Talk:Open source hardware

From RepRap
Revision as of 08:11, 7 August 2015 by AndrewBCN (talk | contribs)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

I am updating this page with links to various pages on the Open Source Hardware Association website. Please note that the President of the Board at the Open Source Hardware Association is Michael Weinberg, with whom I completely disagree on various points regarding IP rights over 3D designs.

--AndrewBCN (talk) 06:52, 27 July 2015 (PDT)


An often voiced argument against applying the concept of open source to hardware (and consequently against licensing hardware under any free or open source license), is that hardware cannot easily be copied, contrarily to software (basically a computer file), which nowadays falls under the scope of copyright, for which there exists widespread legal support.

However, this is a clear misconception of what copyright is. Indeed, copyright does not apply to a physical object (hardware) itself, it applies to the intellectual work that defines this object. In other words, we have to view this from the Intellectual Property (IP) rights point of view.

Even when they are applied to hardware, the concepts of copyright and open source are about IP rights, not about physical objects.

--AndrewBCN (talk) 05:10, 7 August 2015 (PDT)