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2015-03-17 Free Hardware

The bottom section of this post is being updated continuously.


In this post I will be calling it “free hardware”. It's a pity, but writing or pronouncing “Free Digital Hardware Designs” is just too much. Sorry.

There is a new article about free hardware by Richard Stallman, check it out:

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/need-free-digital-hardware-designs/

I am quite surprised that RMS wrote something about free hardware. Previously he stated that free hardware is a bit too much for him (not that it is a wrong thing, but we have to solve our problem with software first). Also, in one of his talks he pointed out that free software principles cannot be applied to hardware, and even said that it is a dumb thing to try to do so. And there is an article On “Free Hardware” (1999, by Richard Stallman) where he expressed some doubts about free hardware.

It is great to know that these things are being rethought. Perhaps the latest success of 3D printers makes us all understand that it is not too hard to share the design of something. However, I believe that free hardware is mostly about electronic devices and not 3D-printed solid objects in first place. That is, schematics and PCB layouts (and also firmware, but that's on the free software side).

So I want to make free hardware, how can I do that?

Luckily there is a plenty of software to help you with that.
Try Kicad! Works so great for schematics and PCB layouts. You can put your project files into git and it will work just fine. Don't expect complex merges to work (although they sometimes do). Most importantly, such approach allows working on the same project in a team, and you also get a history of every change since the beginning without too much of an overhead. Git is so great at storing the source code and since Kicad is using plain text files, the whole thing just works (although I have a feeling that it was not intended to be used with git).

We've been doing this for quite some time and we are pretty much satisfied. I know, it is a bit tricky for electronics engineers to get into git (since they are not programmers in the first place), but I believe that it pays off in a long run.

Thanks, Richard Stallman!

Previously it felt like doing free hardware is something weird. Hopefully it will get more natural after this article.

Here is our thumb up:
This logo suits free hardware much better than a broken gear.

See also a blog post by Olimex: https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/01/13/open-source-hardware-oshw-why-it-matters-and-what-is-pseudo-oshw/


List of lists of free hardware projects

This list is being updated continuously.

It is such a pity that there is no unified list of free hardware projects. Let's list some of the lists:

Comments

2014-08-14 I Am Fed up, Goodbye Skype

I have fixed both logos. You are welcome.

UPDATE: Starting from late 2017 I use Matrix/Riot.

I have been trying to switch from skype for years. Every now and then I tried different instant messengers, but none of them were good enough to switch.

Why bother? Because Skype is horrible. Here is a list of issues I have:

  1. No video conferences.
  2. Sometimes audio is glitchy. To fix this you should restart the call several times until it works.
  3. Horrible default settings:
    1. All notifications are turned on. (with sound)
    2. 'Busy' status after 5 minutes of inactivity.
    3. Skype is allowed to change microphone volume level. Of course it cannot do it right.
    4. Animated smileys are turned off, if someone sends you a smiley you will only see the first keyframe.
  4. If for some reason notifications were not turned off, skype will go "BZZZZZZZZZ" if someone sends me a file. The only way to fix this is to restart skype and perhaps turn off the notification.
  5. Well, these are non-issues since you can change the settings, right?

Wrong. Skype will reset the settings every time you kill it, e.g. after power outage.

And I did not even touch privacy and security concerns.

If you are one of those who want to respond "Oh, Skype does not work nicely in linux? Then linux is broken, use another operating system! Na-na-na...", then I have bad news for you.

Your thinking is broken.

There are several problems, let me help you with some of them:

  1. Linux is not an operating system and it is time to learn it.
  2. Only Microsoft is responsible for Skype features and bugs. There is no way free software community can fix Skype. We have no source code so we can't fix it. Damn, if I had the source code I would have fixed most of these issues myself.

These issues existed for years, why would I write about them now?

I got rid of all proprietary userspace applications:

Thanks, virtual Richard M. Stallman!

Now I only have to get a wifi card that works with free drivers.

It was a bit tricky to get rid of these:

  1. Flash - most modern websites use HTML5. Rest in piece, Flash.
  2. Dropbox - I have passed 20GB limit long time ago, so I switched to BitTorrent Sync when it was released. However, I kept using Dropbox to share screenshots. Public folder functionality is now disabled for all new users, most probably one day they will disable it for old users as well, so I had to drop Dropbox anyway. Now I upload screenshots directly to my server.
  3. BitTorrent Sync - after months of waiting for them to release the source code I gave up. It is not going to happen. Now I use Syncthing.

