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Our next talk is the open heart where
happy hour and which is done by
a bunch of people, so I'll not introduce
them, but I will introduce themselves in
just a few minutes.
So the stage is yours.
Have fun.
Thanks, Carol.
Thank you.
Hey, hey, everybody.
Good to see you all.
Oh,
so, Daniel, you are the moderator.
Why don't you start?
So, yeah,
happy that we're coming together here and
we started like we thought about
starting an event series.
Basically, this was the starting point
and we wanted to do it every
month. And we want to switch
between like virtual events
like right now, but also like physical
events like the happy
a halfway house where happy
hour.
But we have to see our because have
corona and so on, and
we thought it would be nice.
Maybe if we start with a little intro
round
and then
working for of knowledge foundation
mucks together as
we are working on and
prototype and hardware that we want to
present more in detail tomorrow at 7:00
on the same stage, unfortunately, in
June. But maybe there will
be translation as well.
And also working in the project
of next both small
and medium sized enterprises and
connect with them and apply
for our products, basically.
And the idea was that everyone
might say their connection to
open hardware and because we're like in
different phases for it now, maybe you
can also say where you are
and then hand over to the next person and
I nominate Helen.
All right, let's get started.
So my name is Helen Lee, and
some of you may know me from the internet
and as you may know me from
from that hacker scene in Berlin
or London, I'm currently I just moved to
Portland, actually, where I'm still doing
her quest us
along with Drew Faustini and Dave Darko.
We actually started the first at Happy
Hour in Berlin, which was
held in exile, one of the Bosnian hexane.
So I'm really, really happy to see some
familiar faces again.
I deeply miss deeply
Miss X time.
So what do I do?
Well, everything that I do
is shared in every way
I can. So as part of Hotwire, as part of
that to me, like open hardware falls
under a wider remit of
an open society by sharing knowledge,
by sharing resources and
sharing technologies.
You know, I think it's it's part of a
wider philosophical movement,
a shift towards openness and you know, as
you can see it from kind of all the
blocks. And so I do a
lot of my own work in how do I mostly
kind of little musical instruments
and things with experiments, materials.
And also my job job is
I work for Crate Supplier, who
is an American company owned
by Nisa Electronics.
All we do is Open-Source hardware
crowdfunding. That's it.
And we like
hosted and any
one place at all of
bunny involves as projects.
We've done all sorts of different
exciting things that appear in our
from time to time, the
German hacker as well lots of other
things. So yeah, that's what I do.
I both make Open-Source hardware and I
also help other people make open hardware
with credits.
So there we go.
Let's see
who's next.
Should I have not nominated somebody?
All right.
Maximilian, go on.
Yeah, thank you.
I'm happy to be here and
then already said something about
me, I think.
Yeah. And then is that we work
together at the foundation,
setting up a prototype fund for
open hardware because we are
we we think that is that it's something
that need to be pushed and need
to get more attention.
And my background
is also kind
of philosophical.
I started some years
ago for
philosophy of technology and engineering
and kind of stuff, and
I'm very into open workshops
and hacker spaces like scene.
I'm a board member of the foundation
of the German network of open
workshops.
And so, yeah, this is my connection to
all this.
And I think, yeah, of course, open up is
a very important
movement if it comes to
to to a to a
society in which
we
take care of our things.
Yeah, and say
results and all these kind of stuff,
which it's important at the moment,
transparency and so on.
So I'm very into this topic
and I am
happy to discuss all of this
with you and I don't know if
Mitch is there.
I don't know. I can kind of see him.
Maybe it's on the list of the big screen
with everyone.
Mitch, yeah.
So, OK.
Yeah, so everybody.
My name is Mitch, and I'm sitting
here at Ixion in Berlin
Live, while all of this RC three
stuff is happening while everyone else is
in various places in the world.
And like everyone else, I've been
working with higher open hardware for a
long time.
It made me kind of open
our internet.
Famous is an invention of
mine, which is a keychain that turns
televisions off in public places
called TV. Be gone.
Yeah, and it's like everything I you
open.
And even though it's open, a
lot of people think, Well, it's open.
How do you make money? Well, the thing is
the only reason why I've been able to
make a living off of this for the last
eight years, which I have along
with 12 friends of mine who was who have
also made a living off of this for the
last 18 years is because it's
open and
there are a lot of reasons for that.
But be
the biggest thing is when it's open,
there are a lot of people who are helping
and not just me and my little brain.
My little brain works well.
Some of the time.
But when we have a lot of people looking
at something, we have a lot of brains
that are working a lot of the time.
And together we have something much more
powerful than each of us can do alone.
And if we're going to have an
yeah, and those people are constantly
telling other people about this project,
which is PR, that I would never, ever,
ever be able to afford as someone
with a small company.
So, yeah, and if we're going to have
any kind of chance for
survival as a species, I think part
of it is going to be because
we have open projects
that exist because people find it
meaningful.
And when people find it meaningful, it's
going to be used for things that are
worthwhile rather than just maximizing
profit for corporations, which
is responsible for so much of this
downward spiral where we find ourselves
into environmentally
and economically and
data protection wise and all these
other reasons.
So yeah, maybe we'll be talking
about some of this later tonight.
So, yeah, Cedric, you're the next person
thinking it's
difficult to go after you.
I'm just the
just the embedded system engineer
going back to school and
trying to get out of this
industry per share of money with
hopefully some options using
academia and experimenting
to see where it goes.
And yeah, basically, yeah,
my background is in music.
