The intent of the license is not clear. My interpretation is that the plans may be remixed and republished non-commercially, while the production of furniture is expected to be commercial. To limit or charge royalties on the production of furniture would require a more restrictive license.
Our license is here: https://www.opendesk.cc/license -- it is CC Attribution-Non-Commercial (we dropped the Share Alike as an unnecessary restriction).
Our intent is to allow anyone to download, adapt and make the designs for free whilst retaining the right to charge a markup on commercial manufacture / distribution. I.e.: we're not just about Open Source but also about a local making marketplace that (transparently) we make a cut from, in exchange for value offered in QA and ease of purchase.
What we have definitely found is that it is not clear what exactly "Non-Commercial" means. On the one hand, we want to approve makers who commercially re-sell OpenDesks. On the other, we don't want to stop you taking a design to a local CNC shop yourself and asking them to cut it. We'd welcome both legal instruction on the validity of that position and any steer on appropriate license text.
N.b.: if you're interested in a "purer" effort to create a public domain library of CNC-able designs, check out the next stages of the WikiHouse project: http://www.wikihouse.cc/community
I think you could achieve this best by dropping the NC clause and enforcing the approval process by licensing the OpenDesk brandname? I think that is how Arduino works, for example. As it stands this is really not open source because you are trying to regulate how the actual information gets used, which in my opinion stifles innovation.
That's an interesting suggestion and an interesting distinction -- thank you.
I agree that any and all license restrictions stifle innovation / building on each other's work. I also think it would be nice to limit the application of "open source" so that in a perfect world, you don't get the kudos if you don't encourage the innovation.
On the other hand, the literal meaning of open source is pretty clear: that the source code is available for you to view, tinker with and re-compile. Which with OpenDesk is, I hope, the case -- despite the NC license restriction.
Aside: `license the brand` vs `license the design` reminds me a touch of the What colour are your bits article re-posted yesterday http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 A name is just a tag that can easily be snapped off...
According to the Open Source Definition[0] "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code." Clause 6 requires that to be Open Source "The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."
Fair enough -- thanks for the reference. On this point their rationale[1] is:
> to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.
Unambiguously opposed to a NC license being defined as open source.
I have a mild knowledge of open source, but never felt Opendesk nor Wikhouse ever truly embraced open source despite using the name for kudos, nor do I feel the team operate with a true open source mentality. The Creative commons site is explicit that the CC BY SA license is their license that is closest to open source and do not say that all CC licenses are open source. For me, the precense of the NC tag has always torn me in different directions wondering do I understand this stuff well enough as my understanding is that Opendesk is not actually open, (nor is wikihouse).
With my own separate endevour, I have thought alot about this and wonder what parts of our furniture and the furniture of our community should we open source and what parts should we be opposed to. Opensourcing the design project is fundamentally destructive to the current model of design of which they are pro's and con's to that project, the main pro being that you potentially enlarge the size of the design field which would have be proven, the con being that you discount the value of the design where designers are potentially unable to pay their cost of living which is not a glorious project.
Opensouring CNC joints in a beautiful collection is much closer to what I intend to mean by open source, i.e that the components are open sourced so that community and other communities can create great designs. I believe that primitives should also be opensourced that are not attributed to any designer such as square table with no design thought, much of what may be perceived as classical woodworking designs that have been around for decades if not centuries. But as for opensourcing the final design of the desk you guys have designed, I am fundamentlly against, nevertheless you haven't open-sourced it yet, merely used open source in name for now.
I agree with the substance of your analysis on OpenDesk. I don't accept its extension to the WikiHouse project.
On OpenDesk, our aim has been to let people cut and customise the designs themselves. We weren't aware (before this thread) of a contradiction between NC and open source. We'll have to address this in our narrative.
On WikiHouse however, the project truly is and aims to be open source. All designs are released public domain. The goal of the project is to create a collaboratively developed open commons resource.
On both projects, I don't doubt that the design files we release aren't componentised enough and aren't in enough formats. However, we've carefully mastered the OpenDesk designs so they can be both cut from and re-modelled, and you can already see many structural components, as well as whole designs, in the WikiHouse library[1]. That there aren't more (and perhaps that designs aren't modelled more intelligently) is a reflection of our capacity, not our intention to restrict use.
See the WikiHouse constitution[2] and development goals[3] for more. Plus see an example OpenDesk download here[4].
We do quite a bit of CNC work. Our main product is CC BY-SA. I think you'd be surprised how much customers appreciate that, and how much they are willing to work with us.
So I agree with phreeza. Licensing the brand name as a stamp of approval for OpenDesk looks like a better way to build an ecosystem around your quality design work.
Other options might be to do like the your Richard Stallman did with free software. He delivered the free source code with the (software) product. Essentially you would sell physical furniture including CNC files without commercial limitations.
Or maybe you could, with minimal disruption to your current business model, make the commercial license CC too? Sell a CC BY-SA licensed design. Distribute a CC BY-SA-NC version for free like you do.
