Open hardware research community

12th meeting - 08 December

• Date: December 08, 2022
• Time: 16:00 UK time (UTC+0)
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb

Tarunima Prabhakar will be presenting her work, following up on our recent discussions: “What the economics of IT tells us about open hardware”.

Participants

• Tarunima
• Julieta
• Jeremy
• Pen
• Salman
• Moe
• Moritz
• Paul (neither sound nor video in Jitsi)
• Daniel
• Anna

Group news

• Yesterday we had a panel on open hardware at 4s
• Daniel: https://diversityhw.org/
• Moe working on medical certification of the open MRI
  • Anna interested in case study of this process

Discussion: What the economics of IT tells us about open hardware

Link to presentation

• Presentation is influenced by book “The Success of Open Source” by Steven Weber
• Information doesn’t want to be open or closed, it is more about how we handle and use it - it matters where you start
• Regulatory and business structure has an important influence
• The question in this presentation is how are open software and open hardware similar, and how can that inform our ways of thinking about making open hardware sustainable
• With software there are “runnaway economies of scale”
• The cost of sharing the blueprint is negligible, but reproduction is not
• Moe - Marginal cost does reduce over time because you have a growing group of suppliers to obtain the hardware from. This may vary based on the hardware project
• Anna - Does not thing the marginal cost tends to zero, but can be reduced because of the physical cost of a unit. Even after producing 100,000 units, there is still a unit cost. Development cost is spread over the number of units. The economics of open hardware are not all that different from closed hardware. However it is funding, there is a cost of development.
• Julieta - Are we thinking open hardware would replace the current model, or are we thinking of distributed manufacturing where that model would not apply? Open hardware has local realities that influence whether it meets its promise.
• Daniel - Not sure if all open hardware products should be scaled the maximum extent. Maybe they meet a specific, smaller need. Is it possible to channel all the effort and knowledge so that everyone does not have to do it all themselves.
• Moritz - The long term goal of OSHW should be to replace all closed hardware. Should reduce single use, encorage reuse, repair, etc and help people use products for a longer period of time. Make enough products open source that people can repair their primary products.
• Anna - “Economies of scope” makes it cheaper by doing it in lots of different places, or lots of things in the same place. This is in contrast to “economies of scale”. Documentation to enable reproduction is a significant cost. If you can spread that cost across many sites that reduces the cost.
• Julieta - Even if the cost of documentation is spread out, still the costs exists and we are not considering it right now. It should be included somewhere as a cost of openness.
• Tarunima - Economies of scale makes open source software easier to do.
• Anna - It makes it easier to do open hardware because people don’t expect to be given a physical product for free. With software you have just copied a file, so why can’t you have it for free?
• Network Effects - the value of a service increases with the number of users. Should open hardware chase network effects? What forms of network effects should we or should we not aspire to?
• Anna - There are definitely network effects that we should pursue in the field of distributed manufacturing. The interoperability of parts (modular products) can enable a product to spread far (e.g. AK47, AR15 - Are there civilian examples?). It makes it easier for someone local to start to make those replacement parts.
• Julieta - Critical designs that allow others to be built on top should be pursued.
• Haris - About interoperability and spreading the production of parts - it is important for political reasons as well. Concentration of providers causes problems. On balance, it would be good to have many people producing the same product.
• Transaction cost - There is a cost to any transaction in the market (market research, driving a bargain, etc). Not accrued to any one individual. When the transaction costs increase when a third-party like a company has to get involved so that it’s not individuals anymore.
• Anna - If someone walks to a market to buy a product, they accrue costs on an individual basis.
• Julieta - Difference between a person creating something at home is different than a company trying to create a product. Open hardware has a lot of those transactional costs. Equate transactional cost to friction.
• Haris - Is open hardware different from the current economic model.
• Anna - Ineroperability can be a benefit of open hardware because the effort to transfer from one proprietary system to another is a transaction cost. Interoperability could reduce the transaction cost overall.
• Julieta - The horizon of what the open hardware is and where it should go means different things to different people.
• Produce at scale vs produce at a local scale, and those two can sometimes conflict.

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ Leave your questions/comments here

• (Daniel) Can we collect the terms and aspects of OSH, digital/distributed fabrication, peer-production etc. to identify conflicts of interest and reinforcements?
  • (Paul) Could be done with GraphCommons.com (see example on the OSH landscape, sadly proprietary)
  • (Julieta) A good way to do this is through a futures/visions exercise. We have done this with the latin american GOSH, and it helps mapping a) visions b) strategies to get there c) conflicts. I can discuss this next time if ppl are interested.
• (Paul) Can we integrate Andrea Vetter’s principles for post-growth technology design (attachent/local fit, accessibility, adaptability, bio-interaction, appropriateness - see Convivial Technology 2023) to prevent OSH corruption?