DropBox - a box for software that you want to drop
(Sources: trashcan by GNOME icon artists; some dropbox drawings; official logos of Adobe Flash Player, BitTorrent Sync and Skype)

Skype was the last thing I had to remove. It was hard to make that step, but thankfully they did it for me!
First of all, skype update was released. Updates are cool, right?

Wrong, not with proprietary software.

Previously I had to accept their shitty UI changes, but this time they removed ALSA support. And I don't use pulseaudio. But okay, maybe I could use my current skype version and just skip upgrades?

Sure, there you go:

(!) Windows can't boot.

I got that problem right after relogin. My laptop was up for one month so I didn't notice this problem immediately.
That time I left my laptop on without a charger plugged in, so it switched off. When I booted it, I was ready to edit skype settings again. But what a relief, Skype stopped working completely! There is no need to fix settings anymore!

Luckily, Tox is getting better every day. Although it is still in alpha, most clients support Audio and some can even do Video. Sure, there is a lot of bugs and the code is very immature, but it is already usable. And guess what, audio in uTox and Toxic works flawlessly in GNU/Linux.

And there are even some killer-features! For example, in uTox you can select a part of your screen and send it as inline image.

What would you do?

Would you relax and let it go down the throat? Or would you switch to a free alternative that is not even in beta?

Comments:

This post in beyond retarded as well as your point of view seems to be. Linux is good, but not every proprietary soft is to blame, that's not the root of evil. Otherwise, it looks like you are a fanatic and this is your religion. Unfortunately such position would not help the community. Remember to be tolerant and provide only constructive criticism, otherwise it looks like unnecessary rage.

-- Optkk 2014-08-14 10:03 UTC

Thanks, now I know that the most tolerant way to start a conversation is to tell someone that his point of view is retarded. Actually, I am not sure why would you feel offended. The only offensive thing in this post is Skype logo that was made of monkey's butt.
Are you saying that keeping my computers free from proprietary software is not going to help the community? Or maybe sharing the fact that it is possible to live without proprietary software is not going help? What is going to help then? Besides writing your own free software and contributing to other projects, which I do extensively anyway.

-- AlexDaniel 2014-08-14 15:36 UTC

I get your point.We both know that Microsoft's philosophy is the exact opposite of the UNIX's philosophy.

UNIX:
It does one thing and does it well.

Microsoft:
It does nothing and makes it worse.

And for the skype dance, *nix is not the only one that got hit but OSX,Windows and even Windows Phone are having the same/worse issues which again illustrates that they only care about marketing but doesn't gives a rat's ass about their user-base.

But you should know this problem goes both ways, We the users, why are we still using products from a company does that screws us over and over and We Still Stick With It!! WHY ? Because the majority of users don't even give a damn what Operating system they are using or how worse is the quality of the software they are using or is it open/closed source.They just want to get things done without fiddling much (i.e they want to be spoon-fed) and Microsoft does this very well through marketing/advertisement.And people who like convenience over quality and functionality go to companies like these and then developers begin to create products that are going to be compatible with the majority which is formed of the above mentioned people.

And for Bittorrent Sync its really nice but sadly an opensource clone is yet to be developed.I have heard alot of good things about Sync thing but i also heard that there are some critical issues when you sync to a server or something like(irc discussion)that.But it works flawlessly on the lan.

And for Tox its a great alternative except its still under-development and i also read that it still has some legal issues but the biggest problem right now which i guess is normal is people are going to use what they are used to.Look at Gtalk, when google branded it as Hangouts how many people did take it for granted that Gtalk is gone and didn't bother to find out about Hangouts.So again we the users are also responsible for these kind of problems if only there was a great balance between quality and marketing for *nix.

P.S I Probably got carried away.

-- stark 2014-08-15 13:27 UTC

I haven't used Skype for years.

-- AlexSchroeder 2014-09-12 15:42 UTC

It is nice to see you here, Alex :)
How do you communicate with others? Sure, for simple messages you can use facebook/google+/whatever (which is what I do now with those who are not in Tox yet), but what if you want to make a call? Or what if you want to send some big file?

-- AlexDaniel 2014-09-12 21:16 UTC

Comments