[ohf-licenses] ohf-licenses Digest, Vol 4, Issue 2

[Terry Hancock]

Greg London wrote:
> I was wondering if the boundary layer for where
> the license kicks in could be defined for physical
> objects in terms of any contiguous connective
> volume, with no internal holes.

I thought about your post some more. I think your "balloon" model
actually represents the same concept as my "External Design", at least
for the case of literal machine (or electronic) parts.

I think of it on the design abstraction level, though, rather than on
the material product level. They may be 100% homologous, but I'm not sure.

In any case, I think that your balloon represents only the External
Design limit, and not the Atomic Design limit.

As an example of why I think there needs to be an "Atomic" limit (though
I'm still open to using a different word):

Consider the LART. It's an open design. But it specifies proprietary
parts (CPU, memory controller chip, RAM). It's designers simply weren't
chip designers. They were PCB-level designers. So to them, chips are
"atoms" -- something they can't see inside of (except to read the specs).

This, of course, has a pragmatic disadvantage -- you can't make a LART
anymore, because the specified chips have been discontinued.

Even the OGD1 has proprietary chips on it. Also, we certainly don't have
to have plans for every resistor or capacitor in order to understand the
design. The "atomic design" concept is a way of specifying the
granularity required from the Design Source Data.

Now, it would be reasonable to argue that if you derived a design from
the LART, you shouldn't be required to provide RTL for all of the chips
in your design. In fact, you could argue that since the original design
didn't specify RTLs, then you shouldn't have to.

But that essentially an ad hoc "Atomic Design" argument -- you are
saying that since the original design treats such elements atomically,
that you should be able to do so in derivatives as well. But that's just
the implicit version of what the OHPL proposes to do explicitly -- by
saying at what level of design will NOT be included, because it is too
fine a granularity for the level of design you are doing.

Hmm. We could call it "Elemental Design" or "Elementary Design" instead
of "Atomic Design". Then we could use "Elements" instead of "Atoms" in
the description.

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com