Not Open Source Hardware.

I actually find all this discussion about open hardware and what is or isn't really funny. How many of these open source hardware are really as open as they expound. Those that use electronic component do they make available the actual die designs and lithograph plates or are they closed design proprietry designs? Afterall if you have the capabilities to make chips those would allow you to make your own. If not why is it OK to use closed source non CPU chips when it isn't alright to use a closed source CPU chip?

You raise a good point - almost all Open Source Hardware project I know of are only open down to some level of abstraction.  That tends to be the silicon.  There are efforts like OpenCores to even open up that aspect but I think that is quite a bit far off for many applications. 

There was a good presentation on this topic at the Open Source Hardware Summit:

http://www.openhardwaresummit.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Open_Sourcing_the_IC-s.pdf

[PDF]

Cheers,

Drew

How many silicon dies and/or chips have you made recently in your home lab?

For most of the chips used in OSHW designs information on how to use particular chip is available (read - data-sheet) whereas Broadcom is notorious for consealing all information about it's chips from mere mortals. OK, in this case Raspberry Pi Foundation found the way to publish most of the datasheet, except GPU part.

I haven't made any PCBs in my home lab either. I couldn't recreate proprietary software libraries either. Some people get very evangelical about open hardware or open source but seemingly choose to ignore their own arguments when it doesn't suit their particular view of the world. The simplistic view of open hardware is that you have ALL the information to recreate it for yourself without any proprietry items getting in the way. If you don't have the die design and die lithographs then you can't recreate it. Similarly if you don't have the doping information for the silicon then again you can't recreate it. The fact that you need specialist equipment or a heck of a lot of money isn't in question, maybe I am a chip manufacture and have the facilities. (I'm not but I'm making the point in a silly way.) I've never seen open hardware defined as open only as far as you have the money.

Practically you have to draw the line somewhere but the various arguments do seem to be somewhat arbitrary at times. Another silly example say you have an open hardware device which is truely open all the way down to the raw ingredients. Lets say it is a computer like the Pi. What happens if you connect it to a TV which isn't open hardware does that make no longer open hardware because it includes a proprietary element. If that is OK why is a proprietary graphics chip different? You just substituted an proprietary element without knowing about its innards so why is the graphics chip any different.

I'm sure one argument could be you can operate a Pi headless without a display, but there again if you can operate it headless without a display why do you need a graphics chip (even if it is part of the SOC).

By the way just for clarification I'm not treating this seriously I'm not hung up on open hardware etc just interested in the conversation.

I think the most notable thing about the RPi is the intention of the designers, and the price point they designed to and achieved. Speaking as a circuit designer I doubt there is anything unique about the actual PCB layout. Not to minimize the effort of the designers, but similar embedded PC designs exist, and there are many designers who are capable of generating that type of board, given some requirements. To me, what is new here is the price.

I look forward to the release of the schematics. I suppose the layout files might help anyone who intends to build something similar, but I suspect at the moment that's more likely a midsize or larger company, than an individual. They aren't that interesting to me personally, because high pin count, fine-pitch BGA parts aren't so workable at the hobbyist level right now (to say nothing of the PoP memory-cpu stack). 

Interesting thing about this device is that it isn't much different from cheap wifi routers, except routers do not have GPU, but have case, wall wart and wifi built in. Nobody gets too excited about cheap wifi routers these days
So what is so much different about Raspberry Pi?

I think this thread is hilarious. someone said open source hardware instead of open source.

Having been up since 5 am and still not managing to order one, I think some should unregister their interest to spend some more time discussing this, and allow me to move up the queue.

He He. Just injecting a bit of lightheartedness to lighten my foul mood at not getting an order in.... !!

>Nobody gets too excited about cheap wifi routers these days.

A few months ago I looked into getting a cheap router to put OpenWRT on. There is a big hardware list at http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start (maybe too big). When I actually looked for units to buy,  I could not find anything I felt confident would really work, at the price point of the RPi. Reading through forums, all of them seem to have various unique quirks and "features" and models seem to be quickly obsoleted so those with the most support seemed to be no longer sold. Some revisions of a supported model can't run OpenWRT due to SW or HW changes (of course the mfr. doesn't intend them to run 3rd party software), and the vendor won't tell you which you'll be getting... with limited time for my projects, it just seemed like it might be an uphill battle.  And, of course routers generally don't have HDMI outputs, audio out etc.

By contrast, apart from being very affordable, the RPi is designed from the ground up to run Linux and support open-ended development and general hacking. It just seems like the right tool for the job, if you want a super small/cheap/low-power Linux box.

I think one of the reasons to be a "Not Open Source Hardware", have to be with codecs licensing. They have "closed source libraries that give access to the GPU acceleration features."

http://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/index.php/2012/01/31/raspberry-pi-detail-system-libraries-and-codecs-support/

I think that the GPU can hardware decode more codecs than only MPEG4 and h.264, but they have to limit that whit the closed libraries, because the device would be more expensive only to pay royalties to patents holders of the additional codecs 

There has been a lot of interesting and useful discussion. And again, just to make clear, I think that the RP is incredibly worthwhile, a great achievement, and I'm not criticising the RP Foundation here for the approach that they have taken. Rather instead I'm calling out the error in referring to this as "open source hardware" — which it emphatically is not.

Open source hardware means something very specific, as does open source software, and "open source" in and of itself is ambigous. I've heard quite a few times the RP being referred to as open source hardware, with comparisons being made to Arduino and BeagleBoard etc, and this is extremely misleading and akin to suggesting that MS Word is open source because you could write an open source novel using it.

The open source hardware movement has seen exponential growth, is receiving a lot of interest, and with players such as Facebook and Ford Motor investing heavily, and coverage from the likes of Forbes and the Economist etc. The conflation of markedly proprietary hardware and open source hardware is most unhelpful, and does a disservice to those who take the leap of faith and publish hardware design artefacts under a liberal license.

On of the matter of using non-open source components in a design — we mostly don't have much choice, and the generally accepted community norm would be open source schematics, BoM and Gerbers, and HDL source too if there is there is an FPGA in the design. If you produce a design with no schematics made available under a liberal license, it cannot be regarded as open source hardware. Simple.

Finally, and just to make absolutely clear: I'm not downplaying the RP, and I'm not nit-picking — but to call the RP open source hardware is disingenous at best.