I kind of
ended up diving in this hardware
where because I was fixing my computers,
I wanted to understand how to
fucking make my own machines
work.
And and I ended up studying these.
And after 10
years of engineering and
ended up collaborating with
artists, making some
sort of interactive
and interactive systems with, I
don't know, wearables for dance that
would control visualizations and
certifications, and it takes
time.
And that brought me to reverse
engineering chemical processes
to make my
own sensors and help people make their
own. And and I
think the question why do
we want to open up everything
we do? I think we all have
a personal life story.
I'm guessing at this mine is I
grew up in these kind of hippie
communities where everything was said.
It was just not even a question.
And growing up in this industry
hardware where to me, it was
obvious that the hackerspace approach was
the the most appropriate
sharing ideas and technology
so that we all grew
together.
Yeah, that was my motivation.
CBN chairman.
But that
I need you to think that my
back?
Yeah. But I also feel like unfortunately,
we're missing three people.
I think that wanted to be on the stage.
Joel wasn't able to make it,
unfortunately.
And but
I think we can also look back
on just thinking maybe it also
makes sense to ask questions
to which others simply and like
because I think we all have a lot to
share and maybe we can
go
on. But you just have any questions
around the work that Dru is doing
and risk.
Five. I mean, I'm not an expert,
but I am married to him, so we do.
Have conversations about this a lot, so I
know kind of what's going on in the world
of open process, there's open silica
and so I can talk about open silicon
a bit.
Maybe do that right now because because I
think it's super interesting.
Oh, it's so cool.
And actually, there's a really good
opportunity to get involved right now as
well. So for those of you that
don't know this, there's a
guy called Tim Ansel who does a lot of
work in this space, and I really
recommend you check out some of his talks
and he teaches a congressperson as well.
So he's done some really interesting
talks and on open
silicon in Congress the last time
we were in, you know, in meet face
and get to talk about this exact subject.
But it's now, you know, several years
down the line and this project has
evolved. So let me let me take a couple
of steps back here. So when we think
about open hardware, we often think about
the physical, you know, like the PCB,
right? So like the finished the end
product, you know, like how you make a
toy gun, for example, you know, or
synthesize it another in and you touch
another example, right?
So those are the end products.
But really, what we're looking at with
open source silicon
is looking more at the processes and
we're looking at like how to get open all
the way down. Right.
So there's one thing to really show boat
design files, but then how does that boat
get made and how do we pass on the
knowledge about making these boats right?
And then furthermore, you go further
down, down, down, down, then you start
going, well, how is the transistor made?
Like, how do we even make a chip you guys
like, how do we know?
And as it turns out, that knowledge
is extremely proprietary.
So like making it like this is not just
like the like
the like the design files, right?
It's the physical processes here
are not transparent at all.
In fact, they're completely proprietary.
And that knowledge is sequestered away
in like a few small and a few massive
foundries, right?
So obviously, I mean, hello, we're
having a chip shortage, you know, having
having like all of the production
centered on these individual things, it's
not just like a philosophical question.
It becomes a logistical problem.
Here is like, how do we even make these
things that we can't get hold
of anymore?
So Google and
I'm like Fabulous, which is a
kind of a location of
this is this is like all second hand
knowledge as well as say, like, I'm not
like Muhammad from E!
Fabolous has been really going on about
this. I'm like the sky
water people at Google.
They've been working together to create
an open source series
of instructions, right?
And the go all the way down so you can
make fully open source silicon so
that there's a replicable process for
this creation of silicon.
There is a way to onboard people.
So that's this process has been going on
right and going on block grant.
But where it is right now is really
exciting stage and that they are actually
opening up what they call these flights
where they call them, like flights,
like when you go and make a check, right?
There's a bunch of stuff happening right
now that anybody can get chips
made for free, right?
Anyone and not just academics
like nuts, chip experts, anyone.
I'm talking like hobbyists are getting
these chips made themselves
for free.
The only stipulation for this is that
this source, it has to be open source,
right? And I'm guessing if you're
interested in this talk, then
that's probably not a problem for you,
right?
And even if you don't know anything about
creating chips as a really awesome
course, it's being run by them at
the moment called zero to ASEC, which is
all about getting hobbyists involved
and creating their own chips.
So it's a it's a conversation to be had
around open silicon.
It needs to be happening now because
there's so many exciting things happening
in that space.
So if anybody is interested in creating
it, you go right there right now.
Go Google Tim ASCL or
go to Mansel, like
which is I used to go to be there
and look at what he's up to.
And I mean, he's not the only person
involved. I see there's many, many, many,
many people in that. It's just that he
happens to have a lot of the best talks
about it. So we're going to look at that
and yeah, go right now because you can
get on the shuttle
right now, you can go and make your own
silicon and free and make it open
source and be part of this whole open
down to the transition metal movement.
So that's that's what this
does to my best knowledge.
Again, this is like just me reading
articles and being interested in this.
It's not like, I'm not I not make a chip.
I've just, you know, listen to a lot of
talks around that. So that was my
summation of what's happening, and I can
sit around and do apologies if I got some
of that wrong. But I hope, I hope I've
given you some inspiration.
And that's
because this album
silicon movements,
all AI projects are very important and
maybe also like kind of connected
to the way of
how you salzburg's and the software
context.
I think this is something which is
this
is true for electronics in general
because. Can use some some of the
functions, how software works
and this kind of context.
But
yeah, but what I think is still
a problem is that council
appear that this is a question
which I would have raised in this
circle yet.
