Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Note
Since building derivatives is such an integral aspect to open
source hardware, this section speaks to derivatives specifically.
Currently, two issues for which the Open Source Hardware As-
sociation (OSHWA) is committed to providing education are as
follows: (1) trademarks need to be respected and (2) noncom-
mercial licenses are not open source. People may fall into
routines and not necessarily mean to infringe on a trademark or
apply a NC license. It's all too easy to forget that not all Creat-
ive Commons licenses are open source. Likewise, in some situ-
ations, people don't realize the Arduino name is trademarked,
but instead view it as a generic term. In this case, OSHWA
wants to ensure that trademarks and NC licenses are not used
accidentally, and that people are cognizant of these two areas.
Last updated:
April 18, 2013 by the OSHWA mailing list, coordin-
ated by David A. Mellis.
Initial version:
November 21, 2012 by Nathan Seidle and the
OSHWA mailing list.
As the definition grows and the best practices get put to the test, other
groups, such as Mach 30, have begun to write their own guides. These guides
can be somewhat specific to particular industries, but overlap with the general
advice that is useful to the open source hardware community.
Anecdote: The OSHW Prime Directive
J. Simmons
In 2013, I was fortunate enough to attend the Open Source Hardware
Documentation Jam. One of the central themes to come out of that
work was the need to improve documentation tools if we wanted
people to document their projects. At the time I completely agreed, and
I am still in favor of developing improved tools and processes for docu-
menting open source hardware. Since the Doc Jam, though, I have been
thinking what we really need to do is remind ourselves of just how im-
portant documentation is. We need to remember that documenting our
hardware designs is our mission as open source hardware developers.
