Re: FSF continuously harms Free Hardware

[Jean Louis]

* Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> [2022-01-31 19:28]:
* Pen-Yuan Hsing <penyuanhsing@gmail.com> [2022-01-24 20:08]:
> 
> Quick note:
> 
> There is the Open Source Hardware Association which maintains the definition
> of Open Source Hardware here which enshrines the four freedoms for free
> software into hardware designs:
> 
> https://www.oshwa.org/definition/

They have also published what is considered "fake open source". While
I don't find "open source" distinctive enough for that same reason,
and we use "free software" rather than "open source" -- they have
published various levels of "openness":
https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Levels_of_Openness#Levels_of_Openness

Levels of Openness
------------------

We have observed 6 levels of open source in our journey towards the
Open Source Economy, and this article explains them.

Why is this important or more than just philosophical banter? In the
Post-Truth Era, we cannot accept lies if we want societal progress. We
present our observations here to clear up misconceptions about an
important topic of openness - which has profound implications on
access and justice. Ultimately, this openness refers to openness
regarding the distribution of economic power. Technology is power. So
it it important to understand how the world distributes power - how
open and transparent it is with its technical knowledge - if we want
to do better than we are doing today. Mass enlightenmess still needs
to be resolved for democracy to work better than it does
today. Because as in the movie The Gladiator - "The heart of Rome is
not the marble of the senated. It's the sand of the coliseum."

OSE is radically open source. We use the Distributive Enterprise
method - where the goal is explicitly to solve the last unsolved
problem of the economic sustem: distribution. Solving distribution
(Sustainable Development Goal #1 - zero poverty) - is a critical and
Pressing World Issue. Open Source is uniquely position to address
exactly this issue. However, to achieve the goals of zero poverty - we
must make sure that open source as a term includes the critical
ingredient that allows for a historical transfer of wealth from the
few to the many. That critical ingredient is economic freedom - to
collaborate and be able to make a living from (to sell) the technology
in question. That is one of the 4 Freedoms of Open Source, perhaps the
most relevant, of the 4 Freedoms.

This point - the economic freedom point - is absolutely obvious from
the open hardware definition. More broadly speaking - the concept of
economic freedom is generally accepted as good - unless you are a
psychopath or dictator. In practice, however - the world does not yet
accept economic freedom at its core: proprietary development - as
opposed to open source collaboration - is the current norm in more
than 99% of the economy. 100T is the entire economy - $33B is open
source software [1].

So to be clear: the world does not practice economic freedom. Anyone
who believes that economic freedom exists is misinformed. This is a
big elephant in the room.

Some clarity can begin by first understanding what open source is, and
how it relates to economic freedom. And why, from the OSE perspective,
we like to make the point about true economic freedom - so that we can
even begin to move towards economic freedom as a civilization. We are
still at the denial stage. Promoting fake open source as open source
is part of that denial.

The first step to a solution of the world economy begins with healing
this denial. This page intends to shed some light on the topic.

We can all start by recognizing that open source, in its definition,
means economic freedom. Any freedomfighter thus must endorse open
source, by definition.  Open Source

Open Source - meaning complying with the OSHWA Definition or DIN SPEC
3105. The best-in-class example here is Lulzbot up to the end of 2019
(until it got acquired) - which shares all of its CAD designs and
production engineering in open formats. (we cannot tell what will
happen after its end-of-2019 acquisition by another company).

Even further than open source is Public Production Engineering. Open
projects are nice, but without documenting the methods of how to
produce the products, it may not be easy to replicate a viable
enterprise. And thus - the project cannot be said to produce open
source product a la Distributive Enterprise. Yet it is the ability to
produce economically significant products - that is the greatest
transformative potential of open source philosophy. This philosophy
has not yet been tapped in hardware, and it has been coopted in
software. See The Success of Open Source (software). See The Failure
of Open Source.