And when do
you think if really like
a real must have some like
because something what we are asking
ourselves at the moment
if it comes to this finding
process? And so
which I think open source
Congress, nothing, which is something
that makes sense in itself,
you know, technology's always connected
to a specific aim at this
is also something which is connected to
open source. And yeah, which kind
of and which
kind of open source hot race
is very
a must have in your
point of view.
My question is,
can they be added in the
excitement? Say, When is it
not? Is there any reason to
not open source anything?
Just that's the way I to think.
And because anyway, if people really
want to see what's inside your hardware,
they will they will find out.
There's just no valid reason to
trust anything.
That's my opinion, because yeah,
we should it out anyway.
So to win if we were to.
So if we really want to
answer that serious question, I would
say maybe the security
field is where it's the most needed.
But I think for educational purposes,
everything should be open so
that no, no, I'm sorry, but I
was just saying that's very
interesting point. And like I would say
that I'm on the other side of the scale a
little bit in the I'm just a
hall. I'm a pragmatist and I understand
that we don't live in Star Trek The Next
Generation as much as I wish
that that was true.
You know, we do still, you know, we do
still exist in our society.
You know, we
do have to, you know, pay our bills and
so on. So like, I mean, like, for
example, the crates of light, we open
hardware, but we don't make everybody
do the Oshawa Standard open hardware.
Right. We're just trying to meet people
out of that and get them
one step further, right?
So it's open to showing the schematics.
We're like, OK, so open your wire as
well. Is that opening the schematics
in their firmware? I'm like, Why aren't
you releasing your Baudelaires?
Because, you know they're already on that
journey, right?
So you've just got to be like,
like little by little like, come on,
give the people what they want.
But I think you do have to be pragmatic.
You know, you can't like, yell
at people for not being at this on
the same page as you like.
I just don't think that's positive, but I
do agree with you like I'm a hippie
myself, but
I'm pragmatist.
I wasn't the I'm just trying to push
it the other way by thinking
the other way, but I still think that
it doesn't really help a lot to
crowdsource anything and take it.
So why not just embrace that?
Yeah, I think this is I think we are.
We are, and maybe
we have the same idea if it
comes to this idea.
But if it comes to the real world
and then you want, you could
solve not one to
two gets politicians and so on on
your side. And then then you have
the need to have a strategy and
you need to have good arguments
how this hybrid thing can work
in this, like very capitalistic
society. And whereas
for a lot of things, are not these like
business concepts to to have
this kind of stuff.
I mean, is that so I think that's a very
complicated question.
And of course, it is always connected to
to a specific thing, maybe.
And
you ask me if that is something which
should not be open, I believe I
don't know.
I'm not sure that, but maybe that's
something very yeah,
I don't know. I think, Helen, you
are also more on this side,
as if it council asked, Are
you? I think it's nice that
some things are just special
and made an hour
and an hour.
The thing that they are, so you know,
but then this is a little bit to
do to yeah.
And you don't want to talk about this
like in a philosophical
way and then be able to prevent pragmatic
bayside.
Yeah.
Now the decision was that I
really had a question that I wanted to
talk about. Can I try some
of the question? I thought I said,
All right. I'm really
concerned about how people
in the open.
Technology is hardware software, I'm
really concerned about how we treat them
and how we help them earn a living.
And I see so many people
in the source burning
out and
people who, you know,
if they were in an industry that could be
earning a lot more money or this
and that, that's a
question, a problem that really bothers
me. Like at night, it's like, how do we
help people who are working in this way
make a good living?
Is it by helping them create products?
Is it by like getting some
kind of patron thing?
I mean, like, how do we how do we support
the people and all of those things like
the Patriot and all those things like
predicated on you being good at
marketing?
I mean, like, it's really difficult.
It's really difficult.
Like, how do we help people who are
making open source, not
pay the rent?
You know, like what?
Like, you know, inspiring example.
Like, I mean, like, I can give inspiring
examples of some people who are doing
things like like, how are people keeping
their lights on? Is this a hobby?
Do you just have to work from red hot
like or, you know, do something like
what? What is like, how do people make a
living and they can sell hardware
hideaways for that?
So I'll be interested to hear your
thoughts.
And I would probably have good.
Yeah, I can address that from
my perspective.
You know, I was super lucky enough to
come up with a project that caught
fire,
that that caught the ear of the media.
Media loves
examining its own navel, and I created
something that turns TV's off in public
places and media loved it, and they
spread it all over the world.
Within the first two or three days
of my project being available to the
world on my website, and it changed
my life forever for the better.
And I've been making a living from it
ever since.
Not everyone's going to be that lucky to
come up with a project that
markets itself.
So, yeah, like, like, like you said,
Helen, it's really important to
be able to spread the word about your
project and not, you know,
to make a living as
a good example is as an artist.
So to make a living as an artist,
you not only have to be able to do
art that's meaningful for you,
like something's burning inside of you
and it needs to come out into the world.
You have to have skills
for being able to do that
and similar with an electronics
project or a software project
where any kind of project, we have to
have the skills from taking something
that's meaningful for us, burning inside
of us and putting it out into the world
because we really need to do that.
The only other choice is to fight
ourselves. And if we fight ourselves,
as I like to say, you know who loses,
but that doesn't mean you have the skills
for putting your project out into
the world.
How do you put the project out into the
world? That's a whole nother skill
set.
And if you do put it out in the world
now, you've got to be able to deal with
bookkeeping and paying taxes and
running a small business.
