[okfn-discuss] [open-hw] Classification of openhardware

Sat May 10 21:24:40 UTC 2008

Frederic Renet wrote:
> And more generally how do we define open hardware ?

I've also been wondering about this. I recently joined this list and am 
catching up on discussions and projects in this area.

I'm from the Open Knowledge Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation 
founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open knowledge in all its forms.

Our Open Knowledge Definition provides criteria for openness in 
knowledge (including copyrightable content and data).

   http://opendefinition.org/
   http://opendefinition.org/1.0

We've also got a draft Open Service Definition:

   http://opendefinition.org/osd

It would be great to work together towards a shared definition for Open 
Hardware, if such a definition would be useful. We've just bounced a few 
emails about this on our discuss list [1] and I've started dumping links 
on a page on our wiki:

   http://okfn.org/wiki/OpenHardware

Perhaps a good way to proceed would be to gather together some examples 
to try to clarify what we mean by open hardware, and what any definition 
would do (if we need one)?

I've carbon copied this message to our discuss list and the licenses 
list at the Open Hardware Foundation - who might also be interested in 
this discussion.

Warm regards,

Jonathan Gray
The Open Knowledge Foundation

[1] http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-discuss/2008-May/000852.html