11th meeting - 10 November 2022

Access details

• Date: November 10, 2022
• Time: 16:00 UK time (UTC+0)
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

Participants

• Mayra Morales Tirado
• Jeremy Wright
• Julieta
• Joshua
• Anna
• Pen

Discussion: Ideas on Open Hardware Revenue Sharing

Link to text: https://7bindustries.com/blog/revenue_sharing_1.html

• Summary from Jeremy: Jeremy gave a brief summary of the blog post above, focusing on the feedback loop between the developer and the practitioner, and the methods of revenue sharing between the two. Anna asked about how distributed manufacturing fits into this system, and that is a definite challenge as the model in the blog post assumes there is one manufacturer (who is most likely the developer) and that there are clean lines between developer-manufacturer and practitioner. Of course, this is not reflective of real life where the lines are more blurred, especially when introducing distributed manufacturing into the system. There were some questions/thoughts on policy, and government’s role in this process. It seems like a challenging issue because while governments are the most likely to fund projects that are beneficial even with no clear ROI, they (for example the UN, although not a “government” per-se) are reluctant to get into a retail business. The discussion then turned to whether or not a cooperative (as mentioned by Paul in the questions) would solve any of these problems. Several ideas were put forth, and I think a model that was brainstormed was one in which a cooperative acts as the central hub (or “umbrella”). The co-op would have an online store-front that developers and practitioners could contribute products/effort to, and then customers would buy from that store front, picking the manufacturer that was in their region. This is assuming that the co-op has relationships in that area, which would need to be a focus, along with marketing. A crowd-sourced rating system could be employed so that each time a customer buys from a specific manufacturer, they can rate them on things like build quality and customer service. An unrated manufacturer could be used on a buyer-beware basis, but there was talk of a sort of certification for manufacturers, so maybe even an unrated manufacturer could have a badge saying they had been through training and were certified (or something of that sort). The need for high quality open hardware designs were brought up, so maybe a similar rating system could be implemented for designers. In any case, the manufacturer would contribute a portion of their sales back to the co-op due to the referral, which would then be split between the co-op (for operations), the developer, and any practitioners who were involved in the process. Joshua mentioned that it would be great to have this be a career path for people, with a steady income and maybe even things like benefits (i.e. insurance).

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ Leave your questions/comments here

• Paul: Cooperatives of self-employed like “Smart eG” (Germany) help those to pool resources for taxes, administrative expenses etc., “platform cooperativism” is considered a key factor to organize and finance basic services for those, whose work is for a “greater good” - and funds like Zebras Unite are dedicated to support cooperative missions like these. Therefore:
  • Do you see any overlap to your proposal?
  • Would founding a Open Hardware cooperative for individual researcher, activists and makers as well as companies in the field suitable give such revenue sharing an organizing body?
  • Jeremy: I am really interested in discussing how my post ties into this topic of cooperatives. I think it could be a great fit, and within the last year fround out about Mondragon Corporation, and am interested in reading more about that to see how a cooperative at scale might work.
• Jeremy: What would it look like for researchers to be independent of universities and corporations? Is it even possible in the current legal and social framework? The incentives seem to be organized to discourage this, but I’m not an academic or researcher and don’t know. What if a cooperative did allow researchers to essentially be self-funding, and to do the research they wanted to?
• Jeremy: Do researchers even care about having more independent funding?
• Jeremy: Is there a model of organization and revenue sharing that will work across regions, or is it impossible to create a one-size-fits-all system?
• Jeremy: In general, the revenue sharing equation that I define in the post is full of educated guesses. Any discussion and feedback on that is welcome.
• Anna: - how would this work with a structure where the manufacturer is independent of the designer? (
• Pen: BTW the most relevant discussion at the recent GOSH Gathering is on Private Investment and Incubators” (search for that title) here: https://pad.ucw.sh/mypads/index.html?/mypads/group/gosh-2022-ln7xc8j/pad/view/day-3-o5exc5d
  • Unfortunately the notes are pretty bare, might need to contact the listed participants

10th meeting - 13 October 2022

Access details

• Date: October 13, 2022
• Time: 16:00 UTC
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

Participants

• Veronica Uribe del Aguila
• Julieta
• Mayra
• Moritz
• Anna Sera Lowe
• Dr Pearce
• Jeremy Wright
• Daniel Wessolek

Presentation Title:

Unpacking Open Hardware Economies

Link to presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rGwWrYnDEM38KjzJ17WIUBxmCHzwD5yWDzx3OjyOQSs/edit#slide=id.p

9th meeting - 8 September 2022

Access details

• Date: September 8, 2022
• Time: 15:00 UTC
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

Participants

• Julieta
• Jeremy
• Moritz
• Haris
• Tarunima
• Robert Mies

Agenda

1. Future format / collaborations

• We discussed future directions of the group, how to reflect the broad interests of group members?
• Discussed how to better communicate what open hardware is and its agenda to a broader public
• Robert Mies introduced the work of the Open Next project
• Recognized the main group interest in the economics of open hardware (business models, sustainability)

