[Open-graphics] Getting more exposure for OGP

[Lourens Veen]

On Friday 13 October 2006 01:37, Terry Hancock wrote:
>
> With hardware, the credibility battle is much harder.  The number of
> people who believe it can work is still small.  Somewhere, I have an
> article by Richard Stallman himself, written in about 1999, in which
> he essentially claims that free-licensed hardware can't work.  It's
> clear from reading the article that at that time, he had not yet
> become conscious of the distinction between free-licensing the
> *design* for a piece of hardware (which is of course, software)  and
> free-licensing the actual hardware (about which, of course, he was
> correct -- nobody is talking about giving away the *hardware* for
> free).
>
> Nevertheless, the misconception evident in his 1999 article is still
> prevalent in many other people's minds: the idea that free software
> only works because it is a "pure information product".  I even made
> this mistake to some degree in the early part of my "Free Matter
> Economy" series (I'm annoyed with myself for choosing that name, in
> fact, because it suggests "an economy of free matter", when what I
> intended was  "a free economy of matter" or even "a matter economy
> enabled by free-licensed design").  So, I think many people have some
> proving to do.

You lost me there. Why does free-design hardware disprove the idea that 
free licencing only works for pure information? Isn't a free hardware 
design pure information? The actual hardware still adheres to the same 
principles as closed hardware. You mention opencores, which does look 
more like a software project than a hardware project.

In fact, making actual hardware seems to be the main problem for OGA. 
Maybe dip-pen lithography and 3D printers that can print circuit boards 
and components will change that in the future, but the technology isn't 
quite there yet to enable people to simply print a piece of hardware at 
the cost of the raw materials.

In the meantime, while we may be able to compete with the hardware 
designers at ATI and nVidia and elsewhere, it's not that easy to 
compete with their production machine. Any cost savings we make on the 
design will be offset by our less efficient (due to smaller production 
runs) production. Free software does not have that problem; indeed, 
putting the whole thing up for download on SourceForge is _more_ 
efficient than boxing it up and putting it in a computer shop.

In the long run this does not matter, because there is no reason to 
assume that free design hardware will always have smaller production 
runs than proprietary hardware. But what about right now?

Lourens
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