---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bryan Bishop kanzure@gmail.com Date: Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 1:17 PM Subject: Fwd: Non-assertion pledges... for (patented) open source hardware? To: GOSH! - Grounding Open Source Hardware gosh@piksel.no, Open Manufacturing openmanufacturing@googlegroups.com, diybio diybio@googlegroups.com, kanzure@gmail.com

Hey all,

I sent this email to the cc-patents mailing list. Supposedly that's where the CC groupies were to be gathering, but I haven't seen a response yet, and it seems like it might be a black hole (I hope not!)

http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-patents

Anyway, I am forwarding this email so that others (on the GOSH!, diybio and open manufacturing lists) can comment and provide whatever inputs they can.

Thanks!

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bryan Bishop kanzure@gmail.com Date: Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 5:31 PM Subject: Non-assertion pledges... for (patented) open source hardware? To: cc-patents@lists.ibiblio.org, Bryan Bishop kanzure@gmail.com

Hey all,

I have found my way here from this page:

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Patent_Tools_Public_Discussion

I was wondering about the non-profit-research-only non-assertion pledge tool mentioned on the page. I became aware of the patent tools discussion in light of the open source hardware community. Ayah Bdeir dropped a nice link for us to follow and lead us here. In particular, one idea that I have been kicking around (fed to me in part by Joe Rayhawk) for the hardware community is a non-assertion pledge for patent owners who wish to promote open source hardware. In this scenario, OSI, FSF, EFF, TAPR, CC, and DFSG principles would be written into a set of principles that would guide whether or not something is considered to be "open source" (in the hardware community sense).

I am not sure how specific this would have to be or how impractical it presently sounds. The GNU General Public License v3 is very specific about redistribution, modification, etc., and the rights granted to the end-user. Would something equally verbose be needed at the center of this patent pledge scenario?

From the mile-high view, it seems that the non-profit-research-only

specification is more stringent than the open source hardware community would prefer as a legal vehicle. Already we see businesses like Makerbot Industries licensing their content under CC-BY 3.0 and in some cases GPL, BSD, etc., deeper in the internal RepRap community. In this instance, there are no patents involved. But it would be easy to imagine a scenario where patents were involved from the onset. The proliferation of open source hardware in the commercial markets is really interesting, and IMHO worth investigating whether or not it would be possible. Yes, I understand that this is *not* the intent of the research non-assertion pledge currently on the CC wiki.

In light of these ideas, and the recent "Opening Hardware" workshop in NYC, I was wondering if anyone has comments, thoughts and advice to share? Thank you! I also have many links to dump if anyone is interested in the topology of these communities at the moment, and what various projects are using for licenses, etc.

- Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507