2. General notes

• Jeremy asked Julieta what the goals are for these meetings
  • Julieta mentioned a willingness to go wherever the group wanted to, but outlined some thoughts
  • Jeremy is interested in the economic aspect of open hardware, but is interested in all the other aspects as well
• Julieta and Moritz talked about the difference between openmake.de and OpenNEXT
  • Julieta asked about Robert from OpenMake/OpenNEXT
  • Moritz and Robert are colleagues and Moritz was able to ask Robert to join the call
• Robert asked Jeremy about his presentation last month, and Jeremy gave a brief synopsis
  • Jeremy linked to a re-recording of his presentation and some discussion that happened on the open hardware research group mailing list
  • Robert mentioned CRediT, which may be related, and is a way to ascribe roles to research contributors - https://credit.niso.org/
• There was discussion about wanting to connect more people who are working separately on building a viable ecosystem around open hardware
• There was discussion about how many people (like those in technology transfer offices), do not even know what open hardware is or do not really understand it.
  • Open hardware does not seem main stream enough now, and there are not enough highly visible examples at scale
  • Tarunima posted a link to https://inc42.com/buzz/okinawa-autotech-looks-to-adopt-niti-aayogs-open-bms-solution-for-evs/
    • Tarunima summarizing that article - It was decided that battery management systems were too important not to be open source
• Moritz mentioned that there is an Open Science Working Group at Freie Universitat in Berlin, and some of the members are also interested in hardware https://www.fu-berlin.de/sites/open-science/index.html
• Tarunima is working with companies like GitHub on issues of open technology
  • Tarunima posted a link to an EU report on the impacts of open source software and open hardware on the EU economy https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/29effe73-2c2c-11ec-bd8e-01aa75ed71a1/language-en
• Robert talked about an OpenNEXT workshop happening in Grenoble on October 22nd. The topic is the sustainability impacts of open hardware
  • https://open-design2.sciencesconf.org/
• Haris is interested in joining in on the topic of sustainability, but will be unavailable for at least the next few months

To do’s

• Julieta will send a form to the list so we can register the multiple perspectives converging in open hardware
• Robert Mies will present during the November meeting

Next meeting

• October: Presentation from Veronica on open hardware research on supply chains
• November: Either Robert Mies presentation or Follow up of Jeremy’s presentation on sustainability, with Tarunima bringing up some discussion points

8th meeting - 12 August 2022

Access details

• Date: July 14, 2022
• Time: 15:00 UTC
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

Agenda

1. Presentation: Jeremy Wright

Topic: “Sharing OScH Revenue with Researchers”

2. Discussion

• Which are the narratives/incentives/structures that need to change to allow the “cloning is a feature” narrative
• Can there be an Open Collective model for open source hardware?
• Practitioners = Users?

3. Group news/Next meetings

Which format do we take moving forward?

Options
a) Invite a guest speaker + round table b) Propose a topic + round table c) Merge with GOSH community meetings

7th meeting - 14 July 2022

Access details

• Date: July 14, 2022
• Time: 15:00 UTC
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

1. Presentation: Haris Shekeris

Topic: “Open Science and Democracy: Option or Imperative”

6th meeting - 9 June 2022

Access details

• Date: June 9, 2022
• Time: 15:00 UTC
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

Agenda

1. Presentation: Pen-Yuan Hsing

Topic: “Augmenting camera traps with open source depth-sensing tech to transform wildlife monitoring for conservation”

2. Discussion

Resources:

• https://conservationxlabs.com/
• https://hardware.prototypefund.de/en/about-2/ (german partner needed)
• https://jogl.io/
• https://conservationxlabs.com/
• https://dmf-lab.co.uk/

Instead of a electronics-based solution, Joshua suggested also trying adding “binoculars” in front of the camera lens to give it stereo vision. Essentially the camera lens would “see” two side-by-side images, which you can then post-process.

There are even clip-on stereo lenses for phones like these:

• https://www.amazon.ca/Artshu-Smartphone-Stereoscopic-Camera-Fisheye/dp/B07JZJBYVF
• https://www.amazon.com/3D-Lens-Canon-Digital-Camera/dp/B003V1NS9A
• Record 3D VR videos with Clip-on Lens on any phone!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd86wyrfUpQ
• REVIEW: Remon 3D VR Camera Lens for Smartphones?!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxrC_Wrtmb8

And lenses can now be 3D-printed with great precision:

• Resource: https://formlabs.com/blog/creating-camera-lenses-with-stereolithography/
• https://www.diyphotography.net/3d-printing-lenses-is-now-a-thing-and-you-can-make-them-yourself/

GOSH forum threads:

• https://forum.openhardware.science/t/depth-sensing-technologies-for-camera-traps/3236?u=hpy
• https://forum.openhardware.science/t/new-time-of-flight-tof-camera-for-accurate-3d-depth-measurement/3870?u=hpy

Wildlabs thread:

• https://www.wildlabs.net/comment/7771

After the stereo images are captured, OpenCV can be used to process them into depth maps, e.g.: https://forum.opencv.org https://learnopencv.com/making-a-low-cost-stereo-camera-using-opencv/

3. Group news

Next month: Haris

5th meeting - 14 April 2022

Access details

• Date: April 14, 2022
• Time: 15:00 UTC
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

Participants

• Julieta
• Haris
• Jeremy Wright
• Moritz
• Sergio
• Veronica Uribe-del-Aguila
• Fellow Jitser
• Daniel Wessolek

Agenda

1. Presentation: J. Arancio

Topic: Democratisation & open science hardware

• Gathering for Open Science 2022: https://gathering2022.openhardware.science
  • https://twitter.com/GOSHCommunity/status/1508899549846589441

