At YouMagine we want to help people collaborate, remix and design together online. We want to build the tooling to make it easier for anyone to design, work together and share using 3D printing. We’re not alone on this, there are a lot of fellow travellers who are doing the same or similar things. We’ve been thinking about how we can act as a force multiplier by helping our competitors and companies in the same field. If we can make things cheaper, easier or better for them the chance that one of us succeeds will be higher. The chance that we will collectively succeed in making things as supple as other data will be higher also. After all YouMagine wants to make the plumbing for 3D printing and make things as malleable as memes. We see our task as that of creating the necessary infrastructure on top of which others can build. And not in the sense of being a platform as Apple is a closed platform but rather a source of data, information and tooling for other people’s platforms and the community as a whole. We’re not a platform, but rather a foundation supporting other platforms not locking anyone in. Simultaneously we’ve been thinking about our community and how we can work together with them to create a better YouMagine. We’ve decided to let our community influence and guide all the major decisions and directions we take. So we want you to tell us where we need to go and what we should be doing. Feel free to at any time contact me with feedback, ideas, critiques etc.
Share3D
This is why we’re sharing our first major Share3D project with you. Share3D is a part of YouMagine that we will share with the “internet of things”, open hardware & 3D printing communities. It is a set of tools to help them accelerate their development. We looked at obstacles to a 3D printed world, costs that others would have to incur & problems other people were not solving. We decided that the most important first thing to make and share were in the legal realm. A lot of people overlook legal and its implications. When people do look into it they all individually have to spend a lot of time and money to understand all of the patent, copyright & liability implications and issues surrounding the sharing of things. We concluded that we would have the highest immediate impact on the community by ameliorating their risks and to give their users clarity about their rights. We’ve holistically looked at this issue from the point of the designer, the 3D printer operator, the platform and the end user. We have tried to come up with the clearest & most equitable guidelines for all. We’ve found this especially important because a lot of the people involved in the sharing of things are persons but may be faced with severe measures usually reserved for companies (eg infringement, product liability, wrongful death). Also a single tort case in the US for example would be enough to sink any one of the platforms in the Sharing of Things market.
Sharing, so that others can build.
This is why we will create a Terms of Service & license for 3D printed things and share these with the 3D printing, open hardware and IoT communities.
Terms of Service
We’ve decided to share our Terms of Service with any and all platforms or websites that do co-collaboration, sharing of 3D data, online 3D collaboration, IoT & 3D printing. We will use our experience to work with our community on formulating an ideal ToS document that can be used by any and all free of charge.
ToS Goals
- We want a huge corporate platform and a one man band to both be able to let people remix and share online without falling foul of relevant laws.
- We also want a ToS to be available that respects community member’s rights. We want this ToS to be as clear and concise as possible and via bullet points point out the major legal implications to users.
- We want this ToS to be functional in reducing legal risk to platform owners and community members alike across the breath of criminal, IP & other tort risks.
- We want to preempt the first serious legal challenge for patent infringement on a platform by doing what we can to mitigate the impact this would have on an organization or individual.
- We want to preempt the first serious product or manufacturer liability case by clearly reducing the risk to the 3D printer operator, end user and platform.
- We want to make sure that end users of parts understand that there is a “user beware” principle in effect and that the functionality of end use parts can not be guaranteed. We want to indemnify 3D printer operators and designers from any liability that could be incurred from the use of their parts.
- We want to make sure that printer operators and end users of parts understand that the fact that the designer, person who modifies a part, person who prints out a part & the user are all separate actors and have very little control individually over the functionality of the end use part.
- We want to ensure that end users understand that because parts are designed and modified by many the functionality and fitness of any individual part for any individual task can not be guaranteed by any individual.
- We want end users of parts to understand that due to the high variability of 3D printers, 3D printer settings & consumables the same file printed by different people or printers may result in a completely different object.
- We want end users to understand that the same level of product expectation can not be required from a product that is individually 3D printed than that of one who is mass produced.
- We want end users of parts and any parties to whom they give access to those parts to understand that if a file has been designed and shared for free it would be unreasonable for them to expect any kind of true functionality from that part.
- We want to create this document with as much feedback as is possible.
Some questions we’d like to ask:
Questions 1.
- Of the things mentioned above, what do you disagree with?
- What have we missed?
- What are some IoT or open hardware projects emerging that we should pay special attention to?
- For automobiles, drones and the like liability poses a high risk. Should we exclude these things from the license? Make a another license for high risk things?
- What do you feel we should do about guns? We could exclude these completely or let them be shared?
