Re: Not "open source" hardware, "free design" hardware

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > >   >  > Are you using "designs" with a different meaning? -- RMS

  > >   >  From my experience the word "hardware designs" usually refers to
  > >   > schematics only,

  > > Does it include schematics of chips
  > > as well as schematics of boards?

  > Just a data point.

  > From my 20+ years professional experience of an electronics engineer,
  > hardware design usually includes schematics, layout, assembly drawings
  > and instructions (if any)---virtually all documentation used to
  > produce the device.

That would be all aspects of the design in question.  It's the right way
to do things.

You've responded to the question Jacob responded to.
You and he disagree about this.

The other question I raised -- whether "the design of this piece of hardware"
normally includes the designs of the chips in it as well as the design of
its circuit board -- is important also.

  > The layouts for a device is typically harder to make than its
  > schematics; the gerber files (technically, gerber + drill files)
  > are made automatically from the layout in its source code form.

This suggests that a complete design for a board should include the
layout.  But there is no crucial need to include the gerber + drill
files, since you can generate them from the layout.

(Is there free software to generate them?)


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)