I just read all the posts since this morning... wow! You've been busy.
OK... here goes. Carsten had some good points. I think if I spent hours on end burning the midnite oil and then saw that somebody was selling the plans in the back of Popular Mechanics... and getting rich, I'd be furious.
Now... open source does not necessarily mean the project could not be turned to profit making. There are lots of people making money from Linux, after all. I also wonder how we might control anyone who did decide to take the OSS design and start building and selling it... copyleft documents would not do.... as such documents do in fact allow one to reproduce and sell it. We need rather, a patent on any intelectual property in the design to do this.
I think that the best way to control commercial use of the project would be to design it such that it would not be commercially viable. I.e.: a one person submersible could never be used to "give rides", and the potential market for such a machine would be negligible. Liability would kill it before the first dozen had hit the water.
The other thing is that it should be stressed concept only. The idea would be for people to build their own machines to the specifications in the project documents... not for anyone to try to market a kit to be assembled.
If we produce the plans and the documentation... this material could and most certainly would be copyrighted. It could be distributed free of charge in electronic form. Just the fact that we would be giving it away free would discourage competition.
A separate list with url... well, it certainly could be done, but how big a monster is this going to become? Do we need a new list? Do we need a new server... possibly with a forum? Right now this is all new and exciting... like the new girl in school... but the early interest may fade as the drudgery hits.
A camel has been described as a horse designed by comittee... but then, a camel is a pretty impressive piece of technology. Even though God likely did not consult a comittee upon finalizing the two or three designs, the concept is still valid. I think that this would function best if somebody would take charge and start assigning tasks as soon as possible.
We perhaps need to compile a list of who is interested. We could easily form our own mail list and take it off the psub list... but you know what? I suspect that even those not participating would find the project of interest and it would be a simple matter to set filters up to shunt anything with "OSS" in the subject line to a specific location.
A wish list might be one of the first things to be enumerated... just as soon as we know who we are.
This could work. For some reason I don't understand, there seems to be quite a bit of commeradery here... and little or no bickering.
OK, enough from the landlubber. I've already put out my "wish list" and mentioned how I think I might be able to help. I'm going to sit back and watch until somebody tells me to go out and get an original copy of the plans for Trieste or something.
