[Open Design + Hardware] Open Design Definition @ OKFestival 2014

Mon May 12 20:56:09 UTC 2014

Massimo

very sorry to hear that you won’t be able to make it to Berlin in July … I’m planning to be there for sure.  So I sure could happily step in to facilitate the discussion.

However, I’ve got an issue that I’d like to share with the group and get some feedback (see below).  The risk, however, is, that my issue would possibly dominate the discourse in a way that is not exactly helping to close the definition towards 1.0 but rather to open the discussion … Thoughts welcome!

/ Peter

So here I go:

Over the past months I’ve come to the conclusion that focusing on “intellectual property” as “the most critical part” (as you phrase it) is distracting the discussion from the more important questions of the role of the designer in open design.

In a nutshell, the current (self-)image of the designer is impeding open design to succeed.

Expanding on that: Alastair Fuad-Luke reports finding it hard to involve fashion designers in an “open fashion” project (despite fashion recognized as a “low-ip” field of design, [1]).  At various conferences I found designers blurring or even confusing their role of social activists and professional designers in social interventions (most recently at the Cumulus conference in Aveiro, PT).

I am arguing (in a model developed with colleagues) that “open” has two dimensions, open access and open contribution and that the discussion on open design has been focused too much on the “access” dimension and not sufficiently on the “contribution” dimension — or in more detail: that the contribution dimension stops at “co-design” or any other designer-led format but fails to develop “open design” beyond a situation where designers are not in the lead (for the sake of the argument I understand “facilitation” as “lead”).  Imho, in a real open design situation designers should only provide the methods, but not apply/execute them (facilitation).

[1] Raustiala, K. and Sprigman, C.J. (2012). The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design. Virginia Law Review, (92) 8, pp. 1687-1777, online at http://www.virginialawreview.org/content/pdfs/92/1687.pdf (accessed 20 September 2012).

On 12 May 2014, at 18:48, Massimo Menichinelli <massimo.menichinelli at aalto.fi> wrote:

> Dear all,
> I proposed a workshop for discussing the Open Design Definition at OKFestival 2014 in Berlin, and the workshop was accepted. The bad news is, even if I would really love to meet you all there, unfortunately I cannot make it to Berlin for the Festival this year. I had a change in plans and I will move to a new city just 1 day after the Festival, so it is really hard for me to be there. It would be great therefore if any of you is going to be at the Festival and would like to facilitate an Open Design Definition workshop.
> There is no need to do a lot of work, maybe we will complete the definition at a later stage (maybe with another workshop at the Open Hardware Summit for example?), but it would be great to have a discussion on its current status and how it could be improved. Everything can be done just with issues and comments on GitHub, so there is no need for using Git: everything can be done like it were a Facebook group (but if you want, you can edit the code directly online or with fork/pull request of course).
> For the workshop, you can even access the project and work with a mobile:
> GitHub for Android: http://mobile.github.com/
> GitHub for iPhone: http://ioctocat.com/
> 
> As you can read from the previous e-mail below, now the most important part of the definition regards how it is possible to deal with intellectual property for making Open Design possible. This is the most critical part where we need more discussion, especially with IP experts. But other parts of the definition can still be discussed of course.
> 
> Is anybody interested in facilitating this workshop?
> If you are interested in this, please let me know and I will put you in contact with the organizers.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Massimo
> 
> 
> -------- Messaggio originale --------
> Oggetto: Re: [Open Design + Hardware] legal paper on design
> Data: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 18:10:24 +0100
> Mittente: Massimo Menichinelli <massimo.menichinelli at aalto.fi>
> A: <opendesign at lists.okfn.org>
> 
> Hi Tom (and all),
> I've finally had the time to read 2-3 times your paper, so I finally can
> reply. First of all, thank you very much for sharing it, and thanks for
> the effort of making clearer this topic of IP and Open Design. I would
> say that this is a big step forward for all of us, even if the paper
> considers only the European context it is the first real research I've
> encountered on the issue (so it's really a milestone!).
> 
> It has been very useful for me in order to work on the Open Design
> Definition. If you remember it, we were about to specify all the
> different forms of IP that can be applied to any design project, and
> what to do with each form of IP in order to share the project and make
> it Open Design. I hope to have understood well your paper, I've used a
> lot of content from it, please have a look at the last version of the
> Open Design Definition here:
> 
> https://github.com/OpenDesign-WorkingGroup/Open-Design-Definition/blob/master/open.design_definition/open.design.definition.md
> 
> Please also remember that you can directly edit in the browser the file
> by going to this link:
> https://github.com/OpenDesign-WorkingGroup/Open-Design-Definition/edit/master/open.design_definition/open.design.definition.md
> 
> But you can also reply to this e-mail, and I will work on the definition
> considering your e-mails.
> We still need to focus on the patents, trade mark and trade dress before
> completing this section (and therefore the real first version of the
> definition, let's say that it will be with version 0.5).
> 
> Look forward to reading your comments on the topic! :)
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Massimo
> 
> 
> Il 02/12/13 16:10, t. ha scritto:
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> a paper on legal aspects of design rights and copyright in the EU, with
>> some creative commons licenses. A bit long, but should be of some
>> interests to this list.
>> 
>> http://ssrn.com/abstract=2361682
>> 
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> tom
>> 
>> 
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> 
> -- 
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