to its necessary usage of proprietary firmware/drivers will never be Open Hardware as defined by the OSHWA.
 
The thing is that people want to see libre software, as it applies to software, in a hardware license.
That is not quite how it works, like software protection of published works didnt work before 1974, but people are doing it anyway.

And we are repeating every facet of how public domain software became free software, as in freedom.

Down to vague naming schemes, and non-commercial clauses.

Nobody can define what open hardware is beyond open schematics to best efforts, the only requirement of -zingu open hardware. What people want is some reproduce-ability and some protection.

"Open hardware" is not a license, it is a broad term covering many such attempts.

The Pyra is not OSHWA-open hardware, because it is not licensed as such, it is still open hardware, because it qualifies. Look at what the openPandora did. You got the schematics there too.
There is a license to go along with it. You don't need a governing body that to tell you how to publish your works, potentially charging fees to do so. They are all trying to define something within current law in an international or local jurisdiction, or trying to make it sound as good as possible. Same deal with software. Different laws for the time being.

There are many definers of open hardware, and since they all differ, and it is a vague term, you cant claim OSHWA (from 2012) defines open hardware any
more than open source can be a legally binding/defined term meaning free software, because it does not compute.

The Pyra for one, doesn't _need_ proprietary drivers. You can run without the Wi-Fi chip and powerVR just fine. I have tried running my pandora like that with Pandian, it works.
Two, that isnt actually how the OSHWA license works. It doesnt require free software drivers. And firmware isnt copyright law btw, its patent law. Which is why the GPLv3 doesnt cover it.

(You may be thinking of is the RYF license (?), which is a "everything free sofware" deal. Where i think meaninful implications on privacy are outlawed in firmware.)

http://certificate.oshwa.org/

2. Ensure that all of the creator’s own contributions to an open source product using the certification mark are shared as open source in accordance with the agreement and these requirements.

3. Ensure all parts within the creator’s control are open source. Use best efforts to distinguish any third-party proprietary components. Third-party components such as chips must have fully accessible and shareable datasheets for hardware to be considered open source.

>creators own contributions shared as open source, according to license
>All parts within the creators control are open source.
Ok, so what do they mean with "open source"?

>Fully shareable datasheets for hardware​

This is definitely the requirement for the contested area.

Datasheets are not down-to-the-wire schematics, nor is it a requirement of code.

So i think you need an NDA on some TI stuff. The Pyra, lest we forget, is not Tied to a TI processor. Getting a new moduleboard, this could all change.

The “Creator Contribution” Requirement

As noted above, in order to be certified under this program all parts, designs, code, and rights under the control of the creator must be made open according to the open source hardware definition hosted by OSHWA. However, that does not necessarily mean that the entire project must or will be open source. If the creators used third party closed components outside of their control, they are unable – and are therefore not required – to open souce those components. While it is strongly prefered to use open components when possible, OSHWA recognizes the reality that this is not always possible. The “creator contribution” requirement is an intentionally flexible one, designed to be applicable to individuals working alone and multinational corporations.
> All creator controlled stuff goes under OSHWA definition of open source
>Not a requirement for the whole
>Third party components outside of their control (bingo)
>Not required to have open source of those
>Wish for better marketplace, but pragmatic nature.

It is so fresh that it has a spelling error in it… Supposed to be "preferred".

It is important that we read and understand these licenses. None of us are lawyers, but we can do better than assume about them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAPR_Open_Hardware_License#Noncommercial_license

Again, I'm not saying this particular attempt is the _most_ relevant one, im not even saying i like it, quite to the contrary. It was thrown at the wall, it predictably did not stick.
What I am saying is that it is within the realms of open hardware, just like non-commercial open source is open source. That is a very important distinction between what things mean, what we say, and how it works in terms of law.

That is relevant to the goals of libre software, and my idea of what ideal hardware is.
 
Last edited:
Ok, so you're not going to deliver references that support your opinion and I'm not going to accept that opinion as fact as long as you don't reference it.
This won't lead us anywhere. Let's just agree to disagree! I'll just ask you, that you'll make it very clear in the future, that your opinion is just that: Your opinion.
 
License to Kill 5.jpg
 
seriously, keep it confined here, and then people know not to visit this thread instead of a new one ;)
 
Back
Top