Open Source Ecology Development Team, 10 Sep 2018

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From YouTube: Every Open Source Hardware Build is Effectively a Fork

Description

=Overview=

One of the critical distinctions between open source software and open source hardware is that '''every single build replication outside of OSE is effectively a fork'''. This imposes additional requirements for development documentation. Likewise, this also limits the relevance of Github as a 'silver bullet' for development coordination. Paradoxically, Github would not be able to scale for hardware, and a more generalized database approach is more suitable for tracking hardware forks. Moreover, Githib is suitable for about 10% of the assets generated in open hardware development, with other platforms such as Wikis, YouTube, and other media platforms being more suitable. This overview video touches upon more details of the ''every hardware replication as a fork'' consideration.

=Content=
This video continues from the previous video - [[Microfactory Boot Camp - Collaborative Literacy - OSE Linux, Design Jams and Extreme Manufacturing]] - which ended with the discussion of the Dashboard as an organizing wiki page for a scalable parallel development process that can be used in conjunction with [[HeroX]] design challenges. This continues to:
*00:00 - Start
*3:05 - the function of the [[Development Template]] as an organizing framework for the overall development process.
*3:30 - [[Development Template]]
*8:25 - Different versions are kept at the [[Genealogies]] page, such as the [[3D Printer Genealogy]]
*10:16 - Templates allow for scalable organization, but a user and maintainer community must be present to manage the templates.
*11:15 - Development templates can be created for different scales of organizations: machine ecologies, machines, modules, submodules.
*11:49 - Relevance of Github and concept of '''every independent replication effectively being a fork'''
*14:55 - Going through the Development Template and whether Github should be used for each step. The answer is that only 10% of the Development Template lends itself well to Github.
*17:55 - The end game for open product development is that any company in the world has a common pool of design and techniques to begin product development by reusing modules, thereby not reinventing the wheel every time a new product is designed.
*18:55 - Open source development is more likely in the limit of high complexity. This is already visible with software, such as with Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision - but the same trend applies to hardware.

A

You click on that, but it would be nice to have like a little feed that says: okay, new update and then feedback from the the organizing team, where we're saying. Oh, this is cool. We're gonna actually accept it as a workable part in the design, and it could be a small part. So you can reward ongoing contributions by setting up up as as a modular thing where okay I found actually the best bolt and the best sourcing for this 3d printer, like we get them from mcmaster-carr.

A

Maybe somebody found another source, that's better, so they upload that they get credit because we know hey, that's already better than what we have we're gonna give you a point for that, even though it's such a tiny part, it still contributes because the whole project is made of a million tiny parts. So so it's a lot of management issue, but the computer infrastructure can get you that a lot like the free CAD access to freak a desert is a very much accessible tool.

A

The fact that you can upload things readily to the wiki and a lot of things that makes it accessible. So lowering the barriers to entry, so that's about it for the idea, but the concept is with the design jams. I mean there's so many things like people, don't really think about it. This way, but like okay, they're, like typically it's like okay, where do we start? But as long as people get this idea that okay, there is so many things we can do and here's procedure procedures or how we do them.

A

You can get massive collaboration, nobody's really doing this. That I know of in any kind of a concerted group project way. This is definitely pushing the boundaries of what exists. This has been well developed in software. All the major software projects are doing that seamlessly, but it's, but it's software and I guess I'll end off with Erik. Well,.

B

Okay, I was wondering if you could talk about related topics, select. Where does benchmarking.

C

How do you go about doing the yeah there's a lot there's a lot of big hairy.

A

Hairball here so I can I. Think I can answer the first one. The benchmarking is in our first step of studying of the industry standards, so we have a the key is that you have to understand what that entails. So on our wiki somewhere we have, you, can type in study of industry standards and I'll actually go. Let me show you what that is so.

A

It's called development template. The development template has a lot of the stuff I described it's already contained in the development template, which is so here. Here's a basic video of how you do that, and a lot of what I just talked to you about is captured in those very basic steps. Now the cool thing is for every so that's you know watch that video I discuss about how to start new projects underway, because the key is documentation. How do you keep track of everything thousands of pieces, so the develop template is very simple.

A

It's like 40 elements or shorter version, 1 of 40. So item number 2 industry standards. Well, everyone has to have a common language of what that is to be most effective, so you click on it and we try to define it. What that isn't? A lot of these may need updating, but each one is hyperlinked to the instruction set for that step and that's a big point, so analysis of industry standards protocol. How do you do it introduction like what? What is that about?