- Is it fair to the user to in a blanket way just label everything that is made with IoT, Open hardware & 3D printing experimental? Is it tenable in the long run?
3DShare: An open source license for 3D printed things
Existing licensing such as Creative Commons or GPL has been created for use with software or things such as images. These licensing structures are not designed for physical objects but rather for bytes alone. We anticipate a remix world where complex 3D printed things will be made using lots of different parts and many designers. Attribution, attribution of changes, taxonomies of the things themselves and functionality of the thing would not fit in existing licenses. Also product liability and other real world concerns have not been defined within the framework of these licenses. This is especially important because we see things emerging such as 3D printed houses, open hardware projects that spawn consumer devices & the use of open source design files in commercial products & projects. Because of this we will together with our community and lawyers create an open source license for 3D printed things. The aim of this license is to provide for an as free and fair as possible sharing of design files for objets. We hope to encourage collaboration and remix of design files, projects, devices and tools. We hope to make it clear which rights are and are not transferred. We hope to also make it clear what the liability and level of functionality that can be expected is. We also want to let designers decide who can do what with their files under what circumstances.
We would like your feedback on what this license should contain. So below some questions:
Questions 2
- Open Source or Free Software?
- If Mary makes a design file for a hinge and Bob adapts it. Should Bob & Mary be considered the designers of the object? Or should Mary be designated as the designer and Bob the “adaptor” of it?
- If a team of ten designs an object together should they be listed in order of the level of their contribution? Or should they all be considered the designer of the object collectively & equally?
- Should a designer be able to specify that their object can not be remixed or changed in any way?
- Should a designer be able to specify that their design can not be used in a particular type of design? eg my hinge can not be used in a gun design.
- Should a designer be able to specify that their design not be used in particular type of object. eg You can use my hinge for a football helmet design but not to make an actual football helmet.
- Should the license always require attribution? From all designers and remixers of a particular design?
- Do we want to embed “half-lives” in the license? So, my design can not be used for commercial purposes for two years, but after this period can be.
- Do we want people to be able to differentiate between the types of users and their rights. eg My design may not be used for commercial products except if it is a prosthetic device. Or companies that have revenues over 1m may not use my design for commercial products. Or frighteningly, Italians may not use my design for commercial products but Belgians will be able to?
- Similarly, do we want designers to be able to specify that the design can only be used for a particular application, group or purpose, excluding all others? eg My hinge design can only be remixed if it is to be used by the e-Nable community to make a Talon 3D printed prosthetic. eg My design is non-commercial except for this list of ten friends enclosed who can totally use it for commercial applications. eg My design may only be used to make interior design objects namely red vases, nothing else.
- Should we always err towards protecting designers rights or towards increasing the sharability of the design?
Steps
We will gather feedback and discuss these points for the next 3 weeks. Then we will in two weeks work on and prepare the Alpha version of both the ToS and the license. We hope to present these for feedback by the end of September
Please comment and ask questions below, email joris@youmagine.com to contribute. You can also look at this article over on Medium and comment next to it.
Pingback: YouMagine ToS, Open Source License - 3D Printing Industry
First of all, thank you for taking the lead in this area.
I don’t have many comments on the ToS. I don’t think marking everything as experimental will have any long-term effect. Eventually, people will become blind to the label and it will lose meaning. A blanket statement on the site might be more useful, but I suspect people won’t read it.
On the license, I have more thoughts. Apologies in advance for the length of this comment.
The Open Source Software community has settled on a number of licenses that in some ways mirror the issues that you raise. From following projects with different licenses for a while, it’s pretty clear that one license will probably not work for everyone. Taking a page from the Creative Commons, setting up a license as a set of attributes that are combined to make a particular license seems best (although I’d guess that’s probably the hardest option).
On to the questions,
1. Open Source or Free Software?
Both have been used to good effect in the OS community. This seems to be a matter of ideology over practicality. I like the Open Source licenses better in general, and think that would be a better place to start.
No opinion on 2 and 3.
4. Should a designer be able to specify that their object can not be remixed or changed in any way?
This option allows designs to be published that others can learn from, even if they can’t use them directly. So, this does seem to be a valuable option.
5. Should a designer be able to specify that their design can not be used in a particular type of design?
There are people who are going to want this option. I know OS software licenses tend to shy away from these kinds of restrictions. The main reason I can see for considering it is to give a structure to the approach. Otherwise, people will probably try to make their own licenses. (And, I assume most of us are terrible at that.)
6. Should a designer be able to specify that their design not be used in particular type of object?
See answer to 5 above.
7. Should the license always require attribution?
While I think this should be the default option, it may not be the right answer for everyone. The CC public domain option, the Fair License, and various half-serious do what you want licenses, suggest that people might want to have an option of extremely low requirements.
