Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

Caught that a couple of weeks ago. Was going to mention it in our email discussing Make’s mp3 guts but completely forgot. (apologies).

Was planning on posting something on this eventually, but haven’t had the time or inclination.

heh-heh, not to worry, I’ll take care of that posting!

regardless I think this is much further up the food chain in terms of resolution and ease of use than the Make Mp3 guts.

Agree. But it’s not the guts I’m thinking about, it’s the *idea* that electronic guts can be so easily acquired. Add that development to this and to the “Open Hardware License” (not sure where that ended up, btw) and to commercial projects like Neuros, as well as to more futuristic stuff like evolutionary hardware, and the product world starts looking extremely flexible compared to what we’ve known.

I think it has never been a problem acquiring electronic guts for anything. Its just a combination of a few factors such as, greater public know how or interests, the lessening of peoples’ fear towards black boxes, and chain management moving onto the internet, that access to parts has become a lot more visible.

As someone who tried to drum into out-dated engineers a similar concept, the problem is the ability to think on a platform level and outside of the immediate area between the left and right ears.

Also I’m not sure about this open sourced hardware license concept and as you say its purposes and use in this situation with this product?

To me this would mean allowing you and me to hack into the PCB and then re-selling our modified version of say a “pimped out” BUG. It is not easy but very possible these days. Just look at the number of iPhone hacks.

Even if I had the knowledge to hack open my mobile phone and make it into a Star Trek transponder, how would the company stop me? Or why would it even matter, again unless I resell it?

But do we want to? You see, this makes no sense when the reality most people will just mix and match modules. As a result why even call BUG open source?

Well perhaps its open sourced in a sense you can write code to influence the function of hardware? So in reality open sourced hard ware is a misnomer to actually represent open sourced software?

Hmm just thinking out aloud.

I love the idea! Makes me think of a Voltron - GameBoy

Speaking of mobile phones, have you heard of OpenMoko.org ? An open source cell-phone platform, built on nonproprietary GNU-licensed Linux based software. Wonder how that’ll play out..

Maybe it’s “never been a problem” for you, DT, but for a great number of people I suspect it has been and still is, to a large degree.

And the point I was making is what you’re reiterating. i.e. “greater public know how or interests, the lessening of peoples’ fear towards black boxes, and chain management moving onto the internet, that access to parts has become a lot more visible” = the “idea” which is getting into people’s heads via something like Make: magazine, which is doing all those things.

You also miss my point wrt my mentioning the Open Hardware License. Again, your “thinking aloud” is basically reiterating what I’m saying.

Bug is supposedly “open source hardware”, but as you imply, what does that actually and practically mean? If someone modifies another person’s hardware (instruction for which are posted online), can they close source their modifications or are their changes automatically open source as well? the way software often is? Where is the license that governs “open source hardware”? And what happens if a company does sell product based on an open source hardware contribution? How will contributors react? How will licenses splinter to accommodate the various protections people will want (just like software)?

Bug has the potential of opening up the same can of worms that the open source software licenses opened up. I assume you’ve followed the whole SCO mess. Imagine that happening to hardware; to tangible things.

At present there is no generally agreed upon “Open Hardware License” in the same way that there are open source software licenses. Worse yet is that the open source hardware licensing effort made tacit assumptions as to what the hardware did: it was electronic in nature. How does that protect the non-electronic stuff out there? the mechanical stuff? If you read the discussions on the OHL you’ll see I raise those very issues, but last I checked there had been no resolutions.

That’s why I’m bringing up the OHL. Bug may be the catalyst that gets people thinking about these things. If and when they do, along with other developments, tangible products may seem less static and more like intangible and highly flexible software.

And how does it work in the hands of people who are not clever in hardware?

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This sounds great. I’ve always wanted to build ‘electronic’ stuff but never had much skill with the boards and components stuff!

Hi Danny,

Yes hopefully this product will help us get past all those problems! Thanks for visiting and commenting.

I am a Ghanaian based in Ghana. I am in the formative years of building an Industrial Design Company.
I will be very happy if you could provide me with all the necessary information that will help me to start right and stay on the right course.
Thank you very much.