Hey everyone!
-- I'm Mike, and one of the two people who are currently running the show at Tekla Labs. I got forwarded this conversation from Javier and thought I might help clear up some confusion!
So who the hell are we? As Patrik mentioned above, we're just a bunch of PhD students at UC Berkeley trying to do something good in our free time (If any of you are local feel free to ask to meet up, we've already had a great meeting with Counter Culture Labs here in the area). A bunch of us are tinkerers as well, and that's really how the idea started up. Basically, we want to make incentives for makers to make damn good science equipment, that can be built and used by people without the money to buy them. That being said, we don't actually want to own the designs or the equipment - we just want them to publicly exist.
We don't want your IP. Your IP is great, but it belongs to the person who made it, and we have absolutely no desire to monetize it, take it, steal it, do big business words to it, etc re: anything that you make. We just want it to be available for people who need it to be able to use it. We're kind of like a DIY Lab phonebook. All the money we spend and receive is in the form of donations or prizes - sponsors include Autodesk, 123D, BigIdeas@Berkeley, etc. There's actually a lot of foundations or organizations that just give away money to do philanthropic things. We will never charge money for access to the designs we'll host, because 1.) The designs don't belong to us and 2.) That's entirely against the point of what we do.
This is actually kind of a nice setup for us, because we're spending other people's money to do what we do :D
As far as Instructables goes, and the boilerplate terms of service, be careful. If you have plans to patent your design, DON'T SUBMIT THEM. Not because of any kind of scheming on their part, but because of patent law. You need to have a patent application in the pipeline before making any kind of design public in any kind of format, though I believe there is a short 1yr grace period during which you can still patent after publication. Neither Instructables nor Tekla Labs wants the IP to your designs, both of us exclusively run a hosting/access service.
Now, regarding the questions about BY-SA previously:
We'd actually welcome some feedback from you on this issue. We picked the Creative Commons 3 license because we thought it would afford protection to the people who submit designs without hampering their freedom to go forward with it independently. An ideal scenario for the license we're looking for is:
1.) Creator submits design to Tekla Labs, and is forever free to monetize, improve, and patent their design at will (though if removed from the website we can't guarantee it's removed from the internet entirely of course)
2.) People who see the design and find it interesting can post it elsewhere, so long as they attribute back to the creator and to Tekla, they can use it for non-commercial purposes (aka research), so long as they credit the creator and Tekla, and finally, they can improve upon and modify the design, so long as they still use their changes for non-commercial purposes only and credit the creator and Tekla.
3.) The creator can extend the freedom to commercialize a design to whomever they desire; that is, if someone has a really cool modification or attachment to your design and you want to let them patent it so that you both can sell it together, that should be within your rights.
Basically what we want is protection for the creators while also giving them freedom to benefit from their work. We thought the creative commons 3 license filled those requirements nicely, but if you guys know of a better one that you would prefer that we use please let me know!
In Summary (tl;dr):
- Tekla wants to show off your stuff but doesn't want to own your stuff
- Tekla wants to reward people for tinkering together stuff that does some good in the world. Neat things are cool too, but we're specifically out there to encourage people to do good things.
- Instructables just wants to cover their ass. If they take your IP, they're responsible for it, which can be lots of legal tangle. Better to just say "you do what you want with it, and don't blame us for anything that goes wrong." The clause in their legalese is a warning about the way that patent law is structured, and that publishing a design can make patenting difficult or impossible.
- Our license was picked to try to maximize the freedom of the creator while also offering them some protection since they'll be putting their stuff on a public stage. Better license suggestions are welcome.
- WE DON'T WANT OWNERSHIP OF ANYTHING. Ownership must stay with its rightful owner.
If any of you have any more questions, concerns, worries, or need clarification on anything please go ahead and send me an email! We're really just a rag-tag group of students with optimistic ideas who like to make stuff and like people that make stuff too.
Best!
- Mike
On Friday, September 6, 2013 1:22:49 PM UTC-7, John Griessen wrote:
On 09/06/2013 07:36 AM, Josiah Zayner wrote:
> Submit your stuff and win some cash money and some publicity, probably more than you would have received without the contest.
Oh, a kickstarter for a well planned one might do better by far...
And that goes for Sebastien's OD600 meter for $25, if it has a few nice features
and looks like it is worth $25 and not going to quit in weather changes and time.
Some of us worry about the licensing because that's the way of the manufacturing world
and we want to make a difference by freely outflowing good product at low prices
without attracting lawyer letters to desist and to pay royalties.
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