by pooh
Something is not quite right
2:07 am in Being a good member of this community, Getting Started, our mission, questions, R&D-I-Y, Windowfarms Project News by pooh
Hi there,
I was drawn here by the TED talk, and had a look around. I have a few comments and some questions.
I think the format of the website (blog + comments) is confusing and not the best environment for a collaborative effort.
Changes to the instructions and the official documentation cannot be added freely by the community, like they would be in a wiki, but they are cherry-picked by the “Core Team”, who has privileged write-access to the source.
This is not bad per se. Many big open source projects have a selected team of committers, and new members must prove their worth with valid contributions before being granted write access.
However, open source projects also have a clear procedure that contributors can follow in order to “patch” trunk – or in fact, any branch. According to the Open Source Initiative, if such a mechanism is not in place, then it’s arguably not an Open Source project.
Also, Windowfarms is not a code project, it’s a hardware/design/documentation project. Therefore, there is no risk of breaking the build (because there is no build), and Wikipedia shows us that there is a lot to be gained, at the very least in terms of polish and formatting, if write-access is granted to a wider user base.
I think allowing any registered user to edit the documents, plus having a selected group of super-users with special entitlements in order to manage high-traffic, prominent pages, would be a good balance.
Similar suggestions towards a more open, transparent and functional means of documentation and discussion have been repeatedly proposed in some comments of this website, but I have not seen a response from the “Core Team”.
Are there any plans to improve the situation?
I also notice that users are supposed to register in order to read the allegedly open source documentation. This made no sense to me, so I had a look at the small print, where it says “We require that you agree in order to view the free instructions on how to build windowfarms. This is for legal reasons that would endanger the community if we did not require registration and acknowledgement.” Quite how the community would be “endangered” is not explained, but there are two links, one to a fairly big website (http://www.openhardwaresummit.org) and one to Windowfarms’ Terms of Service.
In the main page of the Open Source HardWare website (which is interestingly a wiki), there is a section spelling out the OSHW Statement of Principles. It reads, “Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design.”
Yet, in Windowfarm’s Terms of Service, we learn that Windowfarm’s instructions are available under (an old version of) the Creative Commons Attribution+Noncommercial+ShareAlike license.
I believe that the Noncommercial module is unnecessary. In fact, some would argue that adopting a permissive license can benefit a project’s popularity and adoption, which is apparently the overall goal here. Linux is a notable example of how this can happen.
Furthermore, the Noncommercial module seems at odds with the above-mentioned ability to “sell the design or hardware based on that design”, mandated by the OSHW, as well as the Free Redistribution clause of the Open Source Definition by the OSI.
Noncommercial module notwithstanding, however, it still makes no sense to me that users are asked to register in order to just read the instructions. How is that a legal necessity? Aren’t Windowfarms instructions already protected by the license and copyright statements, much like e.g. every Wikipedia article is?
In fact, can’t anyone, well within the rights granted by the current license, freely divulge those instructions (under the same license) on a mirror website to anyone on the Internet, without requiring any registration whatsoever?
Finally, given the use of the noncommercial module, I take it that only non-profit organisations can sell hardware based on Windowfarms’ designs. Does that mean that Windowfarms itself, which does sell the hardware, is a registered non-profit organisation? Apologies if I missed the details, but they do not seem to be widely publicized.
Thank you for any insights.
I agree with pooh on these questions, the site format should be wiki-like plus a forum.
Plus why bother telling the community that this is an open source project if restrictions are in place?
I am thinking of mirrowing the v2 and v3 plans on a wiki page with all the info necesarry for anyone to read.
If anyone has any objections please leave a reply.
Absolutely agree, and (with a far inferior argumentation than yours), about a week ago, posted a proposal for a Wiki here:
http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/12/01/wiki/
Then realized: why the hell not and (with a lot of credit for @mattycozy), took a few cautious steps with:
http://windowfarming.wikispaces.com
The format at wikispaces is far from optimal, and actually, i just feel it should be migrated to a MediaWiki (?) whithin windowfarms.org as soon as possible. A wiki would not replace the forum, but it would definitely be a better format for _most_ information here!!
I’m new to this site, windowfarming and so far, no plant ever survived me, so in terms of content, i’ve been the most terrible contributer, but i’ll try nonetheless. (-:
Thanks. Yes, I saw your effort on wikispaces, and I thought it was very good.
I agree that MediaWiki (the platform used by Wikipedia) would be better for this project, then again I may be biased.