Maybe you need help and you need to have
employees, and you need to be able to
know who to hire and new, who not to hire
and who to fire if it comes down to that.
Running a business is another whole set
of skills and being able to juggle
all of these things, learning them as
you're doing everything.
It's not easy and it's rather stressful,
but it's something that's burning inside
of you that needs to come out, so it's
worth doing.
But there's no easy answer for all of
this, but I think
one of the keys is to be
part of a community where there are
people supporting each other.
First of all, into making time and
making it fun to make time to explore
what it is that might be meaningful
to each and every one of us
because we don't necessarily know we're
not trained for that.
After going through school for 16
18, whatever years, each of us
has gone through school.
As some people have famously
said this, the school system beats
the creativity out of us, so
we need to have a space to explore
what's meaningful for us.
And when we're doing that in a community
that's supporting us to do that, we can
do that easier and better than if
we're doing it on our own, which
harkens back to open
hardware, open source again,
because again, it's a whole
bunch of people more eyeballs, more
brains, more psyches, more people
looking at something and improving it.
As a result, we can do something
much better in communities and
on our own in general.
And when there's a community of people
involved who many of whom also
see meaning in the projects that you're
doing.
Many people might want to help, and
some people might be good at creating a
logo, and they can give you an idea
of a way to put your project on another
level that you might not have thought of
on your own.
There might be someone who can
either help with bookkeeping or recommend
a book to.
There might be who loves what they do
and and helps people doing that.
There might be people who are good at
running small businesses who can give you
ideas.
And you know, I learned all this stuff on
my own as as TV
gone suddenly became an overnight,
literally overnight hit.
I had to learn all this stuff, and I was
fortunate that I could do that.
But I was also very fortunate that I had
a whole bunch of friends who were really
good at doing all these things for a time
when I needed their help.
There's a lot of luck and circumstance
involved as well, like with all of with
all of life.
So, yeah, so there's no
magic.
Easy answer.
That's good one size fits all.
But in that kind of abstract
answer, there's perhaps
keys for every one of us in all
of our projects
because it's connected to the question of
how and maybe to a question
in the internet.
I would just say that
maybe also examples
I don't know how they like
if they have like a good
life or not, this stressful life
what you said. I think
Lukas from Berlin, who made this
open heart the notebook here
on Craig's List.
Yeah.
Somebody asked if we can.
Maybe somebody made something
open Hotmail like
the one anti-reform reform
into laboratories and butter.
And I think he has a very stressful
life creating this notebook because
he made all of these things
on his own with a small team and
yet a small production line in his
office. And
yeah, but but he he made this possible,
this with this kind of
internet funding way.
There are other examples like
this,
but yeah, but then we come to this
problem of open budgeting
and delayed then because then we
have a new type
of testing topic.
Well, OK, I can add some really good
because I also saw that question some
good examples of people doing so.
This great Scott Gadget's in the US
are doing really great work and
they do really cool like really cool,
open source tools.
I'd also check out the work of Peter
Eston and who
he was that he's behind a bunch of
different Open-Source tools.
Well, actually, Petersen's got a really
interesting kind of like individual
business model, and he just like for
agents like electronic streaming on
Twitch as well
as well as doing his like proper hardware
stuff. So that's really interesting.
So Pizza Pizza was doing great.
Scott Gadget's Lucas
and Shimon Skou is
another really interesting.
He's he's like a hardware designer with
a product design background as well as
similarly to.
And I don't I like it because he's got
product design, background as well.
But like Tim did the Punaro, which is a
CRM for carrier board and
with an Arduino form factor
ridicule board,
there's a lot of people doing interesting
things.
Who else is good, of course, ADA Fruits
and released their designs as well.
Yeah. SPARC Fine Seed Studio in China.
Yeah, yeah. Evil mad scientist.
Yeah, MSL.
I don't know if EMC, I'll do a lot of
open hardware, but not all of them are
open, I believe.
But anyway, yeah, they do some stuff in
that space. There isn't much
SDR stuff happening in
this particular instance
right now. It's been bonkers
losers at the moment.
Actually, one of the best things about my
job supply is I get to see, like all
of the submissions that are coming in
from, like all over the world, it's like
I get to see like, so we
actually turn down like 90 to 95 percent
of everybody who applies to card supply,
which is what a lot of people know.
But we get to see what everybody's
working on everywhere, and it's really
fun to see all the trends and I can
hardware like people have really done for
us, like SDR, they're going,
they're going like bonkers for SDR at the
moment, which is really, really fun to
see, lots of risk free stuff in the
pipeline as well, which is really cool to
see as well, particularly with this new
Olwen, a G1 chip, which is quite
exciting.
So, yeah, I was wondering, way do people
get turned down? Is it because you try to
help them, not to waste their time on
something that's not realistic in that we
just we know
we're very strict.
So we we we would not
take any product that hasn't got finished
prototype. So I wish I
would be vaporware.
So we require a fully functional
prototype, which I like a lot of people
like, Oh yeah, we can do this and we're
like, OK, cool, show us
like you
say, it's amazing.
And that's how we did.
And then we also got like a bunch of
people who like Christ and my sewing
factory and we're like, No,
we do electronics.
So it's
a big project that it's Open-Source that
maybe we should talk about the
Tesla cars that Open-Source open hardware
only only partly.
Yeah, only partly the
battery.