Undocumented Open Source
------------------------

Is code that is available, but without documentation - open source?
Unfortunately, the legal definition of open source (OSI definition,
section 2) is not explicit about this point. Section 2, addressing
source code - states "Deliberately obfuscated source code is not
allowed." However, what does this mean? Does this mean that code is
written poorly, or it is missing documentation? Unclear. What is
clear, is that undocumented source code is effectively unusable by
non-experts in the field. OSE's intent with open source is to avail
power to non-experts by teaching people throughout a development
process - thus un-documented open source is effectively not open
source. The distinction here comes from other requirements of open
source: modificiation. Without documentation, it may be very difficult
for users to parse code, if their intent is to modify. Thus, from the
OSE point of view - Undocumented Open Source is effectively not open.
Ambivalent Open Source

It is ambiguous whether the OSHWA definition is met, or if it is met,
whether the open source contributes to Distributive Enterprise or
economic freedom. To clarify this ambivalnce, one looks for the
license. If something says open source, the license information should
be clearly visible. And, if the license is visible, source code must
be available. One interesting case that comes up here is that of Prusa
3D Printers - read more about Prusa Research Fake Open Source

Fake Open Source - pretending to be open source, but the license in
not open - typically being non-commercial. Note that not all Creative
Commons licenses are OSHWA Definition-compliant. According to this
definition, the Peer Production License is fake open source. The word
'fake' refers specifically to the appearance of openness - an impostor
open source - where in reality the subject matter is not open
source. This is a violation of General Semantics - where the 'map is
not the territory' - in the Post-Truth Era. Just because something
appears to be - does not mean that it is.

Effectively Fake Open Source - this is not necessarily a slander, but
would apply to projects where full documentation is available to the
OSHWA standard. However, if the build requires very expensive
equipment, rare inputs, extensive skill sets - that very few or no
other people can access - then the design is effectively un-replicable
- and from the standpoint of replicability - unreplicable open
source. Which is effectively not open for replication. Thus, it is
ambiguous whether the people who are offering the blueprints are
really following a mindset of open culture - or they are simply being
strategic. It may be either honest - in that resources did not allow
full documentation to be published (we know that documentation takes
time) - or delusive - if the company is leveraging open source more
for marketing than allowing others to replicate. However, there is
hope in the projects that simply do not have the energy to document -
but would be completely willing to do so. Such projects should be
sought as collaborators.

Strategic Open Source
---------------------

Strategic open source - this describes typical commercial open source
projects - where it simply makes business sense to collaborate on a
common core of open code. FB, Google, Microsoft, Amazon - and all the
giants now understand that it is cheaper to create new products if
they collaborate. These companies typically take the common core and
build proprietary applications on top of that common code. So it may
be said that open culture is not a prerequisite for strategic open
source behavior.  Undocumented open source - see Informative Article
on Undocumented Open Source Code - for comments. See
above. Undocumeneted source code is Strategic Open Source if
deliberate, and if not deliberate, is just poor practice. See above.

See an example of strategic open source from OSE's experiences with
Discourse forum software: Discourse#Strategic_Open_Source. This
example appears particularly eggregious, in that the Discourse dev
team _deliberately_ deleted useful documentation from their forum,
which was otherwise undocumented, after OSE (Michael Altfield) spent
the time posting it. Fortunately, we copied the documentation to a
safe location before the post was deleted. This is a good example that
some 'open source' projects violently reject open culture on business
grounds. In our book, this is not part of the Economy of Affection
that OSE promotes.  Useful Open Source

IRNAS has coined the term useful open source in reference to whether
documentation is useful to replicating some hardware - or if it is
practically useless. As discussed above, technically open source,
OSHWA-compliant documentation does not mean that you can replicate the
product, nor that it is worthwhile to replicate it. This is a good
distinction, pointed out buy Luka Mustafa at IRNAS. We share this view
on usefulness - and our Distributive Enterprise diurection is
dedicated to usefulness in the most complete sense. But LOL, see the
current state of Useful Open Source by IRNAS - the link does not work,
so the point is well taken from https://github.com/IRNAS/UsefulSource

Ethical Open Source
-------------------

Ethical/Radical Open Source - this is Richard Stallman and the ethical
position of libre. OSE endorses ethical open source, and for practical
purposes of developing purely open source products - they are one and
the same. The main distinction is that Stallman does not believe that
open source applies to hardware (because hardware cannot be replicated
easily like software) - and the FSF does not allow for mixing of
closed and open content in one license. Mixing open source and
proprietary is currently not possible for hardware - because our
designs are open source - but we use many proprietary components for
which there are no open source alternatives - YET. By 2028, OSE
intends to use 100% open source components, as achieved by
Technological Recursion.

Being clear about the level at which others are open source allows OSE
to make sound decisions regarding collaboration potential. For OSE
purposes - if collaborators are fully open source without bounds -
such as Lulzbot (was pre-2020) as our posterchild - then it's a
worthwhile relationship to pursue and that relationship creates clear
and visible forward motion. If they are not, time is spent better
collaborating with those people who are fully open source, because
life is short - and there is no time for Competitive Waste. At the
same time, we must be careful about Collaborative Waste. 



Jean

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