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Not Open Source Hardware.

Former Member

Hello,

 

Firstly, I would like to make clear that I am a huge fan of the Raspberry Pi and I cannot wait to pick one (or three!) up for myself. However, can we just set the record straight: it is not open source hardware — the schematics and/or Gerber files etc. are not provided and made available under a suitably liberal licence, i.e. as per:

 

http://www.opensource.org/osd.html

 

It runs open source software, but then so can an Apple laptop and an IBM mainframe. Please cease referring to this as open source hardware, which is something quite different. For further clarity, see:

 

http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW#Open_Source_Hardware_.28OSHW.29_Definition_1.0

 

and:

 

http://wiki.openhardware.org/Project:Certified_Open_Hardware_License_Approval_Process

 

This is not to downplay the RP which is an incredible achievement, and having met David and Liz last year and discussed this with them I have a little insight into perhaps why it is, for now at least, a proprietary (closed) hardware design.

 

Regards,

 

Andrew

Parents

  • Hi - that's a very good point which I was thinking about this as I was wondering if I should refer to it as Open Source Hardware. 

     

    I saw that image of a gerber was posted on their blog and the comment was the the design files would be posted eventually.  So I would have to agree with you that currently it doesn't really live up to that definition.  I got the feeling from reading the posts on the Raspberry Pi site that the intention is to be open though.

     

    Cheers,

    Drew

  • in reply to fustini

    Since the RPi fourm is down for today due the launch traffic here is the post I mentioned via Google cache:

     

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1iF-W6p9Z20J:www.raspberrypi.org/archives/344+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

     

    Liz responds in the comments:

    We should be publishing the lot later on for everybody when we release the whole design.

     

    There has also been discussion over the closed source nature of the GPU driver.  This post via Google cache has a good overview:

     

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:caVPDOLUgqIJ:www.raspberrypi.org/archives/592+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

    The Open/Closed source debate can become quite heated, as those perusing the comments and forums may have noticed. As stated above, the host side libraries for the graphics acceleration are closed source and are provided by the SoC supplier. The Foundation has no control over the closed nature of these libraries. Since the vast majority of people simply use libraries such as these, it was deeded a trade off worth making to get the high graphics performance. It’s worth noting there are no other SoC devices with a similar graphics performance that are open source. There is no GPL issue here, these are user side libraries not linked in any way to the kernel.

     

    So I hope that the situation improves over time and the designs are released once things settle down and maybe the propriertary nature of the graphics acceleration could be better addressed.

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