I can see creating a substructure that might be really optimized but widely useful. Then releasing it with a very simple license (to protect it from someone randomly patenting it), but not requiring any attribution because I feel it’s more useful for everyone to have access to it, rather than get any credit.
8. Do we want to embed “half-lives” in the license?
I like this idea. I’ve been trying to work out something particular for some of my designs, but I hadn’t thought of it that explicitly. I would suggest that instead of a period, there’s an expiration date.
I guess you could get a similar result by re-licensing the item at the end of the period, but the automatic nature of this idea would allow me to make things revert even if I lost interest.
9. Do we want people to be able to differentiate between the types of users and their rights?
People will probably want to do this. At a minimum, there will be a need for a non-commercial provision. That’s recreated too often to be ignored. I can see a potential idea for the country-specific restriction to help avoid oddball legal requirements, but I suspect it would be more hassle than actual help.
10. Similarly, do we want designers to be able to specify that the design can only be used for a particular application, group or purpose, excluding all others?
I suspect there are people who would want this. I think it’s a bad idea. If there is anything we’ve learned in the software world, you can never guess how a user is going to use your designs. Closing off all options except the ones you can think of seems short-sighted.
11. Should we always err towards protecting designers rights or towards increasing the sharability of the design?
And you saved the hardest for last. If we can support multiple options for the license (like with the CC licenses), people can choose for themselves. If you just have one license, things get murkier. I suspect that whichever way you choose there would be a proliferation of other licenses created by people with different agendas. The OS software licenses explosion shows where that can go.
Thank you again for taking the lead on these issues.
Thank you so much for your comment!
“There are people who are going to want this option. I know OS software licenses tend to shy away from these kinds of restrictions. The main reason I can see for considering it is to give a structure to the approach.” That was the thinking behind this.
“7. Should the license always require attribution?
While I think this should be the default option, it may not be the right answer for everyone.”
Interesting thought. I thought everyone would want to be attributed but perhaps some do not!
“I can see creating a substructure that might be really optimized but widely useful. Then releasing it with a very simple license (to protect it from someone randomly patenting it), but not requiring any attribution because I feel it’s more useful for everyone to have access to it, rather than get any credit.” Had not considered this option at all.
“8. Do we want to embed “half-lives” in the license?
I like this idea. I’ve been trying to work out something particular for some of my designs, but I hadn’t thought of it that explicitly. I would suggest that instead of a period, there’s an expiration date.” I like the idea of an expiration date!
“I guess you could get a similar result by re-licensing the item at the end of the period, but the automatic nature of this idea would allow me to make things revert even if I lost interest.” Like the revert idea as well.
“I can see a potential idea for the country-specific restriction to help avoid oddball legal requirements, but I suspect it would be more hassle than actual help.” Yeah, this also worries me as I don’t want anything nationalistic to happen.
“10. Similarly, do we want designers to be able to specify that the design can only be used for a particular application, group or purpose, excluding all others?
I suspect there are people who would want this. I think it’s a bad idea. If there is anything we’ve learned in the software world, you can never guess how a user is going to use your designs. Closing off all options except the ones you can think of seems short-sighted.” Yeah, I’m on the fence about this because we want to promote sharing above all else, and do agree it would be short-sighted. But, I can also see groups emerging whereby sharing in the group would be “freer” than sharing outside the group. Friends or a community that would be OK with others in that community using their designs but not those outside.
“11. Should we always err towards protecting designers rights or towards increasing the sharability of the design?
And you saved the hardest for last. If we can support multiple options for the license (like with the CC licenses), people can choose for themselves. If you just have one license, things get murkier. I suspect that whichever way you choose there would be a proliferation of other licenses created by people with different agendas. The OS software licenses explosion shows where that can go.” Agree completely here, ideally we’d want a simple as possible license and have as few as possible. This would let the rights conveyed be broadly understood. But, we also want to cater to as many use cases as is possible.
Really good way to present this guys, and taking some time over it is a very good idea. Lots of people will have slightly different opinions and they won’t all be compatible.
In the end I hope we do end up with a very open, encouraging and supportive community on Youmagine that people use and freely give both time and energy to support.
It’s slippery slope of thinking about financial rewards/returns from an open-source community site, so I also hope you find a way to pay for it and also keep it open, free and fun ! 🙂
Let me know if I can help at all, I gladly give my time, energy and support to Youmagine
Rich.
