Re: Not "open source" hardware, "free design" hardware

[Richard Stallman]

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  > I would say that the design is to include the design of the pieces
  > that are supposed to be produced by the manufacturer rather than
  > to be bought.

I can understand why the manufacturer might do it that way, but that
makes no sense as a criterion to judge or certify a product by.  What
if the manufacturer buys a fully assembled board, and makes only the
container?  If it publishes the box design, should that be enough to
make that product "free"?

Clearly our criteria should not depend on which company makes
what portion of the finished product.

Talking about free _designs_ solves this problem.  We can describe the
situation clearly by saying, "The board design is free, and chip X's
design is free.  The rest of the designs are nonfree."

  > A better example is coils rather than chips: people may buy them
  > or make them themselves; when the designer intends to make the coil,
  > its design should be included (at least, the instructions on how to
  > make it); when it's to be bought, it's sufficient to specify its
  > features needed to get the right coil.

In the special case of a coil, I agree that stating its inductance,
dimensions and type of wire is a sufficient design.

What constitutes an adequate published free design for the coil should
not depend on which company made the coil.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)