CERN Launches Open Hardware Initiative

sfcrazy writes "CERN has launched version 1.1 of the Open Hardware License (OHL), a legal framework to facilitate knowledge exchange across the electronic design community. The alpha version was launched four months ago. In the spirit of knowledge and technology dissemination, the CERN OHL was created to govern the use, copying, modification and distribution of hardware design documentation, and the manufacture and distribution of products."

DIY LHC

[meza]

Finally I can build that large hydron collider I always wanted.

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[IrquiM]

Unfortunately? I'd say it's a good thing!

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[Anonymous Coward]

A new cable reality show "PIMP my LHC!"

This is KyÅma HÅÅin...

[stonedcat]

The organization is making its move.

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[zill]

El Psy Congroo

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[Microlith]

First comes the license, then comes the hardware.

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[xanojsp]

CERN and others have already designed Open Hardware in the OHR. See for example the SPEC board http://www.ohwr.org/projects/spec/wiki [ohwr.org] the 100 Ms/s ADC mezzanine http://www.ohwr.org/projects/fmc-adc-100m14b4cha/wiki [ohwr.org] and the Rhino http://www.ohwr.org/projects/rhino-hardware-01/wiki [ohwr.org]. All of these, and others, you can buy from a number of vendors, and more are in the pipeline. Have a look at the OHR projects page: http://www.ohwr.org/projects [ohwr.org]

Will the lawyers starve?

[apol]

Clearly people at CERN have no compassion for the lawyers.

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[JonySuede]

does this mean that if there is a nuclear Holocaust we will be left with scorpion, arachnid, cockroach and lawyer

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[brim4brim]

No ironically medicine is the one area where they don't care about people. They think of them similar to how public transport workers think of their passengers, they don't :P Too much money in medicine and you know those chemicals be dangerous so we can't be trusted with them to apparently.

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[mspohr]

Most medical journals lock up medical information and require subscription or individual access. It would be really useful to have open access to all of the medical literature. (There are some open access medical journals but certainly not the majority.)

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[xanojsp]

I am not an expert, but I think the big difference with Physics is that there is a lot of money involved (patents for new drugs, etc). In Physics, CERN and others had the vision of Open Access http://library.web.cern.ch/library/OpenAccess/ [web.cern.ch] for scientific publications, a mode in which the editing expenses are paid by the authors so that readers can access freely. This was possible because the big publishers were not really given an option: if they said no, physicists would publish on already-existing free pl

OHW vs OSHW

[BillX]

How does this license compare to the recent (similarly-named) OSHW license [freedomdefined.org]? Do these groups know about each other?

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[xanojsp]

OSHW hosts a definition, not a license. It tells you "if you want to call your license Open Hardware by our definition it needs to fulfill these points". CERN OHL is a license that complies with these conditions.