Discussion pages and user pages may be even able to replace the need for forum and blogs, respectively, and special pages (i.e. “portals” in Wikipedia) can be created for the various communities etc, but I accept that other people may not want to go all the way. Further input would be appreciated.
The impression I had is that the Core Team is not too good at I.T., and they are paying an external consultant to build the new site, apparently without any input from the community.
I am not a webmaster myself, but I have set up a MediaWiki site with a PhpBB forum in the past, using HostMonster and SimpleScripts. All of this is free, you just pay for the domain + unlimited space, less than 100 USD a year.
I am more than willing to help with this, and spend time preparing a proof of concept. However, I would like to hear from the “Core Team” first, because if they have already committed to a completely different design there is no point. Unless of course we decide to fork a new website.
I also notice that spam is a serious issue around here.
Two points:
1. Given a critical mass of users, the wiki model has been demonstrated to be pretty good against spam and vandalism.
2. It seems strange that WordPress does not have a CAPTCHA add-in for registrations and unregistered posts… well MediaWiki definitely does have a few options in that sense.
The website is being worked on, but the majority of the staff is volunteering time in between school and work. I don’t know the specifics but it has been discussed a lot in the past.
Just wanted to let you all know we are working on these issues. We are pretty overloaded right now with all of the Kickstarter follow up, and with getting the new product out the door. And as hardware junky notes, we have a very small staff that is mae up of a lot of part timers and volunteers. That said, it is really important to us to make this community site as usable and clear as possible, and to clarify any lingering questions around the open source aspects. Please be assured that we are working on it, and continue to post ideas and suggestions here.
Thanks!
Wiki +1. YES. I was going to just start one anyway so I could track all the posts I’m reading and summarize the info I need (and share my findings of course).
I’ll try to help out over at wikispaces or whatever is the consensus (I have no preference)
Hmm, It seems I can’t edit my own comment. Since it was stated to post ideas and suggestions here, can someone please have the posting date displayed for posts (not just the time). I might be missing something, but I believe posts are not dated (just comments).
pooh, Andrei Stefana, burt, Perhaps you could help bring the visions of pooh to reality. Helping solve the Open Source Legal issues and developing and testing a MediaWiki site for Window Farms, and something to Find a working Captcha plugin and get it working for a buddypress site for registration.
BuddyPress reCAPTCHA seems promising.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-recaptcha/
Thank you for the inspiration. I’ll ask a few of my friends about the Captcha issue, They use BuddyPress on a few large websites. If I find a solution, I’ll bring it back for you all.
Happy Experimenting
~Stephen
Guys, this is Britta. There is no big conspiracy. I’m the one who has been running this thing for the last three years and funding it and calling the shots. So feel free to take up any issues you have directly with me. This is my favorite part of the whole project and where i hope the vision will work out best. I have not written a ton about it because where legal stuff is concerned its just smart to make sure you know what you are talking about for double sure. Everything is still in my name until we have the funding in hand to actually pay for the legal work to finalize this how I want it work. It is going to be what’s called a social enterprise. The community and the business will be connected. I have spent a lot of money getting the best legal experts to look at how to do this and we are just finally seeing the solution. I am a long time member of the open source hardware community. I am good friends with Ayah Bhdeir. I happen to not agree with the course of action much of the community has taken around noncommercial because i feel it is short sighted and economically does not make sense. I have talked to a lot of people who have run opensource projects for a long time. I want us to be around for a long time without my turning into Jimmy Wales with my face plastered on every page begging for donations or having the community have management issues like drupal because i had to go get a job. Been there done that for two years; doesn’t work and its not sustainable. We can do this together and I should not have to pay for it anymore. I think it can work. What we are doing is unique from other opensource projects that have come before us for several reasons. We are addressing a tragedy of the commons (or two) and it involves information that is much more complicated to communicate than code or a circuit design. I have studied social enterprise for the last ten years and opensource for 5 and mass collaboration platform design for 5. I have not had the money to implement what we need and I’m sick of patched together code, like this website. Volunteer coding is not sustainable. I’m also sick of writing grants and having funders ask “What is opensource?” I believe that a hybrid organization can be created using open source licensing terms and some of the new legal structures that are coming on line so that an opensource project can be financially self sustaining. It requires a different approach if you are going to take responsibility for the project over the long term. Especially for an opensource mass collaboration project that 1) benefits the environment and a fundamental human need (not just fun gadgets), 2) has very intense programming requirements. Furthermore, just throwing up a wiki will not work, again, not in the long term. I am trying to deal with the firehose of people coming from Yahoo right now so this is just a start but I will continue to revist this thread as i can and discuss the different aspects. I really appreciate how thoughtful you guys are being about this and i think and hope you are goign to be pleased with what we (Pirapha, Shivani, and I and a bunch of people helping us) are up to. -Britta
@Britta: Good to hear from you. If you need a programmer or moderator (to delete spam, pleaaaaase lemme lemme lemme delete the spam!! ;-> ), i’m a part-time programmer, part-time looking for cool projects, currently a beginning windowfarmer and open source enthousiast.
