Ideas to promote making and using free hardware designs (was Re: FSF continuously harms Free Hardware)

[Paul D. Fernhout]

On 1/18/22 11:16 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> What could someone do, that would go beyond publishing
> https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.html, that would help
> promote making and using free hardware designs?  I don't know.  Do you
> have any ideas?
>
> If you find a good idea, maybe the FSF could do it.  Or maybe you
> could do it.  Maybe you could do it, and the FSF could host the info
> to call attention to it.
>
> The first step is, what would be helpful to do?

OSCOMAK is an idea I put together over twenty years ago (originally as a 
pre-proposal for a NASA grant after talking to Al Globus) to create 
designs for a free physical infrastructure:
https://www.oscomak.net/
"The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested 
individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global 
repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future 
processes, materials, and products. OSCOMAK stands for "OSCOMAK Semantic 
Community On Manufactured Artifacts and Know-how"."

I mentioned it to you (RMS) back when it was getting started and we 
discussed related licensing issues which you also ran by a FSF lawyer 
(thanks). But I can't say it ever got off the ground for a variety of 
reasons. But conceptually I still feel it is the right way to go as a 
comprehensive approach.

=== More details on the general idea of expanding maker culture

The roots of my interest in that go back to the 1980s:
https://pdfernhout.net/sunrise-sustainable-technology-ventures.html#Notes_on_Technology_Library
https://pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html

The biggest change in my own thinking over the years is to realize the 
idea of promoting *standards* for interchanging free information is more 
important than promoting specific free *implementations* (even as we do 
need free implementations).

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would be a 
natural for defining and promoting such standards. They have ventured 
into that area in some ways. NASA also has an almost obsessive interest 
in sets of procedures (for good reasons), and also in theory should 
support such efforts to standardize the format for free procedures.

One might think either big government agency would develop and promote 
this kind of free design concept in a big way, but I have not seen it. 
Perhaps this is in part because such efforts may quickly get entangled 
with the proprietary "supply chain" interests of large commercial 
contractors such organizations frequently interact with? That may be 
changing though as the free software and design idea spreads? In 
general, creating a free "supply chain" of free designs is another way 
to look at the issue.

A summary of a tangentially related idea I proposed back around 2011 is 
here (the idea page itself seems to have bitrotted and is not in 
archive.org):
https://web.archive.org/web/20150514025613/http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/pmd/449446-8319
"Build 21000 flexible fabrication facilities across the USA
Being able to make things is an important part of prosperity, but that 
capability (and related confidence) has been slipping away in the USA. 
The USA needs more large neighborhood shops with a lot of flexible 
machine tools. The US government should fund the construction of 21,000 
flexible fabrication facilities across the USA at a cost of US$50 
billion, places where any American can go to learn about and use CNC 
equipment ..."

There actually was a related legislative proposal back then but it did 
not go anywhere (and I am not saying it was inspired by that idea I 
suggested, just coincidentally similar at a much smaller scale to 
support creating a few makerspaces). The connection of makerspaces to 
the free design idea is that ideally such makerspaces would share a 
common database of free designs and also free software to use in making 
free designs.

There are simpler versions of the OSCOMAK-ish database idea people have 
created that focus on collecting free (and non-free) designs. 
Thingiverse is one example for collecting designs for 3D-printable 
objects. Appropedia is another which talks about appropriate technolgoy 
designs. And there are others. There are even various (unfree and free) 
computer games have collections of (virtual) designs for them 
(Minecraft, Stormworks, Rigs of Rods, etc.).

But repositories of such designs generally don't emphasize creating a 
system to help analyze how designs and procedures depend on each other 
(a key idea of OSCOMAK). So, the repositories of designs don't generally 
consider that you need a certain tool to easily make a machine to make a 
part to do a procedure that ensures the quality of a product (similar to 
software packages requiring each other). My bias there was an interest 
in creating more self-reliant resilient communities (whether in space, 
in deserts, in the ocean, on Antarctica, in cities, in rural areas, 
etc), so being able to understand the degree of "closure" and what 
"vitamins" needed to be imported was essential.

One exception to databases ignoring interdependencies was an idea 
floated  around 2008 by Ben "fenn" Lipkowitz and Bryan Bishop called 
SKDB which billed itself as "apt-get for hardware". It likewise has 
mostly fallen by the wayside.
https://gnusha.org/skdb/

Another exception is "cradle to cradle" initiatives. For example, Ray 
Anderson started Flor to improve how carpet was made and recycled so it 
used less fossil fuels. There are some related databases but I think 
they are mostly proprietary?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle-to-cradle_design
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Anderson_(entrepreneur)

A variety of people including me all talked a lot about these general 
ideas from around 2008 to 2012 on the Open Manufacturing mailing list 
(not my choice of name, that list was started by Nathan Cravens):
https://openmanufacturing.net/

Discussions there slowed down for a variety of reasons. The best reason 
was that the Maker movement picked up stream as the idea of free designs 
and DIY spread, including via Make Magazine, Maker Fairs, and various 
Makerspaces (including for example at MIT).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_(magazine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace
https://makerworkshop.mit.edu/

There is also a DIYBio variant of that maker idea (which back then 
Joseph Jackson emphasized for example, as well as Bryan Bishop).
https://diybio.org/
https://www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/turning-geek-into-chic-in-diy-labs/
""Garage biologists" or "biohackers" are the new do-it-yourself amateur 
scientists."

While the more the merrier, and free hardware designs and their ethics 
are an important issues, I don't know if it would be a good use of 
limited FSF attention at this point to move significantly into this area 
given the world still needs a lot of attention paid to promoting free 
software? People and organizations can juggle only so much at once at 
any point in time, even if they can also grow and change as well.

It might have made a big difference twenty years ago. But now there are 
other groups of people with their own dynamics that are promoting maker 
culture. These groups generally take Free Software to power these 
systems for granted -- which is a tribute to the success of the Free 
Software movement.

In general though, I agree that reflection about licenses for free 
hardware designs can make sense as times and needs change.

--Paul Fernhout (pdfernhout.net)
"The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies 
of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."