Hello all Future Carers. @Stefano_Maffei write to me that Politecnico is overcommitted and can’t allocate the time to write its part of the proposal. While we are sad to see them go, we are thrilled to introduce to a new partner that is fully qualified to take the lead on what we have been calling “the prototyping layer”: everyone, meet WeMake. WeMake is not a university, but a honest-to-God makerspace, located in Milan, with an enviable experience on open hardware hacking and strong professional and personal ties to Arduino. Co-founders @Costantino and @zoescope have been members of the Edgeryders community for years (and may I add that they are close personal friends); Future of Care will be followed by project managers @Chiara_Bongiovanni, @Cristina_Martellosio and Roberta Ribero. Chiara will represent WeMake at Monday’s call.
With the addition of KITE as consortium leader and the replacement of Politecnico with WeMake, we have a perfectly balanced partnership consisting of three universities and three SMEs. “Balanced” in this context means that it has both the scientific and technological credibility of academia and the hands-on experience and attitude of the hacker scene. I am quite happy with it. Onwards!
Although rather based on personal curiosity, more than based on this project’ scopes, I would like to learn more about your “open hardware” adventures… What licenses have you adopted? Do you experience any specific barriers (e.g.: the non-openness of most hardware basic components, …)?
I am asking this because CERN itself, despite having introduced a CERN open hardware license, does not resort to that as often as we would like…
as a makerspace we are more into using open hardware rather than designing/producing open hardware.
Usually when prototyping devices we use hardware as Arduino and we release documentation on github (code and design files in creative commons).
If you want to move from a prototype to a product the choice could be moving forward and designing and producing your own board. Then you can analyze what is the best open hardware licence to use. It also depends on the type of device you are creating.