Also, If you need a Captcha on sign up. according to a few of my friends who run membership sites, the Re-Captcha plugin works well in buddy press.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-recaptcha/
Remember Britta, Take a deep breath, this part in any business is very difficult. You will always face resistence from old mindsets when you are trying to create something new.
Also, burt, if you want to help, why not take the wp-recaptcha plugin and test it on a buddy press for sign ups(possibly only sign ups). Develop an implementation plan, then give that to Britta’s team. It would have the same effect as you becoming a moderator because it would cut down on the spam considerably.
yes. That would be awesome. We had to disable some of the spam filtration plugins because they were causing registration issues. The bug remains elusive. Please send an email to info [at] windowfarms [dot] org and ask pirapha for credentials to get in to the site and for an intro to amit, who can maybe hand off some of the bug tracking work on this to you if you are game.
Thanks for the reminder to breathe, Stephen. You are so right. Thank you.
Thanks Britta. Even after your reply, which frankly I think failed to address a number of my points, I am as confused as ever about how you intend this project to work. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.
If I understand it correctly, I strongly disagree with your statement, “Volunteer coding is not sustainable”. Reality also disagrees with it. Enterprises built around open source have been going on for years (e.g. Red Hat to name one), and highly profitably so.
You also say that “throwing up a wiki will not work, again, not in the long term”, but fail to explain why so many other open projects and communities have been thriving on that technology (as well as forums) for years. You seem to be confused about the important fact that just using the same technology that Wikipedia uses (MediaWiki, or in fact any other wiki system) does not mean that you need to embrace the same business model, or even licensing.
In another post, you claim that you swore not to use PDF technology ever again, because you lost the v2 source in an accident, which led to loss of resolution. I mean no disrespect, but this is like saying, “last year I bought a Mac, and I didn’t really know how to use it, and I got a computer virus from a friend and had to throw it away, so I will never buy a Mac ever again”. PDF is not inherently bad, provided you store its source somewhere safe (which is an issue that is independent from the format) and, since this is an open source project, provided the community can freely propose/make changes. That said, for WF’s purposes, I believe a wiki would be best.
My first impression is that you are using phrases like “open source” inappropriately, and your rejection of wiki and unwillingness to accept direct contributions to the documentation other than whole translations and rewrites smells of lack of trust in your own community as a whole, and combined with the unclear commercial setup, it exposes you to accusations of slavery.
Best wishes for the future, hopefully I will be proven wrong.
@pooh I have to say I don’t know much about legal aspect of open development and so I don’t know how windowfarms could posibly be slavery (I think this might be an even better example of the inappropriate use of a word)
Open Hardware Summit forum is an example since there are about 18000 topic about free viagra
About the wiki, I think it might be helpfull for structuring the work done on windowfarms, But! I noticed that the chaotic way the forum works is actually more inviting for joining the conversation and research, if there would have been a nice looking wiki I would probebly only have consumed the information and now I’m sharing the experience I’ve gained
Recruiting people to work for free while your company profits from it – incidentally, breaking your own licensing terms. I don’t know if there is a word for that, but I think the concept is more important than the word.
Obviously Open Hardware Summit doesn’t have good anti-spam measures in place then.
Wikis have discussion pages.
@Britta
I just stumbled upon this comment thread’s growth since a month ago. I think economically sustainable is a very important issue and sounds like you are doing a great job trying to balance a variety of principles and goals. Keep up the hard work! We all appreciate you (and your team’s) efforts.
I do think a wiki and / or forum would troubleshoot the current end user experience (even if it isn’t the long term answer). Just my 2 cents having been on many online communities (none of them optimal of course) and tried to dig up info here.
GO windowfarms in 2012!
Thanks for the encouragement and sorry that I was frustrated when I wrote that. This issue is very important to me and I’m so anxious to get to a good solution, but it is complicated and it is just taking time to work out the legal part. I just want to reiterate my commitment to our community and to looking out for its long term health.
