Re-inventing the wheel: Open hardware re-engineering

If I knew then, what I know now.

A lot of people think of the wheel as the first invention.  As romantic as that might seem, it is probably not the case.  It would have required at least some sort of tool to create the wheel in the first place.

The cartoon image seems rather appropriate, though.  The humour of which is no less than a copyright image of what some might think should have been patent number 1.

To not lose out to seriousness on this article, though.  We'll just point to a sad reality that, what ever we make or invent today, we have to think about what patents or laws we might be infringing upon.

So in order to make a better wheel, it might be important to go back to a point in time, and re-invent the wheel all over again.

This leads back to the original statement in this article.  If I knew then, what I know now.

What would the wheel look like, if it never existed until today, and it was imagined, invented, designed and prototyped using today's technologies?

Probably not much different, but what if, from the point of inventing the wheel, it

was placed under a GNU GPL licence?  Not just the wheel itself, but the process of making the wheel.  That being, that it could be shared and duplicated and derivatives could be made, but all derivatives were required to be under GNU GPL, which meant that any future wheel could not be closed source and proprietary.  Could one truly argue that, if the wheel were open source and could not be commercially developed and capitalized on, that we would therefore not make the wheel?

That same argument is used to rationalize copyright and patents.  That without the ability to capitalize on something in a competition free arena for a period of at least 20 years, the technology would not be developed or made available.  That a IP free society would never innovate and advance.

But that is in a way, moot.  We DO have IP law.  So how can we even invent anything without running afoul of IP law?  Well, it might take going back many, many years, and duplicating something that is no longer under IP laws. 

This is especially prevalent in electronics.  For example, I was trying to find out how to create an open hardware television set, and cannot find any projects. 

There could be any number of reasons for this, not least of which, the whole television industry is changing rapidly and people don't necessarily see the television set as an innovation obstacle.

But if one did take up a project like that, one would find that there's a lot of electronic components that need to be made, plus the software.  How much of that is under IP law constraints.  In order to make an open source television set, one might have to work their way backwards to a time at least 20 years back, and possibly as far back as 70 years, in order to duplicate those items that are IP clear, and then work forward using non-copyrightable ideas, in order to create a television monitor that would be open source.  And hopefully it would be cost effective to create, within reason of the cost of restrictive technologies.

And there are people who are doing just that.  They are creating Open Source HardWare boards and even Open Source HardWare CPUs.  It is actually not

much of a stretch, as people have been making processors and boards, almost literally in their basements, as companies like Intel would source out the work when they needed to ramp up quickly for a release or to handle a period of high demand, when not having the pieces meant lost sales.

Certainly, Open Source HardWare critics have a point when they say that these electronics are not nearly fast nor capable enough, when compared to what is available.  Yet this work is an effort of dedication for a future result.  That being Open.  And, the early electronics are being made using old technologies and processes, because that's all that can be afforded or used, royalty free.  Even as these open technologies progress, they may never be quite as good as a commercial product.  But chances are, they will be significantly less expensive, or force commercial technology to come down in price.  And they'll be open, so anyone can make any amount, any time, for their specific needs.

This may be years, or even decades in the making.  But in the end, these people are re-inventing the wheel.  Making sure that our future, and that of our children, are less restricted and they can do even more innovation without having to worry about what they can't, legally do.