[beyond-licensing] quick review of scope, resources, and goals

Alicia Gibb alicia at oshwa.org
Fri Apr 15 12:37:40 UTC 2016


I agree with Karl's sentiment and recollection of the conversation at the
meeting:


> Instead, what Beyond Licensing means IMHO is "things the OSI and allies
> can do, that don't involve software copyright licenses, to help open source
> as a cause".


I was envisioning almost a unified marketing campaign. A one-pager / video
/ poster for specific audiences clarifying and educating on open source in
general. Maybe there's a one-pager that goes to cooperate executives, I
would personally love one that educates the US congress. We talked about
creating a statement of what is and isn't healthy in open source - maybe
this is a do and don't list. There was also an idea of making a new Desert
Island test, but more broadly an Open Source test. I resonated with this
because OSHWA had to make a checklist
<http://www.oshwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/oshwchecklist.pdf> of
correctly open sourcing your hardware, and one item on there is "are you
emotionally prepared to have your hardware copied" because we kept having
people that were negatively surprised when this happened and we would say
'...And congratulations, they gave you attribution! This is how open source
works!'

A big part of the discussion was including things that didn't only involve
software, but data and hardware as well (and sometimes void of software).
Someone (I think Karl) gave examples of the tractor data that is "leased"
from and under the DMCA act, so farmers can no longer share data across
fields. I would love to see a revolt of farmers developing their own open
source hardware tractors <http://opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/>
from OSE - Can't track software if there's none on it! But my guess is
maybe .05% of farmers know that an alternative like this is in the works,
and fewer of them would have the time to finish developing it and build
their own.

I think the big issue will be trying to get a grasp on the IoT (M2M) market
to help people understand there are other IP options before everyone plows
through with patents, copyright, DMCA and whatever other limiting laws they
apply to their entire system.


Cheers,
Alicia Gibb
CEO, Lunchbox Electronics <http://www.lunchboxelectronics.com/>
Executive Director, Open Source Hardware Association <http://www.oshwa.org/>
Director, Blow Things Up Lab <http://www.btulab.com/>
Author, Building Open Source Hardware
<https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13220>

Please note: I tend to check my email once a day during the hours of 9-5
and refrain from checking it outside of work hours and weekends. Thank you
for your patience.
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