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Many ham radio designs are open source, including hardware. Often the original designer isn't even selling kits, so there's no profit incentive. Yet they still

Many ham radio designs are open source, including hardware. Often the original designer isn't even selling kits, so there's no profit incentive. Yet they still have problems with Chinese manufacturers. They will swap components or make changes making designs worse, then sell the meaningfully inferior product under the name of the open source product. This has lead to open source creators, with no profit incentive, still pushing against what are functionally counterfeit clones.

tough 4y ago
I bought some cheap furniture that was tagged made in PRC. Both pieces where lacking some item to complete them, didnt even bother to ask for a refund but ffs dafuq is going on over dere
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Right. I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free. Instead, they see it as license to engage in a race to the bottom against the own creator of the design, using cheap manufacturing as a weapon. It is, in my opinion, disgustingly unethical. This is why we can’t have nice things. It’s also why, even myself, I have sadly resolved that if I ever succeed in making some massive project open-source, it will only be Source-Available.
- webnrrd2k 4y ago
  "I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free." I didn't realize it until a few years ago, but this has been going on for a long time... But with regular commercial for-profit companies. Something like 30% of the original ideas for companies products come from hobbyists. They make a solution to their problems, and give the idea away for free. A company comes along and uses the idea to develop a business. Sometime they even patent the idea and lock out the original inventor. But the original inventor gets nothing. The best example I've heard was those circular irrigation systems where there is one well sunk, and these big wheels that roll around it. They are hard to miss seeing from an airplane. It was originally a farmer on marginal land that come up with the idea. There was an academic paper on commercial business appropriating hobbyist ideas that made the rounds a few years ago. I don't remember the details... Hopefully someone else remember it better than I do and can provide a link.
vbezhenar 4y ago
I think that's a trademark issue and completely different beast. Plenty of free software don't allow to reuse their names. Nothing wrong about it and does not restrict user in any meaningful way.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  As a private individual I highly doubt they even have trademarks and even if they do they would have to spend a lot of money defending them. Perps just disappear and do it all over again.
- explodingwaffle 4y ago
  I think this is one of the few things Prusa actually gets right- it takes serious gall to carbon copy something (there are plenty of cheap, mostly Chinese printers out there, but the vast majority are fairly different to the Mk3, not outright clones)- but not even the cloniest of cloners would dare to call it an Original Prusa i3 MK3s sold by Prusa Research by Josef Prusa.

tough 4y ago

I bought some cheap furniture that was tagged made in PRC. Both pieces where lacking some item to complete them, didnt even bother to ask for a refund but ffs dafuq is going on over dere

gjsman-1000 4y ago

Right. I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free. Instead, they see it as license to engage in a race to the bottom against the own creator of the design, using cheap manufacturing as a weapon. It is, in my opinion, disgustingly unethical. This is why we can’t have nice things. It’s also why, even myself, I have sadly resolved that if I ever succeed in making some massive project open-source, it will only be Source-Available.

webnrrd2k 4y ago
"I think the biggest problem with open source hardware and software right now is that companies don’t have any sense of respect for the people who gave them an innovation for free." I didn't realize it until a few years ago, but this has been going on for a long time... But with regular commercial for-profit companies. Something like 30% of the original ideas for companies products come from hobbyists. They make a solution to their problems, and give the idea away for free. A company comes along and uses the idea to develop a business. Sometime they even patent the idea and lock out the original inventor. But the original inventor gets nothing. The best example I've heard was those circular irrigation systems where there is one well sunk, and these big wheels that roll around it. They are hard to miss seeing from an airplane. It was originally a farmer on marginal land that come up with the idea. There was an academic paper on commercial business appropriating hobbyist ideas that made the rounds a few years ago. I don't remember the details... Hopefully someone else remember it better than I do and can provide a link.

vbezhenar 4y ago

I think that's a trademark issue and completely different beast. Plenty of free software don't allow to reuse their names. Nothing wrong about it and does not restrict user in any meaningful way.

jacquesm 4y ago
As a private individual I highly doubt they even have trademarks and even if they do they would have to spend a lot of money defending them. Perps just disappear and do it all over again.
explodingwaffle 4y ago
I think this is one of the few things Prusa actually gets right- it takes serious gall to carbon copy something (there are plenty of cheap, mostly Chinese printers out there, but the vast majority are fairly different to the Mk3, not outright clones)- but not even the cloniest of cloners would dare to call it an Original Prusa i3 MK3s sold by Prusa Research by Josef Prusa.