Invention, intellectual property and income

  • What am I going to do with my project?

    The idea of this assignment is to take my project and decide where it belongs to: am i gonna sell it, put it online as an open source project, continue with it? Do you want to make a profit from it or is it a service?

    Invention

    The initial idea of my project was to create a social learning tool. I am interested in bringing technlogy and innovation to children in the developing countries. At the end, the project became an interactive toy to apply what I learned in these 4 months. However, the intension to participate in the learning processes of contries like mine is still a priority for me and my projects in the near future. I definetly want to develop this project, or maybe, take one step back and re-formulate the idea with all the knowledge I have now.

    Intellectual property

    Taking into consideration what I mention above, I think this kind of projects need to be available to most of the people. I believe that sharing information help us improve and develop our own ideas but it shoudl always be done with responsability and proffessionalism. Therefore, I believe that the best thing to do is to license my project as an Open Source Hardware and Software licensed under MIT license.
    The License Terms go like this:

    Copyright (C) [2014] [copyright holders]
    Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
    The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

    The reason why I consider this the bet option, is because it seems like the best deal. First, I can share the project and allow any person to use it, improve it and share it again (after all, most of the development of the FrankensToy is based in other people's work who have shared their ideas online). Also, it makes clear that the use of this information is a responsability of whoever uses it. I think this is important to point out because, altough it could be helpful for some, it is also not a finished product and it can have small errors or could cause an accident if misused.

    Income

    This is an important subject for me, not only regarding the FrankensToy but to my future projects too. I want to start a FabLab in México that focuses mainly in social issues. However, getting started is already a big challenge. Also keeping a FabLab running and constantly developing new and meaningful projects is even harder.
    I believe that I can't only depend on social causes or government support but I need to create a Bussiness strategy for reaserch and education. Talking about this specific project, I would like to take it as a demo idea. I already met some people that are interested in subjects like these (learning, technology and social issues) and I can get it moving, not as a product but as an idea to start something new.

Alejandra Díaz de León Lastras

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