DIN SPEC 3105

Good afternoon OSH pioneers, it has been a long run: We are celebrating the release of v0.10.0 of the first official standard in the field of OSH, which itself is the first official open source standard: DIN SPEC 3105.

1) Thousand thanks to all of you

This work would have been impossible without you. Seriously. Every one of you in this mailing list put his or her bit to it. From precise, uncomfortable questions & comments over extensive insights to impressive editorial work – you made it possible. I found it surprisingly easy to work with you, a big, diverse group of activists, spread over different professional fields and time zones. Information, feedback, contacts… it was all there, I just needed to keep it together and write a few mails. Also a huge thanks to the DIN employees that constantly pushed the topic internally so also the board came to the decision to support this project. I’m observing a growing interest for open source in this institution; curious to see what comes next :) Thanks for this amazing experience. The results belong to all of us now :)

2) Get the release here ↓

There are various ways to access the standard now:

• the standard way: DIN’s Beuth Webshop
  • DIN SPEC 3105-1
  • DIN SPEC 3105-2
  • the webshop has not been designed for open source standards, so you will need to register and ‘buy’ the standard for 0 €
• our (now public) Gitlab repository
  • quick link to the release here
• DIN’s new collaborative platform: din.one
  • once the section is public, you can access the standard here

Feedback collection as well as further development will happen in the Gitlab repository. We rely on markdown; the current version in the master branch is automatically converted into HTML and PDF (using pandoc), which can be accessed by the README. The subtitle in export files includes the manual version tag (e.g. v0.10.0) followed by the corresponding hash of the last commit.

3) Not the end of the road

Now it’s time to use the standard. We are setting up the first ‘conformity assessment body according to DIN SPEC 3105-2’ for OSH, using a new section on oho.wiki as a discussion platform. The whole assessment process is community-based. It won’t work without you. Which is good, as we want to prevent the creation of yet more power concentrations and bottlenecks. This means, someone uploads a documentation release, others look over it, maybe try to rebuild the piece of hardware, give constructive feedback and finally ‘approve’ that the technical documentation is complete and has been released under a free/open license. Our idea is that OSH projects will review each other as a) they know their field of technology best (e.g. OSH ventilator teams reviewing each other’s hardware designs) and b) this leads to passive networking as a side effect, projects meet each other. If you want to review some hardware or get reviewed, just give me a quick mail to mh@oho.wiki For most actors at the moment this will be just an official, shareable confirmation that others can exploit their hardware design according to the 4 rights of open source. However, we (TU Berlin, Open Knowledge Foundation, OSE Germany and lots of others) submitted a EU proposal a couple of weeks ago for an Open Hardware Fund. This would guide projects from prototype state over CE certification to decentralised (mass) production, including financial support. A fundamental funding criterion of course would be ‘being open source’ – or in other words now: holding a DIN SPEC 3105 attestation. This shall work for other funding opportunities as well. ‘Public money, public code’ and the open access movement enjoy an increasing support. Include DIN SPEC 3105 in your next project proposal. Make your hardware design (‘documented in compliance with DIN SPEC 3105-1’) a deliverable of your research project. And feel free to ask me for support if needed.

4) Spread the word

I’m very bad in PR when it comes to social media. I don’t even have a facebook account. If you feel this message should go around the globe: Please share it; I won’t reach too many people. If you need material (text, graphics, statements, whatever), I’ll try my best to get it for you.

Have a wonderful Sunday

Enjoy the sun, stay healthy. And as always: Feel free to reach out in case of questions, feedback etc. And please don’t take it personally when I’m taking too much time to respond; mails come in waves sometimes. In urgent cases don’t hesitate to text me on telegram or call me directly; you can find my contact details below in the signature. BTW Markdown rendering works again for Thunderbird; loving it! :)

--

Martin Häuer Project Manager +49 151 28258755 martin.haeuer@ose-germany.de @moedn (telegram) Open Source Ecology Germany e. V. +49 30 / 922 824 26 verein@ose-germany.de ose-germany.de Knobelsdorffstr. 22 14059 Berlin