Intellectual Propety


I never tought I would someday need to preocupied myself with copyrights and intellectual proprety stuff. If there is one thing I like about Fab labs it's the way everything we do is shared and nourrish by the community. This week assigment almost seems unreal for me, I'm not a busniess guy and if anybody ever like my idea enough to someday use it for their own benefit, that would be nothing but an honor for me. I took a look into the creative common licensing, I thought it was pretty cool to see that they didn't focus on the big money/hard-to-understand bull**** that big marketing compagny need to use. As little as i know about that stuff, CC seems really oriented for open-source and freeware while still protecting your intellectual rights. Really user friendly and free, they sure made a friend!

It's also pretty neat that CC use a 3 layer design, to make the licensing understable for lawers, machines aswell as normal citizen.



For my licensing, I wanted to be open-source and if people ever want to work enouph on the project to eventually make money with it I would be more than happy. So the more open the intellectual proprety is the more happy I will be for this project, I took a look at the different kind of license CC have to offer.



We see here that there are 4 "condition" that you can mix and melt for your license, The only one that I really want is the "attribution" condition, for the rest, as long as I have some credit of my work, I really don't care if the project is modified, used, commercialized or anything else. So i'm gonna use an Attribution License for my final project.



So here is the definition of the Attribution license, I think it really fits my need:

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

Looking for another License



I also look into GNU Public licensing wich is oriented for open-source and freeware software. Really neat how they prioritize sharing and developping alongside the knowledge of others. I really see myself using these kind of licensing for any code/software I may wrote someday since these license are only software oriented.

The GNU public Licensing guarantees the end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software under it's licensing. So it's a really straight-forward direct approach into the world of open-source software program.

The Linux Kernel use this License and I think it's a great exemple on how big some software can become even without a direct commercialized approach. If I ever became a programmer and write software for any reason, I may well go with GNU, but for the time being, this type of licensing just doesn't fit my needs since it's only software oriented. I'll stay with CC for now!



I also went and took a quick look at the Apache Software Foundation, This license type seems to be pretty similar with GNU and have a goal of assuring the perpetuing of open source software development, it is member based and it seems a bit more closed than GNU or CC Licensing, their website is also a bit complicated and have a lot of legal information that I don't necesserly understand right away. I was a bit less attracted by Apache, but it was a bit too deep for me to understand everything. Still I can already know it doesn't fit my needs since just like GNU, Their License are for software only.



Dissemination and Income


My project is really all about learning stuff and having fun, I don't feel myself near ready to accomplish something that I would be proud to put a price on it. Meanwhile, the idea behing it, I think pretty interesting and could lead to awsome artsy stuff. I could see making more and more iteration of the project and having a result that I would be proud enouph to really show to the world, If I ever want to gain some visibility on the project I could eventually try to gain some credibility and financement using the awsome international fablab communauty, and using the different social networking platform such as Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and else to try and reach a certain community.

I would also really like a smaller, less ambitious iteration of the project that I could offer as a workshop for kids, To demonstrate to younger people how a sound can become something else and how evertything is finally just a way we perceived things. If my Fablab is willing to finance the Research and Development for this isteration, I could really see myself keeping working on it and see the project become something that actually have an educational purpose in the field of design, electronics and philosophy.

You can see below a small overview of my project that explain in image the process of my machine, with it, a video that demonstrate the work I'm doing to achieve the final results.