7 ms·

The manufacturers are mostly run by people who were trained in "standard" corporate governance. This includes the ways to protect corporate revenue streams by

The manufacturers are mostly run by people who were trained in "standard" corporate governance. This includes the ways to protect corporate revenue streams by suppressing (legally, of course) competition, delivering a range of products by producing the top end model and crippling it to sell at a cheaper price point, and repeatedly reducing costs to increase profits in a "race to the bottom". Until a new set of management philosophies is adopted for teaching, a large number of companies will keep doing the same thing, because in general corporate managers have a lead time associated with them, and we won't run out of the old school ones until 20+ years after philosophies change. This is an opportunity for anyone who can do things differently, of course.

ownagefool 6y ago
Your standard bigco manager also believes a whole bunch of FUD about the lack of OSS secrity and what not, but it's 20 years unless upstarts eat their market. Probably more likely for your average software company than hardware, but I suspect there's an inflection point in cheap hardware.
stereolambda 6y ago
I see all this as a heartwarming story where a company was forced, with a "trap" set by GPL and its philosophy, to offer people for once a square deal: good hardware, fairly priced, you are free to do with it what you want. All this serves human needs better and the manufacturer could in fact turn a profit. There is a faint, faint glimmer of hope that this is a peek of the far future of our techno-political-economic system. Of course with very different laws around intellectual property, company governance, customer protection, terms of participating in the market etc. We might be as far from it as the Enlightenment in 1750 (in a world built on overt serfdom and not even fully developed colonialism) was from the year 2000, but still. Makes me feel a teensy bit better about doing the right thing today, just because.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  On the other hand this kind of "mistakes" are what is driving the new generation of POSIX clones for IoT untainted by GPL, like Azure RTOS, NuttX, Zephyr, RTOS,...
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    Copyleft exists to keep Free Software as Free Software. It doesn't prevent non-Free competitors from existing. If you don't want to be part of the copyleft Free and Open Source software world, then you always have the option to not be a part of it. You can make your own competing product under a non-Free licence, or base your work on Free Software that uses a permissive 'copycenter' licence. This isn't a point against copyleft.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      I am advocate of dual licensing, GPL + commercial. So who doesn't want to pay can use GPL, who wants to make money can use the commercial license. This clearly doesn't work for companies that like Apple, are now sponsoring POSIX clones for IoT deployments to play safe.
- h2odragon 6y ago
  See how drones and 3d printers are evolving; who could fund the firmware development? who could fund the research? but now these cutting edge things are necessarily public and cannot both be a military advantage and cutting edge.
woofie11 6y ago
I'm firmly convinced that if a Chinese maker made a 100% open source keyboard or mouse, they could sell that for $30 instead of $3, and establish a global brand to boot. Same thing for a lot of hardware, actually. Printers. Scanners. Etc.
- Decade 6y ago
  Isn’t that basically Keyboardio? Except it’s a San Francisco company selling them for $150; expensive, but still within reason for boutique mechanical keyboards.
  - alostpuppy 6y ago
    Yea. And they are freaking fantastic.
- gens 6y ago
  http://www.miniware.com.cn/product/ts100-soldering-iron-package-electric-soldering-kit/ http://www.miniware.com.cn/product/ts100-soldering-iron-pack... An open source soldering iron, original by a Chinese company Miniware. I don't know how good their sales are, but the iron is so good it got that Louis Rossmann praised it (for the price, ofc). And it seems to be very popular (probably not nearly as much as Weller, but hey).
  - gens 6y ago
    Turns out http://www.uychan.com/ http://www.uychan.com/ is the original. Since i can't edit, reply.
    - nerdponx 6y ago
      These are great soldering irons for the money.
      - gens 6y ago
        Everybody says so. I'l have to get one for myself some day. With a cheap 24V scooter battery one could even use it in the field without a problem. Oh, and i seem to have underestimated Louis's recommendation. He likes it a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao39bPEyok4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao39bPEyok4 On the topic of open source for hardware; There's an open source software for Hantek oscilloscopes http://openhantek.org/ http://openhantek.org/ (not official) , which is yet another thing i'l have to get myself some day.

ownagefool 6y ago

Your standard bigco manager also believes a whole bunch of FUD about the lack of OSS secrity and what not, but it's 20 years unless upstarts eat their market. Probably more likely for your average software company than hardware, but I suspect there's an inflection point in cheap hardware.

stereolambda 6y ago

I see all this as a heartwarming story where a company was forced, with a "trap" set by GPL and its philosophy, to offer people for once a square deal: good hardware, fairly priced, you are free to do with it what you want. All this serves human needs better and the manufacturer could in fact turn a profit. There is a faint, faint glimmer of hope that this is a peek of the far future of our techno-political-economic system. Of course with very different laws around intellectual property, company governance, customer protection, terms of participating in the market etc. We might be as far from it as the Enlightenment in 1750 (in a world built on overt serfdom and not even fully developed colonialism) was from the year 2000, but still. Makes me feel a teensy bit better about doing the right thing today, just because.

pjmlp 6y ago
On the other hand this kind of "mistakes" are what is driving the new generation of POSIX clones for IoT untainted by GPL, like Azure RTOS, NuttX, Zephyr, RTOS,...
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Copyleft exists to keep Free Software as Free Software. It doesn't prevent non-Free competitors from existing. If you don't want to be part of the copyleft Free and Open Source software world, then you always have the option to not be a part of it. You can make your own competing product under a non-Free licence, or base your work on Free Software that uses a permissive 'copycenter' licence. This isn't a point against copyleft.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    I am advocate of dual licensing, GPL + commercial. So who doesn't want to pay can use GPL, who wants to make money can use the commercial license. This clearly doesn't work for companies that like Apple, are now sponsoring POSIX clones for IoT deployments to play safe.
h2odragon 6y ago
See how drones and 3d printers are evolving; who could fund the firmware development? who could fund the research? but now these cutting edge things are necessarily public and cannot both be a military advantage and cutting edge.

woofie11 6y ago

I'm firmly convinced that if a Chinese maker made a 100% open source keyboard or mouse, they could sell that for $30 instead of $3, and establish a global brand to boot. Same thing for a lot of hardware, actually. Printers. Scanners. Etc.

Decade 6y ago
Isn’t that basically Keyboardio? Except it’s a San Francisco company selling them for $150; expensive, but still within reason for boutique mechanical keyboards.
- alostpuppy 6y ago
  Yea. And they are freaking fantastic.
gens 6y ago
http://www.miniware.com.cn/product/ts100-soldering-iron-package-electric-soldering-kit/ http://www.miniware.com.cn/product/ts100-soldering-iron-pack... An open source soldering iron, original by a Chinese company Miniware. I don't know how good their sales are, but the iron is so good it got that Louis Rossmann praised it (for the price, ofc). And it seems to be very popular (probably not nearly as much as Weller, but hey).
- gens 6y ago
  Turns out http://www.uychan.com/ http://www.uychan.com/ is the original. Since i can't edit, reply.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    These are great soldering irons for the money.
    - gens 6y ago
      Everybody says so. I'l have to get one for myself some day. With a cheap 24V scooter battery one could even use it in the field without a problem. Oh, and i seem to have underestimated Louis's recommendation. He likes it a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao39bPEyok4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao39bPEyok4 On the topic of open source for hardware; There's an open source software for Hantek oscilloscopes http://openhantek.org/ http://openhantek.org/ (not official) , which is yet another thing i'l have to get myself some day.