4th meeting - 10 March 2022

Access details

• Date: March 10, 2022
• Time: 4pm UTC
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

Participants

• Mayra Morales
• Julieta Arancio
• Joshua Pearce
• Jeremy Wright
• Haris
• Veronica Uribe
• Pen
• Daniel Wessolek
• Moritz
• Tarunima
• Paul Jerchel
• Sven Klinkow
• Emilio Velis
• Urs Gaudenz

Agenda

1. Presentation: J. Pearce

• Link to preprint: https://zenodo.org/record/6345120

2. Discussion

• Mayra: how to do this at Uni of Manchester? Which kind of data so I can ask for it? Another question; if unis are not making $ through patenting, are they doing it for legitimacy/reward?
• Daniel: what would the transfer offices focus on instead? MIT media lab model?
• Haris: patent, what is it? the cultural model around patenting, where does it come from?
• Veronica: are there strategies for delaying the period of delay? E.g insulin case
• Emilio: we need to also pay aattention to how hardware patent are written not only the operationla aspect but the conceptual aspect of it.
• Pen-Yuan Hsing (he/they):How willing are universities to provide the kinds of data in this paper? Is it straightforward to get this data?

• Pen: I think the insulin story, and other similar stories, are in the book Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K Levine: http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm I like the book’s tagline: “Monopoly corrupts, absolute monopoly corrupts absolutely.”

• Julieta: Creating alternative metrics for universities
  • Create training for tech transfer office people
  • Are companies curious/interested in Open Hardware? How to assess demand?
• Haris: Scenarios on e.g. vaccine data (Covid-19)
  • Paul added: Taxes and license revenues of BioNTech/Pfizer made up 20% Germany’s GDP growth in 2021. (en, de)
• Pearce, on which data is needed: faculty and staff salaries, how much university spends in patenting
• Tarunima:
  • Maybe good to double check with OFE if they are interested in research on open hardware https://openforumeurope.org/publications/
  • Juli: I engaged a couple of months ago, they said their interest on open hw was focused on the chip shortage, could be good to ping them again

3. Group news

• Job post: https://www.unibg.it/bandi/bando-relativo-selezione-pubblica-titoli-e-colloquio-conferimento-n-9-assegni-experienced.

• Panel at 4S Mexico, on open hardware, CfP OPEN: https://www.4sonline.org/88-open-hardware-perspectives-on-open-science-beyond-access-to-data-and-publications/

• Tarunima: GitHub launching a project on metrics, contributions open: https://socialimpact.github.com/insights/standardized-github-metrics-project-launch/

4. Next meetings

• April: 14 April, 4pm UTC
  • Julieta on credibility strategies of academic OSH
• May: 12 May, 4pm UTC
  • Pen, Ideas about enhancing adoption of a specific piece of hw for ecologists

3rd Meeting - 10 Feb 2022

Access details

• Date: Feb 10, 2022
• Time: 4pm UTC
• Link to join: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/0e8304b39bcc1af427c75d81aedc0bebcd62989468da60c7159b0021248722fb
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

Participants

• Joshua Pearce
• Mayra Morales
• Veronica Uribe
• Julieta Arancio
• Haris
• Moritz
• Jeremy

Meeting agenda

1. Group news

• We can upload our writing/work in this new Zenodo community
  • Mayra: better to have a closed space to share stuff until
• Julieta proposed an open panel at 4S-ESOCITE 2022 Mexico
  • Veronica: presented during the last 4S
• Moritz: next GOSH gathering 2022 in october, he’s part of the working group.
  • https://forum.openhardware.science/t/apply-here-for-gosh-s-2022-collaborative-development-program-round-1/3380/3

    The total funding for the program is $110,000 USD.

    Seventy percent (70%) of the total, or $77,000 USD, will be allocated to the Established Project Track, and 30% of the total, or $33,000 USD, will be allocated to the New Project Track.

    Established Project Track funding breakdown:

    Phase 1: Up to $4,600 USD per project, for a total of up to five projects (up to $23,000 USD awarded in total). Up to three projects from Phase 1 will be approved for Phase 2 funding based on progress evidenced by submission of an interim report. Phase 2: Up to $18,000 USD per project, for a total of up to three projects (up to $54,000 USD awarded in total).

    New Project Track funding breakdown:

    Phase 1: Up to $2,000 USD per project, for a total of up to five projects (up to $10,000 USD awarded in total). Up to three projects from Phase 1 will be approved for Phase 2 funding based on progress evidenced by submission of an interim report. Phase 2: Up to $7,600 USD per project, for a total of up to three projects (up to $23,000 USD awarded in total).

