I don't think I know what "Open Hardware" is so I'm definitely for OSH. Paul PS. Could it be a piece of hardware with the lid open? At 07:35 AM 8/19/2011, Andrew Back wrote:

Hello,

Some of you may also have been following the debate regarding open hardware vs. open source hardware on the Open Hardware Summit lists and/or various others. The OHS updates list archives are, for some reason, private, but Bryan Bishop has kindly been forwarding to Open Manufacturing. See:

http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/c9e1cd72d153a88e?hl=en&...

I have personally had some trouble with this debate in the past, and whilst we ended up being OSHUG and not OHUG, I don't find the argument that Open Hardware is, e.g. just a device with documented registers, entirely convincing. Inasmuch as it may have once meant this, but it has now come to be generally accepted that it is quite something else.

I do agree with a lot of what Bruce Perens has to say... This is not to say that I think we should drop the "S". I've not completely made my mind up, and with regards to what we are called I don't think it matters _that_ much. Bruce does make a good case, though, and I'm definitely with him on this being a movement and the importance of it being " a lot of folks going in approximately the same direction". Which is to say that we don't all have to agree on everything. It would be a shame if this ended up being another Free Software vs. Open Source type split, though.

I'm in interested as to what other folks think...

Cheers,

Andrew

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