Re: [ox-en] robotics
- From: Graham Seaman <graham opencollector.org>
- Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2003 17:40:01 -0500 (EST)
On 7 Mar 2003, Rich Walker wrote:
Graham wrote:
as someone
passionate about the gpl you must have had discussions about open-sourcing
the designs and design process for robots.
Yes; in fact, we spend time pushing this in the networks we're in.
The philosophy page says your
target is eventually to be able to produce useful robots anyone can
afford. Yet looking for details of the robots there are statements like
'we cant say much about how this works because we're applying for
patents'.
As far as I know, no-one has yet said that patents on mechanical
engineering are a bad thing. No-one seems to be up in arms about
hardware patents. This is for a good reason - if you want to find
someone to bring a physical object (for which production costs are
substantial) to market, then the object should be protected in such a
way that clones don't appear
Your argument implies that manufacture is only possible if there is
monopoly? If that is true, then there is really no hope for any
free/opensource development of anything that can be manufactured... :-(
Otherwise, you could never persuade anyone to set up a manufacturing
outfit again.
This is not true in general. Today I bought a new toilet and a plastic
mini-greenhouse. I don't believe either of these items is likely to be
patented, but they were certainly manufactured. Competition does not
make manufacturing impossible.
Hence our viewpoint - we'll patent the ironware in order to be able to
make (enough) money to develop the rest of it. We have no real desire to
be a software company, and so Free software makes sense in that context.
I can see that that is entirely practical, but I have trouble seeing how
you're going to combine it with the open development you talk about below.
We are working on a more open design process, at least in the areas of
electronics and software. We're also a member of CLAWAR (site currently
in hyperspace) a network developing open modular technology for robots,
amongst other things. Hopefully, we should be publishing some of our
software and hardware design work later this month - masochistic
alpha-testers (with hardware construction experience) wanted.
So, the answer is, it's happening slowly.
I don't have any particular iterest in robotics, but have been interested
in development of free IC designs where there are similar issues.
The problem is in reconciling the first part of your reply - that patents
are necessary to prevent clones in order to persuade manufacturers to
make devices - with the second part - that the design process can be made
more open. I don't have an answer to this either. But I do know that when
recently someone mailed on the opencores.org list that they had ideas
for a particular kind of reconfigurable processor my first thought was
'that exactly matches some ideas I've been thinking of - I should join
in with this'. Then when told the guy would be patenting the idea in order
to get it manufactured, my second thought was 'I'm not working for free
for some company that's going to own my input to this'.
Maybe that's unreasonably selfish, but I can't believe it's an unusual
reaction.
regards
Graham
PS I also believe that patents are in general a bad thing, so I'm starting
from a biased viewpoint - but I've put this in a 'ps' instead of the body
of the mail because I think it's a separate argument...
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