• Haris: What is GOSH? How open it is to participation from non-academics
• Julieta: yes, the gosh manifesto is a good reference, sometimes people in academia think GOSH is “too radical”
• Joshua: I guess I would represent the more established wave of gosh, and there’s definitely some more radical areas. I mean, I don’t have trouble going to my idea about any of this stuff, but I’m coming at it from that line of science, faster, like all the good stuff, not the more critical nature

2. Review the list of topics that came up during the last meeting

• Haris: There is a question I want to throw in, what becomes of expertise? If we all put up the field, does expertise need black boxes so that the experts, the experts have, you know, uh, added weight and what opinion they give?
• Julieta: I think the politics of expertise is a huge topic. And especially now, with anti-vaxxer people and everything that’s happening is like more relevant than ever. Um, biohacking was also a big, big topic for the politics of expertise and there are many biohackers within gosh.
• Moritz: we did have a few centuries in Europe where we constantly, we focused all the knowledge, uh, on a small group of religious. And so part of the reason why we got out of that is because we started opening things up to more people as well. That was one of the primary reasons for follow the social movement forward scientific move movement, generally progress. So, um, opening things up for more people. Is in my personal opinion, the way to go.However, um, that doesn’t mean that the quality can be dropped. I mean, technically you, one person can reach the same level of expertise by watching the YouTube videos. In my personal opinion, likely going to take longer.
• Julieta: I tend towards more, uh, trying to build bridges between academia and community scientists to try to bring them out of the, of the tower.
• Joshua: I agree. I don’t think it has to be so combative. I think most scientists will think that well, I agree with it, send it through the same validation process. Everything else goes through. Um, but my experience, at least in working with students is that it is very, very hard to establish, um, the way create new knowledge, like to do that properly. And you could get it from you do videos, but it usually it takes five years, past undergrad for people that are pretty smart already. Um, and then even then not very, so it’s a long, long process. I think we’re all still getting better at it.
• Julieta: Maybe it’s interesting, like physically, like thinking of the structures and infrastructures that facilitate that, that collaboration
• Veronica: my research is on infrastructure for hardware in Mexico and Mexico is mostly, uh, has a lot of interests for, uh, offshore labor. Like it’s another kind of technology production and mass production. So I see the clash of these two kinds of. Uh, forms of production, like very small IOT businesses that only make sense if all the hardware exist, really, they cannot afford these kinds of libraries or these kinds of like a feeling where if it wasn’t for all the hardware, but not necessarily have. I feel like I am in another discussion that also connects with expertise, but I’m trying to research how open hardware is not fully up and all the time and how, how these entanglements of proprietary and oven kind of like, uh, produce other kinds of infrastructure, but also build it happened because all the hardware is built on previous infrastructure that is not fully open and available.
• Moritz: replying to that, there has to be some level of “I just need to provide what I need from this component” without opening each component itself. Maybe the lines between open and proprietary are extremely expensive. It’s really hard to differentiate sometimes.
• Julieta: The notion of standard components that the CERN open hw license included recently, I think goes this way
• Moritz: yes, my view on this is more or less in line with that.
• Veronica: my dissertation is about that. So I engage with a lot of, uh, components, uh, component, like component sellers. These components through, uh, from China, from the United States, Mexico, but also with the regulation that only makes it possible to import these components. So that is kind of like where my research kind of like goes in this, in these politics of what gets, uh, into Mexico and what doesn’t and how they deal with.
  • Joshua: I now find it unbelievably challenging to replicate things that I had no trouble doing last year, just because I moved to Canada and we still have Amazon, but it’s different, it’s making everything different.
• Mayra: We all see things from a different perspective. For me, all I see is how with this, um, take minerals and chips, shortage, maybe while heading towards a new innovation paradigm, right? Where all the hardware might be, where will all companies are going to be working open.

3. Discuss in smaller groups: could these ideas become mini research projects, or collaborative papers?

• Julieta: would it be productive to have someone presenting each meeting?
• Joshua: as an invitation to collaborate, on a paper or other product
• Mayra: open hardware is not necessarily in my line of current research. Uh, but I have a few ideas that I like to explore either now or in the future. And by that end for that, I will need someone with, you know, with a good understanding as to how the field works and where we can access data.

4. General recap

We will have someone presenting their work for 15’ each meeting, we will afterwards discuss. The goal of the presentation is whatever the presenter needs: engage contributors, discuss very preliminar work, write a paper, present something to a conference, etc.

5. Action items

• Joshua will present an idea/paper for discussion next week
• Thinking of potential discussions for 4s conference panel

2nd Meeting - 13 Jan 2022

Access details

• Date: Jan 13, 2022
• Time: 4pm UTC
• Link to join: https://bath-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/97973283694?pwd=Qnk4Ky9LWHNxMEQveHVsZk9JZy96UT09
• Agenda (these notes)
• Previous meeting notes

Access

• Moritz: Issue: I cannot seem to join the meeting url listed in the calender invite (which is different from the one listed above, which shows “invalid meeting id”) without creating a Zoom account, it says “for authorized users only”. Is this intended?
• response by Rafaella: University of Bath requires you to sign into Zoom in order to enter the meeting :/
• Moritz: ok thanks.
• Pen: I think we should use another solution that does not require an attendee to sign up for a closed source proprietary service engaged in mass surveillance.
• Moritz: At FU Berlin we’re using Jitsi Meet.
• +1

Participants

• Louise Bezuidenhout
• Rafaella Antoniou
• Haris Shekeris
• Fabio Balli
• Pen-Yuan Hsing
• Emilio Velis
• Jeremy Wright
• Moritz Maxeiner
• Tarunima
• Morgan
• Joshua Pearce

