Does OSE allow non-open source, DIY products in its product ecosystem?
I would like to raise the subject some time of including the OpenERV in the Seed Eco home,I know you dislike the license it currently has, but I am trying to get the development costs paid off so I can justify releasing it under an MIT license, but I'm never going to be able to do that if I can't make some progress along the way. Basically things just aren't done yet, but they never will be if the community doesn't see the project as worthwhile and support it a little. The Seed eco-home needs an ERV of some kind, and this is the only open source one, plus it gets good performance.
To restate the question:
Does OSE allow non-open source, DIY products in its product ecosystem?
The short answer is that we cannot use it in our official release, which has open source integrity and is important for our brand. Clearly you must understand that we believe deeply in open source, and any content that could be open but is not only dilutes our brand and is not good for our core message and brand. Personally, I dislike the representation of non-open hardware as open - such as OpenROV or Little Bits - and would never promote their products withing our ecosystem. Though I would promote studying how they do things, so that we can create the open source counterpart. Further, there is a technicality, in that anyone who builds our Seed Eco-Home, and builds their own ERV based on your design - will be breaking IP law - the law you determine by declaring a non-commercial license. This means that special provisions clarifying this point will have to be made in future sales, or some disclaimer, which is exaclty the type of waste (competitive waste) that OSE doesn't play with and does not want to play with for the purpose of optimizing unleashed collaboration. I would not allow the publishing of your design in the official OSE documentation for the Seed Eco-Home because the Seed Eco-Home is 100% open source (outside of course of products that we buy off the shelf). So please understand that if we used your ERV - then we could no longer call the Seed Eco-Home 100% open source, and would have to change our messaging around its open source nature, otherwise we would not be transparent or open ourselves. I am unequivocally not willing to do that. However, you are welcome to publish your ERV elsewhere on the wiki, though you would have to use a clear disclaimer that the design is not open source. This is because people might confuse a DIY product with open source. People typically do not confuse commercial products with open source, because commercial products are not expected to be open source. But since your product is DIY, the expectation may be that it is open source, and thus the disclaimer is needed as I suggested. The better solution is to open source it, and collaborate with OSE without limitations. One possibility is that you recognize that OSE can train you to be a builder, or a crew leader, or an entreprenuer, to build homes. Like I will be doing. You can make a living on that. Not sure how easy it will be to make a living on the ERV. Now you may be asking, why such a big fuss over this ERV? Well, if we followed your suggestion, OSE would not exist. It would be a different project. It's the details that matter - for us - it's the specific detail of proving that only via fully open economic creation can we change the world. This is a big question. It requires a very deliberate approach, where the details of how we move forward in the marketplace really matter. So that's a long answer ot why we don't use non-open source DIY items. In short, it dilutes our brand. Our brand is 100% inspiration, or at least a 100% intent for 100% inspiration and we stand true to that wherever possible, for the common good. 99% doesn't cut it, since one of our core values is providing hope to the general population - via open and unleashed collaboration. 'It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.' - Walter Benjamin.
(I put this on the wiki for the hundreds of other instances of this same question that OSE comes in contact with)