Yeah, the battery charging stuff
is open source, but a lot of it is not
open source. They they keep it
purposefully proprietary
because they from their point of view
anyways, they have all these things that
need to pass safety standards
and whatnot. They don't want people
going out that doing things
based on their designs, they'll be liable
for something
that was actually not the way they do
that. What would you do?
Interesting. I didn't know that.
Yeah. Well, I know the person who started
Tesla Motors, and it wasn't
that guy that everyone is
probably thinking about to be named.
Yeah. And it was my friend Martin
who started it long before anyone even
knew that name. That shouldn't be named.
And then he got fired by that guy
who shouldn't be named, and he had to be
sued in order to get his stock back
because the guy stole it, et cetera.
That's a long story. But anyways, he
had to come down
with, you know, in the practical
aspect of starting a vehicle company
that was going to be competing
with General Motors and various
other big car companies.
How do you do that?
And he wanted things to be
open, but he didn't want to be
liable for things that could destroy the
company as well.
Interesting.
How do you deal with liability issues
because it comes up again and again,
because people are also afraid that their
brand gets
damaged and so on?
So like, is that like a how to
of like avoiding liability issues?
Or you just need to hire a lawyer
or like like, how do you do it?
Do you do have problems?
Have you had problems personally in that
field? I have.
Interestingly enough, even though to be
gone is a totally open source project.
There was someone who stole it
and that was a former customer.
As soon as he stole it, he was no
longer a customer.
So suddenly there
were things that looked exactly like
TV be gone remote controls out in the
world, but with a different box, but with
my name on it.
And so I
I have a bunch of fans, right?
When you're open source, there are a
whole bunch of people who are looking out
for you. And so within an hour
and a half of this thing going out in the
market, I had like 100
emails saying, What's this?
This probably isn't you?
What's going on?
So I called up my ex
customer by their next
customer and he said, Oh yeah, you
weren't giving us a good enough price, so
we reverse engineered it.
And it turned out they did very poorly.
But they had my name and my
trademark on the box,
you know?
So I had to sue them to make them stop
because this was a piece of crap.
So I didn't want to license my name
to them because it was just so
it was. It would destroy the product
because I bought a bunch
and a third of them didn't work, and the
ones that did work didn't work very well.
All they had to do was copy
exactly my plans, which were freely
available online, and they would have had
a great product, but it might have cost
more than they wanted.
So they reverse engineered it and made
these pieces of crap.
And I had to hire lawyers.
Fortunately, my brother's
a lawyer and he loves what
he does. He recommended someone
in the UK where this horrible company was
to help me, who also loves doing
what they were doing and
they helped me.
And that was stressful and
it cost me because
in the UK, the
in order to stop frivolous lawsuits like
in the US, which is a very litigious
society, they make it so
that it's very, very difficult to even
make back all of your
legal fees, let alone make a profit
off of a law case.
So even if you're 100 percent in the
right and the judge says yes, you're 100
percent in the right, the most you ever
get back in general is like sixty five
percent of your legal fee, which became
quite high. So I lost sixty five thousand
pounds in this process
so that it's quite a bit of money and
that that and that I lost money
for a year and a half before I started
making money again on my product.
So that was stressful.
But the thing is, we live
in a world where maybe
you've noticed there's like sort of
capitalism all around us and
in capitalism, any way people can make
money, they will, including with lawsuits
and including by stealing
open source projects
if they think they can make a quick buck
on it. So that's what?
These people did, by the way, these
people are long out of business.
It didn't work for them, it backfired.
So the thing is we really can't
stop that from happening.
But if we put our thing out in
good faith into the world, into a context
that we believe in.
Chances are much better that things
will work out for us.
There's no guarantees, for sure.
But since especially now
where we're when we put out open
source projects, we have a lot of
goodwill and therefore people are very
much willing to help us much more
than they would for a proprietary
product.
And they're even lawyers who are willing
to give us a little bit of a break
and sometimes for free if
it's an open project rather than a
proprietary project.
So there's this going for us,
at least for now.
I think that's a pretty good transition
for these time
you spend in tonight's during all
of the industry
or of the of the things
you explore there.
And because China has interesting
IP, more flexible and
more interesting innovation,
which would you talk about that?
I think it's a good momentum.
I think that would actually be a really
good question because, you know, like
culturally, the idea of open hardware,
even from moving from Europe to the US,
completely different and lots
of different reasons as well.
Yeah. And China's again, like
very, very much just disappear.
So I disappeared momentarily
for a technical reason.
But I'm back. So but I heard what
you were talking about.
China is a very interesting
set of circumstances.
The talk at exhaling right
here before ours was a prerecorded
talk about mythology
around China, and that was a very
interesting talk.
That's worth looking up if you missed
that.
China is a very much a mixed bag, but if
you're going to do anything
in electronics, China
is probably the place you're going
to have to deal with, at least in part
because that's the place in the world
that has the complete supply
chain, the whole the whole deal
is there. PC boards in general
are made there.
The many of the parts are made
nearby, if not in China.
They're distributed through China.
Stuff is manufactured in China.
It's just all of the resources there
in general are in China.
Eight Fruit is is a pretty good exception
to this because they try as much as they
can to do things locally, which for that
in their cases in the United States.
In China, it's the most capitalist
place in the world, despite what
the mythology around China
claims. But
there, when people want to make
money because there's capitalism all
around this anywhere, they can do what
they do.
And so there's a lot of people who are
focused on just making the money and not
doing things well.
So if you're going to do things
in China, it's really important to
our anywhere in the world.
It's really important to do your homework
and to talk to these people.