Hi, Britta, I approve of how you handle the project. It has to have a driving force behind it and they have to do it basically full time. And that costs money. You guys have to get paid.
I made several “inventions” over the years and handed them off for free to the wider “community” where more capable people than me and people who could get funding or had an easy profit angle would develop them to fruition.
This didn’t happen. My pulser pump made it into wikipedia. They have strict rules about what they allow. (In my opinion windowfarms should be in it too but you may have to wait a few years) But even with that and other successes that i will not mention, none of my stuff ever got official research. So if Britta and her core team is not co-ordinating the project it would quickly wither and die or some outsider will patent and commercialise it.. There is no back up plan, In my view, the way Britta and her team do it is the only way. It is totally not like software. It is more like designing a system for keeping rabbits in oak trees. This is several orders of magnitude harder that software.
I’m glad that’s the way you feel about it, but my points still stand.
Britta and co are breaking their own license terms by profiting from information that was solicited under the false pretense of “open source”.
How do IBM do open source? Why does Torvads (who started linux) own patents?
False pretence is pretty strong words. She is/has taking legal advice on her licensing terms.
You use “profiting” with disdain. But the alternative is “losing” or “making a loss”.
You want Britta and co to work for free?
I am not a fan of US patent law, the US give out patents far too easily and it is very difficult to strike one down once it is granted by mistake.
If windowfarms do not protect themselves enough, some competing company can be granted (or just plain buy) a spurious patent, demand royalties and take legal action to put windowfarms out of business. In fact there are companies that buy up spurious patents just so they can take legal action against smaller companies. They don’t even bother to compete. They just sue.
> False pretence is pretty strong words.
I don’t think anyone has challenged my arguments explaining why I believe that this is not an open source project.
> She is/has taking legal advice on her licensing terms.
Last I checked, WF was using CC BY-NC-SA, where “NC” stands for NonCommercial, which in turn means that licensees may “make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes”.
> You use “profiting” with disdain. But the alternative is “losing” or “making a loss”.
No. NPOs can have paid employees.
There’s no disdain in my use of “profiting”. You want to profit? Be my guest. But you can’t have it both ways.
@pooh Open source means you can build one yourself, because the know-how is open to the public. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t say *anything* about prices, restrictions. Usually an agreement allows you to use the product somehow (why anyone would want it otherwise?), but that’s (as everything else is) just a detail.
I believe Windowfarms project complies.
Just read GPL. Any versions. Can you see restrictions there? Sure, it has a ton of them! This is the whole point of the de facto standard open source license. For example it says you have to apply GPL to your whole product if you modify a GPL-ed work in any way (it happens very easily, just subclass a GPL-ed class).
Red Hat et al uses opensource products for their consultancy business. They founded profitable businesses out of free software.
However, this is a completely different ballpark, with different set of law of physics. Your knowledge of free software might help, but you just can’t generalize.
You might want to have more freedom on business use (or whatever else), that’s alright. However, it has nothing to do with claims of WF being opensource enough or not.
1. Open Source. I quote from my original post
”
[...] open source projects also have a clear procedure that contributors can follow in order to “patch” trunk – or in fact, any branch. According to the Open Source Initiative, if such a mechanism is not in place, then it’s arguably not an Open Source project.
http://www.opensource.org/blog/ThePatchTest
”
2. License. Funny you should mention GPL, because GPL licensees *are* allowed to charge whatever they like for derivative work.
However, this is irrelevant because Windowfarms documentation is not released under GPL, but CC BY-NC-SA.
I invite you to re-read my original post, the pages I linked and perhaps also the comments, because you seem to have missed crucial details.
Hi!
One comment first: I love the idea Britta and you do great!
Thank you very much for your work and commitment!
There is of course much to do
nothing is perfect:
“I think the format of the website (blog + comments) is confusing and not the best environment for a collaborative effort.”
I would like a kind of Database where everyone can put information together so that it is easy to find in the context and that research really can reach people.
I don’t like that the Tags funktion is using the same things twice… or the google search funktion.
One should be able to quote here correctly and network information… which post belong together…
“Changes to the instructions and the official documentation cannot be added freely by the community, like they would be in a wiki, but they are cherry-picked by the “Core Team”, who has privileged write-access to the source. This is not bad per se.”
Well everyone can Post his or her version everywere and people can look at it this is just a well tested version meant for beginners. And it is meant to be updated with ideas from the comunity.