A

So you know you study the history, the prior art, like patents and everything, here's the protocol crowd protocol, so basic steps. All these pages need updating that some of the stuff we want to develop as a team, because we all want to get together on defining something that we all like and say. Ok, we can spend for this. This is an effective process. You can get others involved and we can document it effectively.

B

A

We can benchmark.

B

B

A

That could be three three items to that. First of all, if you're building this last version, that's going to be its own development template, it's gonna, be 17 point. Oh seven, there's gonna! Be that one. So one one aspect of okay: where do you document that one one part is there we go?

A

We going to build instructions is one, that's just basic build instructions, but you want a little more than that we'd like to have food product manuals which include instructions, operations, safety, maintenance and cap files. All of that that would go more into so. This template. That's just the first page. Now you've got a bunch of other tabs, which is one is enterprise.

A

There's different other tabs, so one is dedicated to enterprise. There should be another one here, that's more like.

A

It's not it's not all in place, but there should be like the documentation. Part is part like build instructions, build pictures, video that collection a lot of that. A lot of these elements here, in fact, like a lot of this, can go into the product manual and that's there shouldn't really be another next major one which is not development but documentation. That would be like publishing. Here's your design guide, here's your product manual, here's maybe like your your marketing copy for announcing a workshop, that's publications which would also go into more like into enterprise.

A

So what the point is? You can break the project down into like so many different things, but you, but the main things are there's development. There's documentation is enterprise. You can go into others, so not super clearly defined, but if you were to do it, the easiest thing is: we all keep blogs on the wiki. The way the the core team works is like: okay, somebody's working on a design manual. Well, first of all, just just declare it: okay, the 3d printer build manual just started because you can always edit the wiki.

A

Afterwards you can redirect renaming pages and so forth. We can put like if it acts our official guide. We probably one of them, put it on our front page of the wiki and stuff like that. So we can manage that.

B

B

B

A

That's what you're talking about is indexing and featuring, so we don't have I mean you can't create all that functionality within the wiki like featuring things or doing a platform like, for example, open builds, has a bunch of individual projects, but there is within our formalism here, there's like the main trunk and different versions where we keep it as this gets into taxonomy, but we keep it for any project. You have a genealogy, so you can't put all the all the versions there.

A

So, if you're savvy about how the development process works, you're going to go to project name genealogy, let's test it so so 3d.

D

Printer genealogy I just want to point out that you have. We have individual logs for the developers.

C

A

I mean yeah, it's a complex thing. It's like on github, you have genealogy so.

C

B

B

Benchmarks or something.

B

A

We have to agree how to do so. First, we would say: okay, we're gonna all start a Google Doc doing this, and we can we can. We can do that. We say okay, so I I would first have to put our my log. Other people are contributing, I put it on their log and then it would go to the main, for example. This is the main page for that project like we have. If you go just to 3d printer, you probably get the old like from wait. You know.

A

So this is like all the latest versions.

A

But what happens when you just go to 3d printer cuz? That's where an asset like that should be located?

A

Okay, so that's stuff from way before right there. So we have this template and the point is you can make all kinds of templates, but it's all useless unless you get enough of a group understanding and management in there to make it work, I mean, for example, we have this already, but it requires that people understand this whole process and that's why you know what the fellows and people who are continuing at a deeper level, the development team. You learn more and more about that.

A

So the critical things would be, for example, like the collaborative literacy webinar reading through the development template page crash course, because there's like, if everyone understands the taxonomy, then in principle you can get many many people putting things and not just randomly like if they're random, you can still search the things. Look at recent changes and someone can actually manage and organize that. But if the person actually knows that understands the taxonomy of development, then you can really cause some damage in progress.

A

Now, the main page for that that we use right now the template, the development template, there's so many different things, so you got to develop a template and you've got each project, so you got 50 machines, so I mean this is complex. This is really accomplished. You got 50 machines say get 12 modules for each first of all, you definitely want to development, a template for each machine, but if the thing is so complicated like the extruder, you probably want to dedicate a development template for just the extruder and other parts.

A

The frame there's hundred ways to do the frame variations disk at files. There's structural testing, there's PVC there's only each thing can get its own development template and then it gets broken down further into all the development stuff. So there's a lot of mass that you need to do now. Here's the big point.

A

Why- and this is I kind of came up with it last week as far as formulating like all the time, people ask us: well, aren't you just using github right, they already got done, I, say: okay, my wants one-line statement to that of the 10% of the content that we generate. That's handleable handleable by github github won't handle it because every single build is a fork.

