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Re: open hardware certification document: second pass



On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Brian White wrote:

> > 3. Where the device is offered with packaging and/or instructions in a
> >    national language, the documentation must be available in that language
> >    as well.
> 
> This may turn many manufacturers away.  Companies will pay translators
> to create documentation in other languages and may not be willing to
> pay for such when it comes to API documentation.
> 
> I would suggest removing this restriction in the interest of making the
> offer more palitable to manufacturers.  You could, I suppose, change
> it to something like "must be released in the manufacturers native language"
> to avoid them trying to hide it by releasing it in swahili or something,
> but I don't think that is necessary.
> 
> We have enough people around the world on the net who would do the
> translation if asked nicely.


i was going to say this, but you beat me to it :-)

i think it is good enough as long as it is available in any language.

while i'm usually quite cynical about the motivations of businesses i
really can't see them publishing their documentation only in some early
obscure dialect of Sanskrit just so that they can join the program.

I suspect that most companies would either play fair, or just completely
ignore it.

from a manufacturer's point of view, the logo is a marketing/PR
exercise. Screwing around with something like this would backfire
in a very expensive way - the sort of people who would be
impressed/influenced by the Open Hardware logo would probably boycott
any company which abused it.


The important conditions, IMO, are:

    1.  Technical documentation must exist.

        "technical documentation" means substantially complete, usable
        reference material and/or technical notes. 

        Qualifying technical documentation has to provide at least the
        minimum required information for a programmer to write a device
        driver or other program for the device in question.

    2.  It must be reasonably priced or free.

        "reasonably priced" means either:

            2a.  cost + shipping & handling charges
            2b.  a price comparable to that charged for similar
                 documentation.

(2b is the tricky one.  phrasing that in legalese is probably going to
be a real PITA)

    3.  It must be available to anyone without prejudice.

        Technical documentation is deemed to be "available" when:

        3a.  it may be acquired as a book or other printed material

        3b.  it may be acquired on disk as a collection of plain text,
             HTML, postscript and/or PDF files.

        3c.  it may be downloaded from the internet as a collection of
             plain text, HTML, postscript and/or PDF files.


In all cases, [debian/SPI/whoever]'s assesment of any product's compliance
with the above conditions is final.



something like the above needs to be translated into real legalese - it's
only pidgin-legalese at the moment.


craig

--
craig sanders
networking consultant                  Available for casual or contract
temporary autonomous zone              system administration tasks.


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