Meeting agenda

1. Interest in applying to funding: but for which activities?

• Rafaella: Spoke with Robert Mies from Open Next, already run a conference on “Open source hardware and open source product development”. Oriented towards building a collection for a Design Science journal. Idea to keep this happening, find funding e.g. from University of Bath, Open NEXT, GOSH funding that is general not only science

• Pen: GOSH regional funding, there will be another opening soon, regional events to advance open science hardware in a tangible way. Coming from a Sloan Foundation grant. In person or virtual, 3 tiers of funding. + info https://forum.openhardware.science/t/apply-here-for-goshs-2022-regional-events-funding-round-1/3290?u=hpy

• Julieta: I think it would be good to take these group discussions offline, but still need some deeper conversations to happen. Also +1 to sustaining openNEXT.
• Joshua: APC waivers for HardwareX, tech or not, open hw related. Elsevier is pushing really hard to increase the IF. Also in Design journal, editor shift. Possible to waive APCs there too.
• Moritz Maxeiner: interesting to hear, have hw but not published
• Joshua: HardwareX only science, Design more general

2. What do you think is the most relevant/urgent research question in open hardware research today?

• Moritz: figuring out how to get documentation out there that allows people to define this is good or bad open hardware, in different scales but that main idea. Because if you look at open HW projects, unless you are an expert you cant tell if this is something to invest your time in or not replicating. Validation of the quality of the work
• Emilio: I think this falls into reproducibility, how to ensure any docs can do proper knowledge transfer. For hw, ensuring that is a piece of hw that works
• Julieta: how we can contextualize open hw, how to capture the context differences in open hw implementation.
• Fab: the question of infrastructures specially in public research institutions, little research on that despite UNESCO recommendation. Beyond tool but whole infra, legal paradigms to change
• Louise: +1 Fab, supply chains and institutional infra is interesting in open hw because it highlights the future marginalization of communities that do not have access to that infra.
• Haris: how much open hw for a democratic society. Democracy of science within society. Should there be anything non-proprietary?
• Moritz: to Haris, when you say democratic society, does that mean in science or beyond?
• Haris: I think it broadest, science in society. How much of hw should be open in a society that is more democratic? Even open science is sometimes looked down upon by scientists that dismiss it like outreach, I mean more aggressive. Science as a discipline is turning towards AI, proprietary. How can OH change that , but I’m from a different field
• Moritz: as a research question how do you falsify that and turn it into something you can answer?
• Haris: case studies would be useful, this is policy oriented action research. UNESCO recommendation is interesting to look at, not data gathering at that. More theoretical, I come from philosophy. I don’t do experimental data
• Julieta: +1, I do that with an ethnographic approach. Interested in how OH enables new questions.
• Set up a repository of these groups papers
  • Zenodo community for the group
• Louise: I specialize in the African region, looking at not only the physical but digital infras can hamper enthusiasm in OH, is a problem I face a lot in my work. I think the OH community can benefit from problematizing further, these unequal innovation situations and what that may undermine collabs from other parts of the world, it hampers openness we take for granted
• Fab: the UNESCO recommendation is still very top down, can we think of a reply to this but bottom up. That is missing and we can use as a political aspect.
• Moritz: regarding digital infra, how to ensure ouro hw remains buildable. Our supply chains are very focused, if they get disrupted and we have a global shortage it can become worse. How feasible would it be to set up production of silicon chips for open hardware, should the supply chains be interrupted, so you can turn to this. I don’t have an example, I can only think of the EU is trying to diversify its production cpaabilities for chips specifically
  • Louise: +1 Moritz - this would not only be useful for interrupted supply chains in HICs, but also for OH enthusiasts working in LMICs because this is a regular challenge
  • Joshua: +1 Moritz – I think you laid out a call for a massive multi uni grant - to make an OS toolchain to fab chips. I have worked in semiconductors - and a lot of it is open - but putting everything together to make even the chip for an Arduino would be non trivial
  • Louise: I think that it is interesting that the OH community is so vulnerable to the vagaries of trade agreements, political changes and economics (ie. through supply chains) in ways that the other OS communities do not have to deal with. I don’t think that this comes out sufficiently in discussions on OH, and also gets lost when OH gets absorbed into more general OS discussions (or assumed that OH is just the natural output of the different OS communities)
  • Fab: +1 Louise, + all regulatory limitations, especially when it goes to medical stuff
  • Louise: Absolutely! Perhaps a question to ask is what is “open” when the communities have to deal with these elements that have no involvement in open discussions (and probably no interest)
• Julieta: someone from OFE, a think tank connecting open source with the EU commission, says this is the most important topic now
• Moritz: to prevent next chip shortage there should be an alternative
• Haris: open science Is interesting, but often the jargon and theory is inaccessible to lay people. With open hardware, if you give hardware to the grassroots level there must be interesting bodies of knowledge that may emerge. This may level the field differently, empower production of interestingly different and unpredictable community knowledge, breaking monopoly of knowledge production. Different from open science.
• Julieta: open hardware is a very big label for a heterogeneous set of communities, from processors, to communities to etc. Unpacking those is important to understand these claims of democratization. Which are the models for participation in open hardware, and what for?
• Joshua: I recently changed countries and I noticed massive difference in abilities to do same work. You have to distribute manufacture everything, if you rely on import duty that may make your hw not viable. Interested in core economics of open hardware, how it makes things less expensive. Message that may be appealing to the funders and bigger community. Also any policy that will accelerate things forward, where we can protect the commons.
• Julieta: how openness hardware plays in competitive advantages of countries, the geopolitics of it
  • Louise: I’ve done work on the impact of financial sanctions on access to open resources
  • Fab: In France they are initiatives to gather crowd-produced material and validate, maybe listing such initiatives could be good
• Joshua: using open hardware as a weapon. E.g., EU and Russia, open sourcing energy efficiency. Reduce reliance on energy inputs.
• Julieta: national security, how policy may be not positive towards open hw because of national security. Last, about open hardware and distributed production are usually associated in narrative but not for everyone and not in practice
• Moritz: openNEXT recently had lots of people presenting stories, including someone at an open hw company. His argument was 1) we don’t have to deal with repair our customers’ products. 2) we don’t hire lawyers and get patents to protect our stuff, because we don’t care. 3) time as a competitive advantage, you can go earlier to market without fear of protecting
• Louise: about the geopolitical, I’ve done work related to that and I’m very interested in seeing how that progresses
• Haris: very interested to work on the stuff we talked about today
• Tarunima: source of reluctance in the global south to make their hw open
• Rafaella: for me it’s different because I’m interested in the practice. I would have found useful it existed, is about how to judge the openness of a project. Even if there is a definition, it is still not perfect, there are no those variables to assess. Interested on studying that. How open a project is, interested in that
• Fab: we are preparing a festival in May in Geneva but can also replicate elsewhere, to bring communities together working in health and the commons
• Julieta: is open hardware creating jobs? Can it? Especially in the global south and related to repair? Can we measure that impact?
  • Moritz: definitely but not know how to measure
  • Louise: There is new legislation in the UK that requires commercial appliance producers to keep producing parts to allow older equipment to be repaired. Perhaps it is a good time to start discussing these issues wrt OH as well
  • Morgan: at the EU level, there is now also a similar legislation
  • Moritz: I’ve been privately following the RoR campaign since Louis Rossman started talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w
  • Louise: I think wrt the OpenFlexure microscope and job creation it is interesting the amount of effort that they have had to put into certification etc. I think that for small organisations - particularly in LMICs - that do not have funding and legal support, this is a real challenge and limiting factor to job creation
  • Julieta: absolutely, Louise
• Tarunima: I wonder how this ties with models of entrepreneurship in countries with weak IP. Adds label but idk if that ties with core value
• Joshua: the model is lateral scaling, one documents or innovates, the rest get the benefits without additional effort. Regarding job creation, opportunities In writing case studies for business education schools based on open hardware companies. Enough companies now through oshwa to study economic impact of open hardware.
• Tarunima: that is interesting. Because ‘digital public goods’ is becoming more important in diplomacy. Also on the economics of open hardware- openness is property rights defined as right to share (as opposed to right to exclude). i think that is a starting point so if anyone wants to do a thought experiment to build on it.
• Pen: I think one thread that connects everything is power dynamics in open hardware and how it alters the general politics of intellectual property, protection/not protection
  • Julieta: the politics of open hardware?
  • Moritz: in software what has worked was “protect the people” they are the ones to be protected.
  • Fab: Open-source does not mean the capacity for communities to take ownership… 😛 otherwise GAFAM would not succeed…