Your TOS should concentrate on what you, as a website and as a company, promise to do – independent of what designs you are hosting. You should include safe harbour provisions and limit your liability to an appropriate locale and court, but beyond that, try to stay clear of specifying how you will interact with user’s content other than to store, forward and facilitate collaboration. IANAL, but you can’t possibly indemnify users of your site from legal proceedings, so just state that.
Of the things mentioned above, what do you disagree with?
baking in topics like guns, cars etc. into a TOS
What have we missed?
safe harbor provisions
What are some IoT or open hardware projects emerging that we should pay special attention to?
This is not part of your TOS is it? Really?
For automobiles, drones and the like, liability poses a high risk. Should we exclude these things from the license? Make a another license for high risk things?
Here you are talking about license and not TOS. Don’t conflate the two. See below.
What do you feel we should do about guns? We could exclude these completely or let them be shared?
Provide mechanisms for users to police the site themselves instead.
Is it fair to the user to in a blanket way just label everything that is made with IoT, Open hardware & 3D printing experimental? Is it tenable in the long run?
Yes. Yes.
The license is a good idea, but must distinguish between items that are works of art and those that are functional. The former are copyrightable, while the later are not. The latter can be patented. So two licenses are required.
Open Source or Free Software?
Moot. The ideal license is neither. Maybe closest to Open Source because of the remix idea.
If Mary makes a design file for a hinge and Bob adapts it. Should Bob & Mary be considered the designers of the object? Or should Mary be designated as the designer and Bob the “adaptor” of it?
Each a designer, of their own object – Bob just derived his from Mary’s. And don’t split hairs about what an derivation is. If the design isn’t identical it’s a derivation.
If a team of ten designs an object together should they be listed in order of the level of their contribution? Or should they all be considered the designer of the object collectively & equally?
Up to the team.
Should a designer be able to specify that their object can not be remixed or changed in any way?
No. Unless it is a work of art and then copyright applies.
Should a designer be able to specify that their design can not be used in a particular type of design? e.g. my hinge can not be used in a gun design.
No, for the same reason as above. Unless it is patented, it is derivable in any way that subsequent designers feel. Users should not be in this game if they are squeamish about possible uses their design could be put to.
Should a designer be able to specify that their design not be used in particular type of object. e.g. You can use my hinge for a football helmet design but not to make an actual football helmet.
No. As above.
Should the license always require attribution? From all designers and remixers of a particular design?
No. Many people stand on the shoulders of giants and cannot possibly provide attribution. If it’s obvious, the designer should acknowledge it, but there is no way to determine who made the first potato chip bag clip.
Do we want to embed “half-lives” in the license? So, my design can not be used for commercial purposes for two years, but after this period can be.
No. That’s the job of patents.
Do we want people to be able to differentiate between the types of users and their rights. e.g. My design may not be used for commercial products except if it is a prosthetic device. Or companies that have revenues over 1m may not use my design for commercial products. Or frighteningly, Italians may not use my design for commercial products but Belgians will be able to?
No. See patent law. This would be impossible to enforce due to grey areas. e.g. Is that net revenue or gross? Belgian by birth or immigration?
Similarly, do we want designers to be able to specify that the design can only be used for a particular application, group or purpose, excluding all others? e.g. My hinge design can only be remixed if it is to be used by the e-Nable community to make a Talon 3D printed prosthetic. e.g. My design is non-commercial except for this list of ten friends enclosed who can totally use it for commercial applications. e.g. My design may only be used to make interior design objects namely red vases, nothing else.
No. Keep it dead simple.
Should we always err towards protecting designers rights or towards increasing the sharability of the design?
Shareability.
My 2¢.
Would agree with: “try to stay clear of specifying how you will interact with user’s content other than to store, forward and facilitate collaboration.” Especially in the Netherlands this will be a good course of action. Totally agree with safe harbor.
With regards to guns and other topics, we may have no choice because we are expressly forbidden by Dutch law from sharing certain things. But, I understand the general point. Agree that self policing is almost always the best option.
I’m not sure that just labeling everything experimental will be enough in the long run. I would hope so, but the lawyers we’ve spoken to tend to think that we could be leading our users into a trap of feeling secure whilst a court could easily say that clearly the thing is not experimental since its been around for years or is shown in use etc.
Versus art works v. functional would agree that it would point to two licenses. But, ideally we’d have one with two settings lets say.
2. agree that forking and derivation would be a clear way to address this. I’m curious to see if people really want to “co-design” and be co-owners of something, but this would be complex legally.
4. the no remix is interesting. We’d always like to promote remixing.
5. Ideally anything that could be used by another should be able to be used. But, I am mindful that some people could have preferences as to what kind of objects they would like to see their thing used as.
