[hpsdr] Where do I watch for Minerva/DFC [Solved]

[Marc OLANIE]

Thank you all

Many instructive points of view, but also many confusions, especially in terms of legal rights and commercial practices. And quite a lot of misunderstanding or misreading when I saw some reaction like "I don't understand why people are complaining about the current HPSDR"... nobody complain about the Openhpsdr. The question was concerning the slow drift from an open project to a proprietary system by one person/organization. 

First of all, we all must admit that more and more new SDR -open and closed source platforms- are emerging, using the openHPSDR standard (new and old protocol). Apache is not the only player in town, if this could reassure people who fear an "evil monopoly"... this is not the case. Thanks to the dev. team, your involvement is really fantastic.

We all hope that disruptive open architecture (like Minerva) also will be shared by as many manufacturers as possible and use approximately the same licensing model

In a few words: it has been written that the open hardware license would run from the Hermes platform to Orion MK2, and that schematics were available for the complete Hermes family (from Hermes to Mk2)
This is completely inaccurate. Facts shows that the schematics are only available via the Apache forum (no public repository as it is done for the whole software part you can find on github) and this only concerns the generations of Hermes and Angelia boards. The publishing of the Orion generation schematics has been voluntarily blocked and is subject to the good will of a third party
.
While it is indisputable that the intellectual property belongs to those who drew the pcb, this does not imply that it gives the right to force all people interested to buy this pcb WITH components already assembled. This is a roundabout form of forced selling, which was not the case in the past, when bare pcb were sold alongside the assembled cards.  

Similarly, the fact of not selling the old generation of pcb anymore and removing from the Apache catalog everything being open-soft/hard (since Orion is a de facto closed hardware) seem -to many people- as an attend to grab a large part of an open hardware/open source project. ("seems", no "is")
This would not be the case if Apache continued to sell bare pcb of current and future OpenHPSDR or open hardware derived platforms.

- This would in no way violate its intellectual property and limit the risk of piracy  (reversing an 8 layer board is not an easy task)
- This would provide very little work for Apache in terms of stock and service, given the very low proportion of ham radios who still use soldering irons (I wonder how much bare Hermes and Angelia boards have been sold so far... far less than finished product I gess) 
- This would finally mark precisely what is Proprietary and what is Open (software and schematics are open, so is the assembly of the board from component level, & pcb remains the exclusive property of Apache, there is no ambiguity)
- Finally, selling "bare" Minerva pcb (or other future evolution) would be a way for Apache to prove its good faith and its position in favor of open development, without impacting it's revenues, while frankly marking its involvement in the design of the pcb routing (which is not a trivial task). Without this effort, this attitude would means "my business-model consists of looting 90% of "free"  R & D software and hardware in the Open domain for my sole benefit, with a minor participation in the overall project. You love it or you leave it." Sometimes a symbolic action makes the difference.

It should be noted that such a tempest of criticism is rather new on this list and coincide with the decision of Apache to "cut" everything from the past, including bare boards an Open Hard designs.

The fact that some people don't have a view good enough  (or do not have the adequate equipment) to assemble new generation boards is not a relevant and is NOT a reason that justifies the systematic industrialization of an open hardware project . Caveat emptor. If you cannot solder, do not force ME to buy YOUR flavor of board. We all need our own dogfood, that's the reason why I've choosen an open hardware project and not a Yaecomwood. (or a Flex).

It is true that the pcb of a board like Angelia is provided without the "solder-paste-mask" (not to be confused with the "solder mask" as I read it). The drawing of this mask requires a partial reverse engineering of the Gerber file .... (unlawful, but necessary, and we don't intend to resell it). Which implies some design knowledge that few hamradios can master (without mentioning the fact that selling pcb without anything to create a stencil is arguable anyway)

Answering "if you are not happy, route your card yourself and give it to the community" is hard to argue. No one can route a board of the complexity of an Hermes or a Minerva all alone. It takes at least 4 to 6 people: one designer at least, and a group of debuggers and beta testers. And I understood that this debugging was done for free by members of the OpenHPSDR group (thanks to them). So there was a big part of this design that depended on the goodwill of a small group ... for the benefit of a third party. Honesty makes it necessary to clarify this point (and once again, this is not a reproach. I'm really happy every time an Open project creates a new startup... as long as this company respects the terms and the spirit of the licensing model)

To repeat myself, the bottom line is not a question of "open or not open," "free or commercial", but a problem of setting the boundaries between what belongs to Alice and what belongs to Bob and Eve.

In short : 

No one should challenge Abhi's rights on the work he has done, it's his decision, we must respect him and thanks him for the quality of his work. 

But this decision should not be used for taking hostage an entire project that will only be "open" by its name if things goes on.  And again, 

-	Bare pcb (protected by Abhi's IP)
-	Bare pcb made by other companies 
-	Populated pcb because there is an important market for appliance users
-	More and more "clones and compatible systems" using the same openhpsdr software platform. The health of a market is linked to free competition and the standardization of its fundamentals (software and protocol for the DDC/DUC realm)
-	More and more software compliant platforms (like LinHPSDR, Sparks SDR, GNU radio based devs etc) 

Hope things are a little bit clearer :- )) 
Vy 73 to all
Marc f6itu