Shared links

• Festival on health commons and ‘taking care together’ in May: possible cooperation?
• UNESCO open science recommendation
• https://open-design.sciencesconf.org/
• Rafaella: Link to opennext project
• Rafaella: IDENTIFYING THE FACTORS AFFECTING THE REPLICABILITY OF OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE DESIGNS

Action items

• Set up somewhere to drop and share our papers with the group
• Draft an agenda from this discussion so we can collaborate on these topics in smaller interest-driven groups

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1st Meeting - 9 Dec 2021

Access details

• Date: Dec 2, 2021
• Time: 4pm UTC
• Link to join: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3978420015?pwd=ci93V3Q3THNLcXVxanNxc2hrK0dyUT09
• Agenda (these notes): https://hackmd.io/@oh-researchers-group/SkAIqgKut/edit
• Are we meeting yet?

Participants

• Julieta Arancio - ja2153@bath.ac.uk
• Veronica Uribe del Aguila - vuribede@ucsd.edu
• Sergio Minniti -
• Mayra Morales Tirado - mayrismt@gmail.com
• Fabio
• Moritz Maxeiner - moritz.maxeiner@fu-berlin.de
• Haris Shekeris
• Louise Bezuidenhout - louise.bezuidenhout@dans.knaw.nl
• Emilio Velis - emilio.velis@appropedia.org
• MC Forelle - forelle@cornell.edu; @mcforelle on Twitter
• Massimo Menechinelli - massimo.menichinelli@gmail.com
• Rafaella Antoniou - ra486@bath.ac.uk
• Morgan Meyer - morgan.meyer@mines-paristech.fr
• Wiebke Denkena - wiebke.de@posteo.de

Meeting agenda

1. Briefly who we are & what are we doing research on

• Veronica: 5th year phd STS Communication studies UC San Diego, research on makers and use open hw, e.g. use of Arduino not necessarily in the open. Wide sense of comms practice in Mexico, fieldwork in Guadalajara, Monterrey, Mexico DF. How they create businesses and how they engage in supply chains, imaginaries. In this group for community, apply to grants, panels in conferences

• Sergio Minniti, STS postdoc in U of Padua, bottom up innovation, co creation. Case study is an informal group of makers who support free sw and open hw, only with open tech. Interested in going deeper on issues with open technologies.

