i am currently working on the blueprints for food processing equipment that has significant economic value, and am considering releasing it as open source. i have several questions....


1. how do i release it as open source? this would be done when i apply to u.s. patent office?
2. is there merit to releasing proprietary to recover r&d before making it os? i think we can recover r&d, even releasing it os, because we would easily/obviously be first to market .
3. can a piece of processing equipment be "sold" if it is os? the price would be for manufacturing?
4. could i require that any plant manufacturing the equipment be required to ensure that blueprints accompany each unit sold, including modifications, and that these must arrive together at the consumer?


my motivation for releasing os, is to place a check on manufacturing and retail gouging, encourage development, and make the unit more affordable for small businesses, thus lowering food prices domestically and abroad.

regards,
present

edited:spelling

I think that your questions could best be answered by Richard Stallman or Eben Moglen. You can contact them at:

Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330,
Boston, MA 02111-1307
USA


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Steve Stites

have been working on the project (and several others that are nearing completion) and had planned on contacting the people mentioned above, but in light of current developments, would prefer different contacts. hate to bother the fsf guys with small questions while they are trying to hammer something out as fundamentally and universally beneficial as GPL3.

any ideas of other contacts?

thx pres

Don't know answers for 1 and 2 (don't know American law).
The answer for question 3 is yes. You can chanrge as much as you want as long as the documentation (and software) is released freely (well, OSI approved licence), it's OS. Answer for 4 would be probably yes. But you'd need to phrase the licence correctly.

i don't think its legal in the US to do that, you could get a patent and give it way under the license ... but then a company might throw inti competitive laws at you ... but I'm no lawyer

hmm, i'm not sure i understand the hypothetical basis of "anti-competitive" charge. what would be my "intent" that they would be attempting to prove?

just patent it and let people use it and contribute to it. they wont be able to make it propriety cause you still have full rights to it.

and i think the anti-cmpetitive cahrge comes from you underselling the competition. believe me, if one of them contributed a penny to the bush administration your whole operation would be killed off in a second.