apertus° decides: open or closed source for AXIOM
Soumis par Sebastian le lun, 02/10/2014 - 13:33
What does "open" mean?
There has been an ongoing community discussion around the level of openness to which apertus° will be willing/able to go with the Axiom. This discussion has lasted for several years up to now. On our website (See: “Why Open Source?”), we have detailed the problems that openness can introduce with proprietary interfaces. In most cases, developers are forced to sign binding non-disclosure-agreements (NDA) before any technical documentation may be acquired. With this in mind, our motto has always been: “As open as possible, as closed as necessary”. The apertus° core team (apertus° association board of directors and apertus° company representatives) have recently met up in a virtual boardroom, with the intention of not leaving until a decision had been reached regarding “how closed is actually necessary”. The decision we arrived at is indicative of the transparent rules: a solid constitution - set-in-stone - that the Axiom project adheres by.
A major milestone has now been reached on the path to an open digital cinema camera! How “open” will Axiom be? The answer is simple: 100% entirely! We have banned all proprietary interfaces and parts without open documentation from being utilised in the camera core. Please read on for the full statement.
Full Statement
Our definition of “open” for the apertus° Axiom:
Hardware
The Axiom base system is defined by the following logical and physical parts: image sensor front-end, processing board, external interface board, power management and enclosure (including lens mount base). These parts are guaranteed to be released as open hardware (all the schematics, plans, BOM, CAD files, gerber files, etc. required to duplicate the hardware) as defined by the CERN OHL (open hardware license 1.2). apertus° ensures that all Axiom interfaces to the outside (as well as the inside) are open, well defined and publicly documented.
Software
All software source code (including FPGA, firmware, drivers, etc.) running on hardware that is developed by apertus° is guaranteed to be released under the GNU GPL V3. There are no explicit non-release agreements between apertus° and the community creating software/hardware. The copyright holder might always license his/her work as appropriate (and even dual license it) but for apertus° to accept the software into the official Axiom repository it needs to be released under an FSF compatible free software license.
Summary
This means anyone can 'reproduce' the work done by apertus° for Axiom without hitting any legal boundaries and/or requiring any reverse engineering. It does not mean however, that no manufacturing/assembly/etc. knowledge or special equipment is required to reproduce the physical hardware.
Addons/Accessories
Anyone can carry out the following actions legally:
b) use any apertus° Axiom open component in a proprietary setup (again without proprietary modifications to any open apertus° Axiom component)
c) create a new (open or proprietary) component which interfaces with existing apertus° Axiom components (via well defined open interfaces)
d) Sell the newly created component from c) without paying any royalties to apertus°
Proprietary interfaces that can not be open sourced can therefore only be added to the system as physical addon module (interfacing via one of the open interfaces).
Note: In Europe reverse engineering is a legal method to obtain information.
and the AXIOM project is certified Open Hardware by
.
8 Commentaires
Thanks for making this
Thanks for making this decision :)
"We have banned all
"We have banned all proprietary interfaces ... from the camera core"
So does this mean HDMI and SDI output would only come via an add-on module?
For HDMI, definitely - to
For HDMI, definitely - to acquire HDMI transceiver chips you have to become a member of the HDMI consortium which is 5.000 - 10.000$ per year plus a fee per device/chip sold.
For SDI we are still in the process of figuring out the license situation, its a lot less clear than with HDMI but so far it seems to not be limited by any patents/license fees.
You may want to go for the
You may want to go for the route that DVEO took. Their Linux SDI cards include an FPGA etc.
What route did they take in
What route did they take in particular?
I looked over their website but could not find anything (rather messy).
I know that displayport is
I know that displayport is royality-free but i dont know if it is required to be a member of the vesa Organisation.
If the displayport is freely
If the displayport is freely available, it could be one of the most viable options for video output. It can go up to 4096*2160 and that's pretty big. Just add an DP to HDMI converter and it's like any other camera ...
That was our idea behind it.
That was our idea behind it. http://www.vesa.org/vesa-standards/free-standards/
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