A

That's not a trivial statement. That's very actually a very insightful statement that says every time this is different than software. With software you have an absolute uniform, compiler pieces. Another piece of software that compiles your code that you're running a million people are underworld, are going to use that compiler am I going to get the same result. Those million people in hardware are each going to get a different result. They used different sourcing. They might have used different tools, they might made a change because they didn't have something, in other words the compiler.

A

What is the compiler, the compilers, the thing that builds it? It's your workshop, it's your skillset! It's what you had for breakfast that day, it's like all these different things that go into that that make the product non-uniform and in order for somebody to replicate it exactly, you would have to follow. Like say, someone in India makes the 3d printer you're gonna have all the specific steps you did dad tools.

A

Whatever there's a you know. The developer has a lot of different elements. If you have one of them missing like, for example, like you have a sourcing of some some weird part I'm in America, it's like I, don't have no idea what that is. They know it all there because they got their culture and way of doing things. They're sourcing. Whatever point is, that has been hardware.

A

You have to keep track of of all of that information and therefore, if you simply if you treated it like github- and this is a longer discussion, but if you treat it like github github would simply not have enough memory.

A

The files are large and you cannot just stake. Okay, I'm gonna, like in my project, I just did that one or two things differently. You cannot say. Oh, you know to my project I'm, just gonna like put those things on the wiki and that's documentation for that project. Well, in order for somebody to replicate it, you don't want them to search like oh well, there's that whole lot of other knowledge I need to put into there.

A

You need to copy that as a full package, so it's seamless for somebody else to replicate it, for which reason every single bill you have to have the big thing embodied for a hole for every single bill, and you just run out of memory. So then, why did I say for the 10% that give up can't handle well because there's way better tools than github to handle other things like fix it?

A

If you go through the development template, we can go through each step and say: okay, where does github become really useful because of its functionality versus other places, where it's like a wiki is much better or a Google. Doc is much better or something else is much better or or or github just doesn't have that functionality like to render things like you can't render a free pad. It can render, you know, say sbls, but we need to look at freecad so within the platform.

A

So, for example, in the wiki we might have an embed of the freecad. That's okay, but we can go through this where's. Where is give them useful? Well, obviously, for software, but for 3d CAD know you probably want to have a different platform, a different way to do that.

A

If you have a cat file, you make one little change, there's no way to dip it really like you'd have to store. If you want to keep the old version, you have to keep the entire file unless github develop. So the point is like build instructions. Well, that's definitely doable well in the wiki or maybe our Google Docs, build pictures in the video I mean that's YouTube, so the point is about.

A

10% of these items can be handled well by github, but the rest, because we have so many different things that are non software related they're, better done elsewhere. So that's why I say: first of all, given we can handle 10% and of the 10% that it can handle it crashes on you, you can't really use it, because every single project is going to be a fork. So that's that's the answer and that's a longer discussion and that's something we have to resolve.

A

But the idea is to use multiple tools and you have to have enough understanding about this, so use wiki's cloud, edible, Docs and freak out some of our main stuff and otherwise it's a complex process. There's no easy answer: yeah I.

B

A

I got into the that's why I wanted to say about github cuz there's other people like. What's it called the latest thing we got there from from Jose latest meetings we were yeah was the thing that they created some other thing: that's based on github, that's supposedly for open hardware, development and yes, it can help. But you know you need a little more than that. There's no Universal Silver Bullet here to make it happen. So any other questions. Besides no sir, that's a mouthful on this, but yeah. It's it's a complicated process.

A

It's it's, not easy! Where you know I think we're paving some of the way. There's the set thing. There is no other dedicated, open hardware development project. There's many projects that you just do like one thing but nobody's trying to look at. It is okay. What is a scalable platform and many come? What's the end game, any company, any individual all over the world anywhere it can tap heart libraries designs and produce them locally. So who does that?

A

Nobody, a company, of course, has its own proprietary products, that's especially true a note, and the latest and greatest, which is like the semiconductor industry, open sources far from happening there in terms of open source chips, so, for example, even together the open source so-called well open source, Arduino microcontroller, that chip is not open source. It's it's done by a proprietary processing and the design of it is even closed. You can't get the reference design for the actual microchip. That's on the hard we know so point is nobody. Does this?

A

This is our next I think cultural leap as a society so that everybody can benefit we. We have evidence from software that this is more effective for very complex things and I think that, as things get more complex and we care more about integration of different elements in society or making a sound environment for people in nature and everything else, we have to think more broadly and become more open because we simply cannot handle all the information that's required.

A

So I think the trend is towards more open source in general. I do believe. Culture is evolving to that. Go slowly and we're trying to push that process.

A

Yeah, okay, so it no further questions. Thank you very much.