Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Creators can then register their designs and receive a unique product ID, the OKEY. The
OHANDA label and the OKEY are subsequently printed/engraved on each copy of the
device. This way the link to the documentation and to the contributors travels with the
physical device itself and makes it a visible piece of open source hardware. Through the
OHANDA registration key on the product, the user is linked back to the designer, the
product description, design artifacts, and the public domain or copyleft license through
OHANDA's web-based service. Through this process OHANDA seeks to make public
sufficient information to test/reproduce the device; collect information on new innovation;
ensure openness; make the description/documentation publicly accessible; protect com-
mon knowledge; make the standard generic, universal, and simple; and create a venue for
time-stamping, quality control, and trust (Neumann and Powell 2011).
OSHW Definition, Summit, and Logo
In early 2010, Ayah Bdeir, then a Creative Commons fellow, was trying to turn her project
littleBits (a system of open source hardware modules) into a company. She consulted with
her Creative Commons advisor, John Wilbanks, with whom she had several discussions
about how to launch, run, and protect open source hardware enterprises. Together they
decided to hold a workshop to share the questions and possible solutions they had been
debating with other open-hardware developers. The Opening Hardware workshop, which
took place at Eyebeam in New York City in March 2010 (Eyebeam 2010), coincided with
a major Arduino meeting that had brought several stakeholders to the city. Among those
present were Alicia Gibb (R&D director at Bug Labs), Andrew “bunnie” Huang (founder
of Chumby), Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief of
Wired
magazine, author of
The Long
Tail,
and founder of DIY Drones), David A. Mellis, Gianluca Martino, Massimo Ban-
zi, Tom Igoe (four of the five members of the Arduino Team), Nathan Seidle (founder
of SparkFun), Zach Smith (co-founder of MakerBot), Limor Fried (founder of Adafruit),
PhillipTorrone(creative directorofAdafruit),BeckyStern(theneditorat
Make
magazine),
Benjamin Mako Hill (MIT), Jonathan Kuniholm (Open Prosthetics Project/Shared Design
Alliance), Ken Gilmer (Bug Labs), and Ken Gracey (Parallax).
During the workshop, Thinh Nguyen (legal counsel at Creative Commons) and Wil-
banks talked extensively about legal protections and recourse for open source hardware,
and advised attendees to determine the practice's norms instead of opting for a probably
long and painful legal recourse. Based on this, Bdeir, Mellis, and Windell Oskay (EMSL)
orchestrated a series of posterior communications among the workshop's participants that
culminated in the open source hardware definition 0.1 (OSHW Definition) (Freedom
Defined n.d.).