“According to the Open Source Initiative,[bla], then it’s arguably not an Open Source project.”
I don’t really care about that.. I’m not a lawyer and don’t want to be one.. And I dont want to split hairs. Comon Sense is that we build together windowfarms and use each others ideas for free…
That is enough for me and it is fun! I dont need to call it opensource or something else the most important part is that I can learn something here and that others can learn from me. I do this in my own free time and they do that too.
“I also notice that users are supposed to register in order to read the allegedly open source documentation. small print says “We require that you agree in order to view the free instructions on how to build windowfarms. This is for legal reasons that would endanger the community if we did not require registration and acknowledgement.” Quite how the community would be “endangered” is not explained”
Well you have to log in, in most Forums and even in most wikis. And Is kind of reasonable to me that for one who dosn’t know that much about lawyering it could be safer …
Well I don’t care if i have to register or not… Don’t you have a trashmail you can use? If you are bothered by it? People who are interested in planting (probably so most of the people here and the core people) Like Plants, Gardening, Science, engeneering but probably not ‘lawyering’ So since that is not jet sorted out -> but obviously in progress on just hast to wait and see.
“Finally, given the use of the noncommercial module, I take it that only non-profit organisations can sell hardware based on Windowfarms’ designs. Does that mean that Windowfarms itself, which does sell the hardware, is a registered non-profit organisation? Apologies if I missed the details, but they do not seem to be widely publicized.”
You really have it with the hair splitting^^
They started the projekt and give everyone access to the designs and ideas how to do it yourself.
EVERYONE Who likes it can come and look at the designs and build them for themselves or with their class or whatever.
People who don’t have time to search for the best materials and just want to build one in a nice design can buy one from here which benefits the core team and the Project. I do not have a problem with that.
Everyone who dosn’t want to buy can build for himself… where is the problem? That ‘theiy gain’ from that?
That they could secretly make huge amounts of money? I don’t think that it is that profitable^^
I’m not shure but If I designed some really nice bottles I could post it here how to do it yourselff and sell them to people who don’t have the time or the artistic streak whatever…
The question is could somebody else take this and make money with it?
As long as I’m not hindered in my things.. well i don’t know… I think the moment money comes into play people can get gready and it can go south.
well I still think this projekt is doing great but we do need a database for growing data/information on one point and standadized so you can get information out of it…
Like what did i use how long for my tomatoes, strawberries…
and that this information is useful it has to be put together…. somehow
yours zis
@pooh WF passes the patch test, just as well as Linus accepts patches from random people (he doesn’t). There is a core team to maintain the project (Linus has his lieutenants, for example), and, if you don’t agree with a decision, you can just fork it.
OTOH these forks usually die fast, because they don’t have traction and volunteer power.
About the second part. Have I mentioned anything about the restriction of selling something GPLed? What I was talking about is GPL has a lot of restrictions, and to not be surprised seeing restrictions in other licenses too. This is what licenses are for after all.
Peace, try to write a patch to linux kernel, and then try to push it to a release. If that’s not open source (according to the patch test), then the problem is not with WF(God forbid, with the Linux kernel) but with opensource.org’s descriptions.
I have to say I am really enjoying this post so I’ll put in my thoughts. I don’t know all the details, but looking at the opensource.org and if I were a lawyer I would argue that by definition this is not an open source project strictly because this is not SOFTWARE. Maybe what we are doing here does not fit into this definition precisely, but maybe it’s close enough to get the point across to the masses.
I would contend that the “source” is strictly the body of knowledge on this website about buiding a type of hydroponic system. That’s it. It is the knowledge that we all freely share. That’s all software is anyway is a body of knowledge.
The instructions posted here are not the “source”. They are here only as a convenience to those here who are less handy than others. If you are very handy, you do not need the formal instructions. A bit less handy and you use the instructions and for those who are not at all, then you buy the whole package. This let’s anyone do it regardles of skill level.
Patch test? There is nothing to patch and what would the HEAD/Trunk be anyway? On the other hand, everytime someone posts a new window farm, that’s a patch and it is incorporated into the Head/Trunk immediately. Every new post is a new revision. In a few day I’ll be building window farms version 2.348.124.
The source here are the files that generate e.g. this page
http://our.windowfarms.org/instructions
That page is only visible only to registered users, which is already pretty novel. Its source (presumably a bunch of xml files) are not visible to any of us mortals, and presumably can be modified only by a very small group of people.
