[PSUBS-MAILIST] group submarine designing - good or bad.

[Ian Roxborough <irox@ix.netcom.com>]

"non commercial" vs open source.

If it's "non commericial" then I don't see how it's open source.
There is no open source project that says you can not use it
for commerical use.  They are plenty of projects that provide
a "not for commerical use" version, sometimes with source code,
but this isn't an open source project and calling it an open
source project would dilute the (already over loaded) term
"open source".  - just my 2 cents.


Group submarine project.

Wasn't there a couple of people (from this list?) who tried to
design a submarine together and after 3 years still had not
finish the specs stage?  (I heard this third hand so I could
be wrong).

I'm not saying this is a bad idea, although the energy might
be better spent focusing on more specific areas of submarine
design, such as a motor control circuit (I remember Ken Martindale
posted Motor Controller Schematic http://www.psubs.org/pic/motorcontrol.html),
or a trim tank control system, or Auto-Hover depth control like the
sport sub, or a black box dive recorded, or nice way of controlling
a spot lights direction from within the submarine.... etc..
I.e. things that are really useful to the submarine building
community.


K-350 vs open source.

I don't recall George Kittredge open sourcing his K-350
design, which means that we don't have permission to create
works derived from any of Kittredge designs and then give
the plans away for free.  We could produce designs that
could be used with a K class, "Auto-hover depth control for
you K-250", but not redesign a K class and then give the
plans away.  I don't think anybody here would buy all the
rights for the K class off George and then open source it
either.


Talking vs work.

I'm interesting in being a part of this idea, but not
until I see that real progress is possible.  I'm also
not convinced that it is a good idea to be a psubs
project, and that it may open psubs.org up to more
liability than the people running it would wish.


Ian.