Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
ment, and one the cloners feel is financially viable, indicating a fairly
significant level of demand and popularity.
Now, a word about the caveat I mentioned. While I believe cloners
are an integral part of the open source economy, I cannot abide free-
loaders. Clearly, I do not believe all cloners are freeloaders. If one goes
to the trouble of developing one's own brand, of creating and running
one's own support system, and if one builds high-quality products, then
I don't think that person is a freeloader. But, if one fails to live up to
those standards, then the person is unfairly profiting off of the hard
work of the original project. That is decidedly uncool, and is more akin
to theft than being an integral part of the open source economy.
So, let us all boldly go and document projects that have not been
documented before, but not because someone made us or because we
finally have that silver bullet that makes it easy. Instead, let us docu-
ment our projects because it is what we were called to do. It is the very
reason we are open source hardware developers, and it is the reason we
should be proud of our work.
Mach 30's OSHW Ground Rules
Unlike many open source hardware projects which come out of a single
lab/shop/company/makerspace, at Mach 30 we have had to learn how
to develop hardware in a distributed environment from day one. Mach
30 does not have a shop of its own. Instead, volunteers from across the
United States develop hardware in their homes, garages, and local
makerspaces and share the results on Open Design Engine, the free
open source hardware project portal run by Mach 30. As you can ima-
gine, working with people in different locations, often in different time
zones, adds a whole new level of complexity to project management.
But it also makes our projects more open. The same steps we take to
ensure distributed project teams are up to speed on current design dis-
cussions and decisions ensure visitors to our projects can get up to
speed quickly and easily. And getting visitors up to speed quickly and
easily promotes contributions (bug fixes, design ideas, documentation
assistance), replication (building or buying their own copy of a pro-
ject), and forking/remixing (taking parts of a project and integrating
them into a new project)—three of the best indicators of a project's
success.