And if at all possible to visit
because when you visit a place, you
might find out that they were just
telling you what you wanted to hear
rather than the reality.
And also just you can you
can do projects remotely, but
it's it's much, much better when there's
face to face contact and then you get to
know people sort of body language and you
can get to see, Oh, these people are
really friendly. You learn to trust each
other much, much quicker than if it's
remote. And then when there's a
misunderstanding and there always will be
over email or whatever, then
you find that person's really nice.
There must be some reason for
for this misunderstanding, and it's much
easier to clear up.
So, yeah,
the PC boards for
our little projects, we can go
to PC Way or jail,
CPCB or any of these other big ones.
And it's really inexpensive to
jumpstart your project this way, and it
takes very, very little money.
It just takes your time.
And then once you have that, you can find
some good manufacturers.
I found one that I've been with since
2005, and
they're fantastic.
They've helped me so much that take
responsibility for when they make a
mistake and everyone makes mistakes.
Some companies don't do that,
and they also are very,
very happy to help people with
their open hardware projects,
even if it's just small quantities and
help them put it out into the world.
And they have a lot of experience at this
point and a lot of the experience they
gained through
helping me put out my projects and we
learned together.
So if anyone out there has a project that
they think can
benefit from an actual manufacturer in
China, contact me.
It's totally fine and I can connect you
with them.
If if you get a good feeling from
them, maybe they're a good match, but you
should always ask like one or two
other companies,
if you can, just to make sure as a
reality check and pick the ones
that you feel are best for you because
the manufacturer you have, if you go that
route is basically a partner,
even if they're not a legal partner
because they're they're part of your
life. Everything they do
reflects on you and not so much
on them.
So but the interesting thing with China
is that everything is based on
relationships, and
that's true all over the world, but even
more so in China.
So even though it's the case that it's
capitalism and people will make money any
way they can legally, ethically
or otherwise.
Relationships are very valuable
there, so if they're
going to sacrifice
a relationship that they've built up with
you, whether it's for a few days, a few
weeks or a few years, they're not going
to do that lightly just for a quick buck,
so easily.
Some will, but most won't,
because their relationship is valuable
because who knows where that goes in the
future?
It might go nowhere, but you know that
connection connects to other people,
connect to other people.
The relationship I have with my
manufacturer
means that I've recommended and it's
one that I value and that they value.
That means that I've recommended people
to them, and some of those
connections have made them
tens of millions of dollars,
US dollars.
So that's a super valuable
relationship that they don't want to
sacrifice with me just to make a quick
buck by copying my thing, for instance,
or copying any of the people I
recommended to them, because that would
sever a whole bunch of relationships.
So learning to navigate all of
these things is really valuable, and
that's part of the bag of tools
that we all have to have if we're going
to go the route of making a living
on our projects.
And even though that's not necessarily
easy.
I want to encourage people to explore
that as a possibility so that we all
make a living as all of us do
here, doing things
that are meaningful to us, things that we
love doing rather than just getting some
stupid job that makes us enough money so
we can buy food and shelter so we can
have hopefully have enough time to do
things that are meaningful.
These are both options.
Oh sorry, Mitch.
Philip joined out of.
And we'd do a quick introduction.
You do a quick introduction to yourself.
Maybe. And then we use the
five minutes of our extra time or
something to speak and quickly
a little bit about like open climate and
open hardware in that connection or
something, I suggest.
Just very happy to be here with you
all.
I was telling everyone before the
session that
it was this was a great excuse for us
to see each other.
And turns out they made a horrible
mistake of miscalculated the time
zone difference.
So I thought, like this session was going
to start 60 Minutes
from now, and I'm terribly
late, so I'm really sorry for being like,
horribly late.
It sucks, so I'm not feeling very good
right now.
Minds, minds, every night,
we would just have to pretend we're just
happy. You're here, don't
I?
It's good to see you all.
So basically, I don't want to just
interrupt this important conversation
about trying to knock on harder.
So basically just
to say a few words real quick.
So my name is Felipe.
I know most of you are from
or hackerspace
and the hardware and free software
adventures and different parts of the
world I've
been.
I'm one of the founders of the journal
Open Hardware, and I've been involved
in free software for a while,
helping organize the International
Free Software Forum Brazil
for, you know, for for a while.
And I'm really interested
now and I'm working on a new project
in Alaska and I'm interested in open
hardware, scientific instrumentation.
How can we bring open hardware to
climate research
and to create
a culture of hardware sharing, not only
software sharing for scientific research,
but community science
that is grounded in the practices
that we developed in free software and
open to some really
dedicated to that.
I know you are all very interested
in this. And I think this is an important
opportunity for us to discuss that.
But I will not say anything any more.
I'm going to zip up and then we can go
back to China and then return to go
to to to the topic of climate later,
if I may. I think there's a great
connection and I feel
like we can use
this.
You were talking about people cloning
Project Meat and and
I feel like there's probably a way
to hack the hackers for calculations
like that or the clones by
giving them this fake idea
or actually a real one, that
these particular hardware can
be used for other things.
And they can think, Oh, I can make a lot
of money with that then, and they will
replicate your project and make it
even more affordable and so that everyone
can benefit.
I think there's some interesting
hack of hack that should be thought
of. Yeah, we
there there's I was a hacker
in residence at a hacker space in
Zagreb, Croatia, called
right the owner, and they
actually came up with
that idea that you just said for their
project, which is
an open hardware platform for FPGAs.