• Haris Shekeris, phd philosophy, production and dissemination of science and knowledge, familiar with STS, postdoc on democratization of science. With philosophers mostly, not case studies. Interested in sci policy. Doesn’t know about open hw, user of open sw. Outside of research for last 3 years, interested in it. Open hw related to…?

• Mayra Morales Tirado, from Mexico, phd uni of Manchester, policy side of science and technology, evaluation. Studies particle physucists at CERN how they develop tech, new to open hw. In the group for collaboration! Other project: how policy influences policy makers.

• Moritz Maxeiner, research assistant FU Berlin, open make project, how we can assess and improve open hw in academia for reproducibility and tech staff recognition. FOSS enthusiast >10 years

• Emilio Velis, Salvador, ED of Appropedia Foundation, a wiki for sustainability, dev, focus on open hw. >1000 designs, students & others, working on documentation. Open movement, fab and maker movements.

• Rafaella Antoniou, phd at Uni of Bath, part of EU Horizon open next project, study success in open hw projects and how to help them become more successful. How SMEs can use open hw to capture value. Helping to write a book on learnings of that project for SMEs

• Morgan Meyer researcher in Paris, researcher on cit sci, open sci and participation. Interested in all thigs shared, documented. DIY biology or biohacking is a topic of study, also open source agricultural tools. Recently research on groups doing low tech and experiment, how they document, videos & tutorials. Sociology background

• Wiebke Denkena, graduated of U of Amsterdam in media studies, based in Berlin, interested in socual, political, econ implications in AI. Masters, mapped developments around specialized chips, from proprietary side, interested in open!

• MC Forelle (forelle@cornell.edu), postdoc at Cornell Tech on legal implications of emerging digital tech, research in STS. Interested in automotive tech with AI or other software. Interested in the after market, how ppl develop products that go into cars after they leave the industry. How open hw intersects with car tech, policy implications? Regulations, implications for safety, IP rights. Exploring the open. Policy, consumer tech side, international perspective. Car industry tends to be very national, increasingly not.

• Louise, NL. Social scientist, STS, open data. Came into open hw by how it creates open data. How can these communities intersect or not, why? From South AFrica, co founded network called lab hack, competition for producing low cost versions of lab equipment, run events. Interrupted by covid.

• Fabio, affiliated with IUC Turin, co-founder of GHF Open Village to showcase health and healing commons as the new standard . Considers any publicly funded project should be shared under libre licence. Collectively creating freely reproducible solutions to challenges in society, as opposed to following dogmatic measures decided by an elite (policy brief).

2. A discussion on this group’s goals & how we can contribute to them

Previous info from the survey results

• Who is funding OH research?
• Potential collaborations
• Establishing a common research agenda
• Academia & industry collaborations in open hardware
• Open hardware and social, critical theory

• MC: work together in grant applications
• Moritz: +1 to MC
• Haris: incentives for more people to go open hw
• Julieta: collaborative research agenda
• Veronica: defining openness levels (e.g. different for chips than other stuff)
• Fabio: reflecting on narratives: resources that fulfill a social purpose should have a participatory governence, regardless who owns them (Italian work of Comission Rodotà) + federate initiatives that succeed to raise awareness and inspire, examples of success such as we do with 15 examples of health commons
• Mayra: trace impact of publicly owned and public funded tech. CERN develops all open, in the US (FermiLab) not as open. Benefits from each of these sides, where are they going to?
• Mayra: we can work on defining openness. For this I suggest we conduct a literature review, which is the common practice when it comes to ascertain how terms or definitions are established, and how these evolved.
• Louise: EU lots of money in open science cloud, what’s the space of open hw in those?
• Rafaella: definitions of open, standards

3. Defining frequency for this meeting & other action items

• Monthly meeting
• Send minutes to everyone and contacts to those who shared them

4. Links and notes from the Zoom chat:

• Rafaella: https://opennext.eu/
• Rafaella: @MC - this might be interesting for you: https://opennext.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021_Vignettes-sonomotors.pdf
• MC Forelle: Love this, thank you!! Oh, and to add: interested in open hardware as a pedagogical tool as well!
• Fabio: GHF Open Village https://breathinggames.net/openvillage-2022
• Fabio: 15 example of open hardware for health https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5515632
• Mayra: As a key point in our research agenda may be a work stream on defining openness
• Morgan: on openness: http://peerproduction.net/editsuite/issues/issue-13-open/
• Fabio: Unesco recommendation on open science was approved last week https://en.unesco.org/science-sustainable-future/open-science/recommendation including 5 types of open sci knowledge

Other comments

• Fabio: We should use Jitsi as a libre, community driven tool to be congruent (Fabio)

Action items

Send minutes to everyone, define a monthly meeting (starting in January).