Talk:RepRap and Open Source
I am reorganizing the page RepRap and Open Source in the wiki, because I believe it is very important for the RepRap movement to firmly assert its basic principles and clarify the various questions that arise from the concept of Open Source and how it applies to hardware replication i.e. RepRap.
Now, the question of RepRap and Open Source can be examined from various angles and I am trying to bring all the previously available points of view into this single page.
The page is still very much work in progress right now and apparently there is not a single coherent, unifying view (which may be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it) on this somewhat vast and controversial subject. So feel free to voice your opinion, either in the RepRap and Open Source page itself, in the Discussion tab here, or in a newly created page and add a link to it.
There was an interesting discussion about the use of Open Source 3D printable designs in the forum which surprisingly demonstrated that the subject was more controversial than what I would have expected, given that the RepRap movement is entirely based on the idea of Open Source hardware. The thread can be found here: Use of Open Source designs
--AndrewBCN (talk) 15:33, 20 July 2015 (PDT)
The subject is still surprisingly controversial from what I've seen, what some developers think opensource is can get quite twisted sometimes,
I would have thought that given the length of time that this project has gone on for there would have been a standard of sorts universally accepted by everyone , which there is to a limited point...
the closest we've come so far to even defining what we consider opensource is in this community "Sources sufficient to make a copy" and pretty much what some of us admins have been trying to enforce with limited success.
As i see it we have three types of opensource hardware developers:
1 - the developers who publish everything in the format the source code is in and use services like GitHub to make contributions by others easier and actively accept contributions eg Smoothieboard, Ramps , many others
2 - the developers who publish a limited and cut down version of the sources often in formats you cannot import into any software (a jpeg of a schematic) and usually missing half the information however it's usually just enough to be allowed to use wiki pages and forums for advertising where you can buy the hardware, eg Azsmz.
3 - claim the project is opensource however don't publish anything or promise to publish sources after a kickstarter
Imho 2 and 3 are really unacceptable in our community we only really tolerate them because there is a train of thought out there that says because it cheap and they claim to at least be opensource they should be allowed to abuse the wiki and forums however it's wearing thin with a lot of people.
A while ago we started using a "tag" system to mark pages which existed for either advertising purposes and falsly claimed to be opensource or pages which just didn't have any sources at all, in almost all cases this was successful in getting authors to cough up sources however there were a couple we ended up removing entirely as there was no communication and/or it was clear through communication they had no intention of publishing anything.
at the risk of being called a Nazi , a dictator and other things I've been called in the past over this topic i'm of the opinion that we can get around the controversy by looking at the issue factually and literally:
the term "opensource" consists of two words "open" and "source":
the context being:
"open" as in visible to all, accessible to all , anyone can come and go/contribute and take...
"source" as in the original material, the data from which everything is made from ...
yet there is a lot of argument on what we call "sources" to me sources are the files that you do the design in and contain all the information required to build a complete working copy.
in terms on what we allow on the wiki i think (and i would be very much in favor of), requiring every project that claims to be opensource to:
- publish and maintain proper sources on GitHub
- if they are selling the results of the project provide one link to the sales page on the project wiki page and every other link on the wiki relating to the "product" must link to the wiki page not the third party site
- publish the sources immediately, not in 6-12 months time after a kickstarter
- if they have a username on the wiki the signature should bear the link to the wiki page and/or sales page for the project , that way users can see any bias in recommendations for certain boards by particular users.
At the end of the day, this is a wiki here for the purpose of providing information in the spirit of opensource collaboration on a machine that produces copies of itself (or as much of itself as it can), it's not a marketplace for those who's only real intention is to make money out of it and not really help t grow.
We loose nothing at all as a community if we removed every project that is not truly opensource in the simplest form.
--Thejollygrimreaper (talk) 16:46, 20 July 2015 (PDT)