They did not want to
if they didn't have a budget for one
thing, but they didn't want to, like,
devote their lives to making
a budget and create a
company and all of this stuff.
So what they wanted to do was to
have a Kickstarter project or some kind
of crowdsourced thing that made it look
like this is a super popular thing so
that some companies in China
would just replicate this thing and put
it all over the world, and then they
wouldn't have to do anything.
So
I don't think they ever did that.
But I just saw their project
in the PCB Way
annual contest, which I've been
a judge for for the last four years,
and I was just seeing that.
So they're still working on this project
four years later, and
hopefully things like that will
get put out into the world because this
is a way for people to make super
powerful, complicated
projects with very inexpensive
hardware.
And so if
if there are ways to get this
out into the world,
a lot of people can benefit from it.
And I think this
topic Open-Source hologram
in the science context
is very interesting and I want
you to rise again my question from the
beginning, but I will.
I want to precise and a little bit more
because. But but what I
meant with my question at the beginning
is, is there something
which we can call public
interest tech in the hot scene
so like technology
which need to be open
like that
because it
does, it has the aim
which helps everybody in a kind of
sense. It's not just like a toaster.
Was some like this, is it?
I think, you know, if you look at
the pandemic and so on.
You know, and so I think it's
something, but I don't know what you
think about this question.
I think that's a really good, and I
actually had a question for that which
is similar to this, that I wanted to add
into the mix for this part of the
discussion, which was
so I see so many
open science tools coming up
now. I'm finding that incredibly
inspiring to me.
I think it's the most important part of
open source hardware.
Is this movement within open science
like it's most interesting to
me and most important to me anyway, like
creating these tools that open science.
And I think that what you just said,
Maximilian, the
idea that some technology
is in the public interest and therefore
it should not, you know,
it should be shared.
I think that's a really, really
interesting area of discussion.
I'm really curious to hear from you,
Louise, what your impressions
are being somebody who's so,
so, so much into the open science
movement. Like how much are you seeing?
A lot of people come from hardware, they
come in from software. Are they
scientists who are learning these skills?
Like like what?
What is the community comprised of in the
open science and open science hardware?
I'd be interested to learn more.
Well, it's I think I'm
with you in this excitement,
with the possibilities we have
of bringing open hardware
and free and open source
practices of sharing and community
making to the sciences.
But when it comes to open science more
broadly, I think it's kind of it
is. It's a very diverse community
like you have folks who are
only in publishing, debating questions of
publishing and creating platforms
and publishing.
You have you have folks who are really
into building software for
reproducible and scientific workflows.
And in us like doing the
hardware side of things like we're very
new and the small community.
But as you said, like, it's really
exciting because we're very we come from
different parts of the world.
We're really concerned with the state of
science in terms of like IP hoarding
and in terms of the inequalities that
characterize and have been characterizing
the field of science as forever like.
We need to change science as if it's
being made and make it more accessible
and make it more inclusive.
So I see that the open
science is a very complicated rubric
right now because
you have even of actors
like corporate actors who had nothing
to do with anything open
whatsoever who are now
trying to join and calling themselves
open and involved in open access.
And I'm talking about those of view.
Right? So it is
it is a complicated rubric.
So I think there's a lot of work that we
need to do to
bring what we do in open Harvard
to open science.
And I don't think we're quite there yet.
I think there's more work to do.
But that would be my impression, you
know, my personal impression of
the state of the field.
And some of the feeling that in Germany
or in Europe, we have the chance
to really work on this public
money public tech topic
because there's also like the new
government now it is right to repair
happening.
We as point on the agenda
so. So there is some, some motion
in the right direction.
I wonder from this
US centric perspective, for us, something
is there like like similar pathways
that one can really like tie funding to
open hardware and have a similar
idea? Or is this impossible?
Well, I wouldn't say it's impossible, but
it's a hard sell in the United States
where we have a long history
of, if anything cool is going to happen,
we have to get together with other people
and do it ourselves.
We don't rely on the government to do it,
that's for sure.
It's interesting that after
World War Two, the United States paid for
governments to come together.
And of course, the motivation was
for economic control,
the wrong reasons. But as a result,
there is a culture here that
people expect that if something cool is
going to happen, the government should
pay for it and they should be like, Why
do we have these governments if they're
not going to give us some
kind of return for the
power that we give them?
But in the United States, there is
an open there is a right to
repair movement going on.
And there's this one guy,
Louis Rossman, who's been putting out
all these incredible videos
through the last many years
about how to repair things that seem
impossible to repair, like Apple
laptops.
But he does that and he shows people how
to do that, and he's been driving this
right to repair a thing.
And you've got Steve Wozniak, the guy
who created the first Apple
computer, which was totally open
when it came out the Apple two.
But then Steve Jobs came along and says,
not with my company.
And then he squeezed all these people out
and people lost their
shares of stock.
Similar story to some other people
who are kind of dicks. But anyway, Steve
Wozniak got on board and
and he's kind of high-profile, so
it's getting some traction.
So there's possibilities there.
There's also possibilities
that
the government people in government
are seeing that there's an advantage for
more people to see of
security issues.
And there's been a lot of security issues
you might have noticed that have bitten
large corporations in
places where they don't want to be bitten
because it hurts their
quarterly earnings, which is a bad thing.
And then these politicians don't get
reelected if they don't get the money
from these corporations as
a result. So anyways, there's
possibilities.
It's not impossible and we
should be encouraging that.
