Licensing
under heavy construction...
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This document explains the license of Sensorica-labeled artifacts (hardware solutions). Sensorica is an OVN, designing, producing and distributing IoT solutions.
NOTE: In this document we are consciously avoiding the use of the term product, to steer clear from cognitive interference. For most people, the term product designates a material good or service that is distributed through markets. Linux, the operating system is not a product. Wikipedia is not a service that people pay to access content. The property regime of Linux and of the content on Wikipedia is commons. Solutions built through commons-based peer production are not destined for market transactions, and thus they don’t fit the traditional economic definition of a product.
Table of contents
License for all the work on the OVN model
License for all the work on sensing technology
Low-cost, one time, wide adoption/use hardware solutions
There is no one-fit-all type solution for hardware licensing. It depends on the nature of the artifact, as well as on the context in which the artifact is brought into existence and is distributed. Every situation defines a specific game. We need to understand what possible games we can play, to choose our games and to learn how to play them well. Some games require more control over designs than others. We cannot play all games! We have some choices to make...
A license sets the degree of control we chose to apply to our creations, and influences their future development. Control is not always needed and in some cases it is even detrimental. In other cases, control is necessary in order to insure the sustainability of a given economic operation.
To adopt the best license agreement we need to take into consideration different factors.
The OVN model and infrastructure developed by the Sensorica community in collaboration with others is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The work is documented on the OVN wiki.
Sensorica started by putting a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License on all technical documents such as RnD docs, Instructibles and manuals.
The CERN Strongly Reciprocal Open Hardware License is now widely used for open source hardware.
NOTE: we give to anyone the right to commercially use our technology!
Read Tibi’s post: How to play the open game in the present and future economy.
We believe that the tactic we’re employing at this moment works when the nature of the hardware solution leads to a repeated and long-term game between affiliates of the OVN (researchers, designers, manufacturers, marketers, distributors...). This situation arises especially for material artifacts that have a rapid evolution (e.g. electronic devices), that have high costs of reproduction, that require special knowledge for marketing and for servicing. High-tech products usually fall into this category.
It is assumed that Sensorica will develop hardware solutions for which there will be a high dependency between designers on one side, and manufacturers and distributors on the other side.
Once we develop our manufacturing and distribution network, the economic situation will improve for Sensorica affiliates, because they will be able to use the brand, the distribution and the economy of scale to thrive among large corporate entities.
{Put your ideas here. Use comments to react to other ideas. See the section Cautions and contribute to it.}
The natural economic relations between stakeholders (designers, manufacturers, distributors, consumers) are dictated by the nature of the hardware artifact and by the context in which it is brought into existence and disseminated or distributed. Every situation defines a specific game.
The natural economic relations between stakeholders (designers, manufacturers, distributors, consumers) are dictated by the context and the environment in which economic activity takes place. In our case, we are dealing with the production of material goods, which are very low-cost, appeal to a very large population, and are trendy or ephemeral.
If the material artifact is a one-timer, or if it is trendy, i.e. it doesn’t have an evolution path like a car, or a computer for example, the relation between the designer on one side and the fabricator (and perhaps those involved in dissemination or distribution) is weak, because this makes it a one-time game (not a repeated game), i.e. the fabricator doesn't depend on the designer to repeat the innovation success.
If the artifact is destined for massive use, the temptations for the fabricator to be disloyal towards the designer are significant and justifiable, and this can exacerbate the problem exposed in the previous paragraph. In this case, the relation between the fabricator and actors involved in dissemination or distribution is strong, and the relation between them and the designer is weak.
Francois asked this question:
What if sensoricans design a hockey stick with a force sensor in it? This can be a mass market product. Nike can decide to copy the design and mass produce it in China, and because of their world renowned brand that their vast distribution network can sell this product stealing possible rewards for sensoricans.
Answers:
Tibi
Nike is NOT into selling sensors, but into selling sports equipment. Normally, Nike would work with other companies to put their product together. In this case, they would come to Sensorica for the force sensing device. The problem is that if we cannot produce at a low enough cost Nike can turn around and ask a Chinese company to copy the force sensing device, since it is open source, and produce it at the lowest cost possible. In order to bypass that problem Sensorica would have to find a partner that can produce at the cost Nike dictates.
In this particular case Nike has a lot of power because of their brand and their vast distribution network. They can also take advantage of the economy of scale.
In this case we are talking about a hardware solution that can be embodied as a mass market product, and probably a one-time product. Therefore Nike doesn’t rely on Sensorica for a continuous and rapid stream of innovation for future versions of the product. Because of this weak link Nike can easily jump over Sensorica.
[Tibi] If there is no one-fit-all solution we can use different licenses for different hardware solutions, based on the type of game each type of artifact and economic context entails.
Bayle Shanks
As I noted earlier on the list (see discussion here), the idea that the value network license is noncommercial use only and the sensor license allows commercial use seems backwards to me. What if a company comes along and wants to use the value network? We won’t sell it to them so why not give it to them. And what if a company comes along and wants to use the sensor designs? This is something that we would prefer to sell, so why give it away (unless we insist on giving everything away, but in that case neither license should be commercial? Note however that I am biased (i don’t know in which direction) as I am founding a commercial company that makes value-network stuff ourselves -- on the one hand it would be good for Pietrust if Sensorica licensed it to us for free so we could use it -- on the other hand in a way it would be good for Pietrust if Sensorica did NOT license it for free because that’s less competition for us. -- BayleShanks
Here are my thoughts on designing a copyright license that Pietrust will use for source code, in case Sensorica would like to do something similar:
http://p2pfoundation.net/Slowly_Opening_License
The proposed license has not yet been drafted (and it needs a much better name).
Although Pietrust will apply for patents, this is for defensive use only so the patent license is not as important for us (presumably for Sensorica the patent license is more important than copyright).
[Tibi] On open innovation
I see a connection between this profound but very subtle disagreement on knowledge and the difference of opinion about rewarding ideas OR rewarding processes that materialize ideas. In the open innovation philosophy knowledge is considered as being abundant. Moreover, we believe that sharing/spreading knowledge can bring more than keeping it and exploiting it alone or at small scale. Furthermore, knowledge is NOT seen as property. There is no jealous attachment to one's ideas. The FOCUS is on the effects of ideas AND on the process through which wealth is extracted from applied ideas and knowledge. We believe that there are new such processes available. Control of ideas of knowledge is NOT necessary, even more, its detrimental! Rewarding knowledge or ideas directly becomes incompatible with the game. This is why I like to say that we are moving, either we like it or not, towards a know how economy rather than a knowledge economy, i.e. people will get paid for what they do, not for their ideas, which is not to say that ideas will become unimportant, they will not be considered as products anymore, because not only they are becoming abundant, but also because it becomes more "profitable" when ideas are shared than when they are kept. These processes are new and they are related to large scale effects made possible by the Internet. A new game is now possible because of the Internet and digital technology, the open innovation game. In my opinion, this is what we need to master. Why is it counter-intuitive? Because we've been conditioned NOT to share and to compete. This game is about sharing and collaboration. Moreover, this game introduces large scale effects, and humans are used to think at small scale, small group dynamics, ...
openness, transparency and protection and OSH day
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