Free Hardware Discussion

Discussion moved from FreeHardware, to try and stay on hardware topics.

Surely there is room in this discussion for the many free hardware design projects? Here are a few:

Richard Stallman -- On "Free Hardware" http://linuxtoday.com/stories/6993.html
What is 'Open Source Hardware'? http://opencollector.org/Whyfree/open_hardware.html
Free CPU designs: OpenCores? project http://www.opencores.org/
F-CPU Project http://www.f-cpu.org/
Knuth's MMIX 2009: a RISC computer for the third millennium http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/mmix.html
Open Graphics http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics
Other links http://debianlinux.net/hardware.html#free_cpu

This is not exhaustive. -- Doug

Good Urls... It's a good idea to post any Url's you find on FreeHardware. I have been gathering a bunch of Urls myself. Some of them in my bookmarks. (The LinuxToday? link is funny, because I see microsoft ads on that website right above Richard's name.)

If you want to move them to FreeHardware, feel free. I wasn't really following the discussion, so I wasn't sure if I'd be accused of being off-topic if I did so, despite the page names. -- Doug
Not off topic.. anything related to free hardware is on topic. Most of the urls are on free Hardware design projects. I am still looking for more urls that discuss actual free hardware in physical form, which seems so ridiculous to many people.

EditHint: Free as in FreeSpeech seems to be confused with FreeAsInBeer. While both versions of free hardware - or free anything for that matter - are plausible, this page could benefit from a clear distinction between them.

Well the author hints that Free cost and speech intertwine together. One affects the other. They are not just two separate stand-alone items. Maybe some licenses are confusing.. so in this case, the author wishes to discuss free hardware from a free speech and free cost perspective. The author thinks that they are together, not separate. The free speech and free beer issues always wind up in a never ending loop. Really, it's about freedom in general. Look at this equation:

   FreedomA + Costs = Less freedom.

Costs are an issue with freedom, and so is speech. Whether costs are an issue with free speech or not is the same as asking about general freedom, if free speech equals general freedom.

I am not as much for debating free cost over free speech as I am interested in going after general freedom. An equation goes like this:

   FreedomA + FreedomB = more freedom
   FreedomA + COST = Less freedom.

General Freedom = Free Speech and if Cost is part of general freedom...

...Then we are okay to include cost as a factor. Whether minor or major, cost is a factor. Whether you call it general freedom, or free speech, cost is still a big factor in freedom.

So ultimately if you have more cost, you still have less freedom in the end. Is it less free speech? Well the definition of free speech varies, but don't you agree that since cost and speech affect each other that less cost will benefit freedom as a whole?

If not, you might end up in a loop.. Cost is restrictive, so it affects freedom. Simple as that really. You sound like you come from a Gnu background since you bring up the beer issue. I use Gnu software too, but I don't necessarily see that free beer and free speech are unrelated or awfully separate. I do see issues with freeware vs Gnu, but the whole free speech thing is just too confusing for anybody to spend time on. Let's talk General Freedom, or if you must, free speech as general freedom. I think the problem is people will not admit to the fact that free speech and free cost heavily affect each other. If they heavily affect each other, we can't talk about them like two different things all the time (maybe some time, again, this is an infinite loop and an infinite conversation).

Even though not being exactly on the frontlines of the FreeSoftware movement, I disagree with you here. FreedomOfCosts? (note the absence of beer) and FreedomOfUse? are two different things, though linked. The with FreeSoftware, the user has certain Freedoms of Use, described on exactly that page. If software has Freedom of Costs, it simply means one can become a user free of charge. Usually the former will lead to the latter, since one of the Freedoms of Use is Freedom to distribute, which means that there's usually someone who will do so free of charge. But Freedom of Costs means just that. It will not autimatically lead to Freedom of Use. Even though most creators of FreeWare? will not sue you for reverse-engineering their product, under some (a lot?) licenses they would be perfectly entitled to do so.

The same can be said about FreeHardware. Freedom of Use would mean that once you're the user, you're free to do whatever you want with it (or rather to it, since you shouldn't be allowed to shoot anyone just because you own the gun). This would probably include Freedom from Patents. FreedomOfCosts? here, would mean that you could acquire it without costs. Neither of those freedoms necessarily implies the other.

You cannot just lump the two of them together and call it GeneralFreedom, and you cannot lump software and hardware together and say they're the same thing. The difference here is in the stock, the supplies. Software can be copied, so that both the new and the old user have it. Unless you live in StarTrek, there is no such thing for HardWare?, which makes it by definition another issue altogether.

Who says I cannot just lump the two of them together? I happen to think free cost and speech are very important in today's world. Some may think that free speech is more important in all cases. I do not. I think that speech can heavily affect cost, and vice versa. Therefore I lump them together. Nothing is written in stone. I agree with much of Gnu but I do not have to take it in stone, just because it was written down. GeneralFreedom was written down in 2005 and you do not have to take it in stone.. but I expect you to consider that both cost and speech are highly important in today's world of fast information and hard good exchange.

The only thing they really have in common is the word 'free', but used in two different meanings. Apples the computers are quite different from apples the fruit, though they share the same name. The distinction there is much clearer, though. You can lump those together, but there's very little sense in doing so.

If they heavily affect each other, and free cost is one of the major methods of software transportation, I do not deny that it is heavily important. You may. I think some people try to ignore the fact that cost is important by masking it with a lot of free speech talk. But that's just my opinion, and I hope others will agree.

And as a kind of sad but true aside note, arguing over free beer vs free speech doesn't really mean much too some people. Because the author doesn't even drink beer. Better wording? Freedom, General Freedom. How about if I have children reading over a license or a wiki who don't drink beer? I find beer a bit confusing when talking about software. I think freebeer is confusing since it's just relaying one free to the next free. Freeclothes freesepeech, freebeer, freedesk could all be the same thing or different things.. but since they prefix with free.... hmm. The last thing we need is confusion.

Let's just talk about GeneralFreedom.. and general freedom [b]will[/b] involve cost and speech. So be them. I don't think people could deny that cost is not related to 'free speech' or 'general freedom' in some way or another, in the long term.

FreeHardware needs some structure to it. A website will be made discussing it soon. Cost/speech issues are a problem in these wikis and I think a website will help (i.e. no one can edit the Gnu website, or the Mozilla website. They are structures who lay down some general text to follow.)

There may be different branches of FreeHardware, just like Mozilla or FreeBsd is a different branch from Gnu. That will help people join the hardware group they feel is more appropriate to their belief or ethic.