WF documentation does not really break. Not in a way that screws up half of the planet’s servers, so comparing the level of control around Linux patches with that of this website’s instructions is ludicrous, and it does not void the validity of the widely accepted OSI definition.
What I’m saying is that by refusing to cede control of the source to the community (for example via a wiki), Britta is not trusting us and, despite her PR claims, she is not following the spirit of open source.
Also not in the spirit of free-as-in-freedom is the fact that the license is NonCommercial. But that’s OK, that’s a high-level decision that we can either accept or go elsewhere. However, what I don’t accept, is that Britta claims the right to break her own license to gain an unfair competitive advantage, presumably while she waits for the patent to go through (and good luck enforcing a commercial patent based on documents that are already licensed under a non-commercial license).
It’s either one thing or the other. Either one can make money out of the instructions (and that would include you and me) or one cannot (and that would include Britta).
I have an idea, that would greatly simplify this page, don’t know if you like it, but I would like to see building blocks. One for each step in the instruction. Each building-block can have multiple versions, made by ANY user (open source). You can add a new version of a building block (for instance, using the inside of a ballpoint pen instead of a needle for the air-pump, as I did), and users can rate versions, so a new user will quickly know where to start looking. Each building-block will have it’s own problems, it’s own solutions. This way you can have for instance a building block called: pots, which will have multiple versions, like plastic/stone/iron. A building-block suspension (like for instance the person hanging them on a glass roof). A building block water pump, there are already several versions of this. They can be like classes are to software. This will keep the project maintainable I think, and you could easily have one ‘official’ version.
@Jurriaan Schreuder and building the thing is just on step…
The information and experiments on plants need to be structured for easy access and summarised. I started a bit… but it is quite a lot of work.
But it is FUN ^^
The format of this ‘website” is confusing and it is making it very difficult for me ( a new windowfarmer) to find the information I need.
It would be great if you could either make a manual or streamline the website.
Secondly I believe that selling a windowfarm is a good idea because #1 TONS of people ca not build things and see the project as difficult. #2 selling a nice looking product allows windowfarms to enter more homes. Many people are turned off by the idea of having water bottles on their windows but with the new design it looks clean and neutral so it will fit every home.
I do wish someone would compile a manual or a PDF format on how to take care of plants, control PH, use nutrients etc…. Because it is frustrating to search for information on this website and find nothing useful. I know the information is hidden somewhere within website but if someone could make it easily accessible that would be phenomenal and helpful for the new batch of windowfarmers who are on their way.
I would first like to agree with Pooh on the fact only registed users can access the instructions. Maybe thats a restriction set to ensure that the community grows its membership. I think making the instructions restrictionless would just mean you need to base the windowfarm community size on downloads of instructions. I think we will get a lot of people who leech but never feedback.
The ability to post feedback on the site should definately be restricted to members only.
Even if this project is open-source it still requires funding and I agree with Britta that going cap in hand begging for donations is not a good solution and I would get tired after a while. Its nice to know that selling some kits will pay for server hosting/traffic and some staff time.
I expect that Britta and the gang has invested way more in time and effort than they will ever make from the project.
It’s really no different from the Arduino open source project which sells pre built boards to people who arn’t inclined to build their own.
Even though there may be some restrictions that are opposed to open-source ethos, I believe Windowfarms is working in the spirit of open-source,
> It’s really no different from the Arduino open source project
Wrong. Arduino “files are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, which allows for both personal and commercial derivative works, as long as they credit Arduino and release their designs under the same license.”
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/FAQ
As for restricting read access, initially I also thought that it’s done for marketing purposes, so Britta could go to TED and brag about how many members her community has.
However, see my original post for the intended reason: to prevent other people from profiting from the documentation. (As if restricting access were necessary to enforce the license – presumably more of the same bad legal advice.)
Server hosting is 100 bucks a year, so let’s not delude ourselves. Many open source, for-profit initiatives do pretty well just on donations, but that is beside the point. The question is, how can Britta sell this stuff while getting out of her way to disallow anyone else to do the same? CC licenses apply to everybody, and she has chosen one that disallows profiting from it. I didn’t see anything in the CC license about Britta being exempt.
Open-source hardware shares much of the principles and approach of free and open-source software. In particular, we believe that people should be able to study our hardware to understand how it works, make changes to it, and share those changes. To facilitate this, we release all of the original design files (Eagle CAD) for the Arduino hardware. These files are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, which allows for both personal and commercial derivative works, as long as they credit Arduino and release their designs under the same license.
OK Pooh, I stand corrected.