I would say that also something that's
been really catching my eye over the last
few years in terms of open hardware have
been public institutions
like CERN who've been publicly
funding the great deal of work
and seen this
as particle accelerator laboratory thing
in Switzerland. And they and they own
a hardware team there.
And in fact, for a number of years,
they were heavily and investing in
key as well the the open source
design tool, which massively pushed on.
So do you see that there's there is
opportunity because of the centralized
funding in Europe, there's opportunity
to make quite big changes like so
centrally funded, like science,
I guess, right? There's a lot of like the
EU funds, it gives a lot of money
to these institutions, whereas I guess
in the US recent immigrants, I really
know like there's a lot more defense
funding, right?
You know, it is less it's like
that there's a lot of money in the EU
that's for these, these research things.
And then there's people that are questioning
that.
So if we're paying for this without
taxes, then why is this not open?
And that's a very strong argument because
like, how can you argue with that?
Like if the citizens are paying
for the stuff to be developers, then
how do they not have access to the
papers? How do they not?
How are they not allowed to know how the
methodology was then?
How are they not allowed to see this?
You know, that's a very strong argument
for open science.
Open hardware is like, Hello, we're
paying for it. It should be publicly
accessible.
Yeah. So I don't know.
I think in Germany about this is just
a theory and
an open heart.
A hot beverage comes out of the science
sector is kind of like kind of implicit
or maybe explicit
push for the economy.
You know, it's all because sometimes
there are startups, maybe starting
out of this.
I think this the idea was they have,
but I don't know.
So maybe you get.
This argument, if you say
here and may, may,
may make all of this, all of them have
it. And I think we all agree that
we only have a few minutes
and a lot of questions in our
heads. I don't know if we can answer
all of these in this
short time. I answered some of them,
but there is one which is maybe
very interesting, but it's not possible
to with.
We could try. Do you see the interests
of hackers looking for a box that open up
that compared to the interest attracted
by biotechnology programs offered by
corporations?
I don't know if somebody is able to
answer this very shortly.
Well, if there are projects that
people feel that it's it's
part of, you know, they have their heart
into it, of course they're going to be
looking into it.
But if it's just
being motivated by making money,
there's a whole bunch of people who are
motivated only by making money who are
going for the ones with big bounties.
But there was talk Maxine
was at yesterday
about responsible disclosure,
and that's all stuff that's being
driven just because people know it's the
right thing to do.
So, yeah, if things
are open, there will be some at least
percentage of people who will be doing
it just because it's something they're
driven to do from inside rather
than externally through
making more money.
Yes.
On this topic, I think
there's opportunities for
compensating folks for fixing
problems.
But I think what's happening and has
been happening, I'm working on a project
right now. It's it's a small project.
We're funding a small company,
an open hardware company called
Electronic Parts of Mexico.
And I'm working with them and we're
reporting micro
on to a microcontroller that is
a low power microcontroller from the same
series.
And this is something that I think
happens a lot in open hardware, and we
need to see more of that.
We need to see investment in
fixing problems and porting
frameworks that we have two different
chips.
So we have alternatives when we have a
shortage of a particular chip.
And we can also reuse chips
that are not as popular but are widely
available. We shouldn't just dispose
things. We should be reusing things as
much as we can.
So other than fixing problems
and bugs, I think there's also
a need for investing heavily
in to addressing things that we need.
Lake Lee was Ellen
was talking about the
Shurn. The investment that certain made
on keycard that Ellen was talking about
was massive and that transformed Kit-Kat
as a project.
So now Kit Kat is like a breeze, and it's
lovely to use.
And before CERN came into the picture,
keycard was a nightmare.
It was really hard to use.
So now it's just that that's
the importance of investing in the tools
that we have that we need.
Yeah. So we've got to wrap up now.
Unfortunately, we're out of time.
But just one brief comment before we
go in a government
investing in open hardware,
open software.
All these open projects is an investment
for the infrastructure, for all of
society. Very much like making roads
has been and railroads
and all of these other factors that other
people pick up on that can then
add to the economy in so many
huge, unknown ways.
And what we're doing, all of us here
collectively is adding our little parts
of that. But if the government got
involved, that could multiply
and in
a huge way.
And with
that, I think we're really out of time.
So it's been great seeing all of you.
I hope we can all be together at
a Congress, all in
one wonderful place again,
perhaps next year, perhaps one of
the camps this summer.
Perhaps hope in New York?
Who knows?
So wait, there's
an open source hardware summit.
Maybe? Who knows?
But that's in May, isn't it?
I always forget the day.
I always say wrong, but it's either in
April or May.
Open Source Hardware Summit in New York
and there is also I
run a festival or, you know,
theoretically do as never happens since
I've had my new job.
But there's a cold today in
Portland or Portland,
Oregon. So if anybody is local
and I'm just blown open, how do I do come
along to that then?
Probably in September.
So, yeah, but yeah, how can
I talk to someone who's going?
Is anyone going?
Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to go.
Yeah, that's a whole
nother excuse.
Yeah, if it happens, I'm going.
So yeah, is
it? Yeah, yeah.
Super cool.
Thank you all.
We're doing a little talk tomorrow on
the prototype and hardware at seven a.m.
stage.
Yeah, and I would love to continue
assembly, but I think we'll have to
read through this another time.
And thank you all.
Thank you so much.
Renee, nice to see some of you in person
for, you know,
not just on person square.
Yeah. And I'm desperately jealous of
Match being in Zion.
It's really nice to see
you.
Yes.
Thanks everyone
for having this discussion here with
us on the exciting stage.