7. Love the potato example. Very true!
8. With the half-life idea we want to create a way for someone to have exclusivity on selling something commercially for example but realize that this is fungible. Its not a patent but rather a way to when uploading something specify that it will be available to others at a later date.
9. Yeah, scary area, don’t want to go here frankly.
10. Real believer of keeping it simple.
Thank you so much for your help!
I don’t want to go through all the questions right now but there is one thing that just popped in my mind that is very important: the users should be protected from the platform operator. One particular 3D design sharing site has recently come under criticism for becoming more commercial and less open source. Many alternatives to this site have popped up (youmagine being one of them) and some people have actively taken down their designs from this site and moved elsewhere, but the vast majority of the designs originally posted on this website remain locked up there: even though the designs are open source and can be freely copied, the database of this website containing these designs is copyrighted as a whole and protected by the TOS. This means a potential competing platform must start from scratch and can not build upon what the community has created even though the models themselves are open source.
The solution seems clear to me: the TOS of any truly open source 3d design sharing platform should allow users to steal their database and open a competing platform. Not just the models need to be open source, the database as well.
Tom,
Without going into specifics I think you have a very good point. The data in my mind always belongs to the user and platforms are always locking in people because in controlling the network they attain value. Since the user adds value they should be able to subtract it as well. We see ourselves as a foundation not a platform. This is important because it means we do not wish to lock anyone in. So I totally agree with the premise of your statement.
I’m not entirely sure how we would do this however? We could make it very easy for people to export their data. But, I think that what keeps platforms alive is inertia. Everyone posts to MySpace because everyone posts to MySpace. It doesn’t have to be a question of data portability or ownership of the content. In MySpace’s case it lead to many users until those users decided it was uncool to contribute to MySpace. Then they contributed elsewhere and the platform collapsed. Perhaps it was in danger of collapsing many months earlier but out of force of habit prolonged its existence. There are many examples of companies and tools that people use whilst hating them. Whatever the legal situation of the content an zich, a platform lives and dies according to the will of its contributors. The MySpace data was left to rot and updates were made elsewhere. So I completely understand your point but don’t know how it would be workable?
There is an unfortunate trend in the maker community that confuses free/open source licenses with those that allow downloading with restrictions (non-commercial, no remixes, restrictions on field of endeavor). The open source software and now hardware communities have a very specific definition of what “open source” means: http://www.oshwa.org/definition/
Please make sure this distinction is very clear, that by adding any of these restrictions, the design is no longer open source. Allowing commercial (and any other use) is a critical feature of open source, because it encourages others to invest more of their own creativity, time, money, and resources into making the design better. “Sharealike” licenses often achieve what I think people want from non-commercial licenses: preventing “theft” and monopolizing designs.
Yes it is an important distinction.
I think that we ourselves would love for the widest and deepest sharing that is possible. But, on the other hand by letting people restrict the level of sharing of their design we can perhaps encourage more people to share. This is a choice that we still do not fully know the answer to.
I second Ben’s distinction about open source being about entirely open software and, therefore, hardware.
There is philosophical question to ask about the nature of innovation before I’d answer any of your questions. How do we understand the nature of how innovation and ideas emerge, manifest and grow? Are ideas brought about by a single person or by designated teams, best managed in closed environments by those who have the know-how? Or, do ideas emerge in our constant dialogues and intellectual+creative exploration of existing concepts? Their chance of manifesting hinging on the idea being bounced back and forth with others until it grasps sufficient real commitment to drive it forward, becoming innovation thanks to the feedback from or adoption by communities at scale?
I sense that there is possible utility in both arguments: for high-tech innovation that requires hefty budgets, I can see the closed-source argument being used to ensure that they rally & reap the necessary funding from institutions, corporations and universities. But, when it comes to low and consumer-grade tech, their chance of success is dependent on individuals’ ability to test and experiment with the product, to extend it to other applications, and so forth. Especially for appropriate hardware to be adopted at scale – technologies allowing for water collection, energy generation or basic prosthetics, for example – it is vital for these designs to be freely adaptable, to use local materials, be manufactured with little formal skill, be easily assembled (and disassembled), etc . The authors behind such ideas are only part of the web that makes it happen; those who share their designs and blueprints understand that by presenting a runway for anyone to participate as they will, they can bet on the chances of crowd-sourced innovation.
I see YouMagine and similar platforms betting on the ontological position of there being abundance in innovation, by incentivising the sharing of design on open terms in order to truly enable the creative capacity of the public at large, least not to hoard ideas to the lonely confines of one’s sole brain or organizational complex.
And of course, open innovation will become relevant to high-tech innovation too. WikiSpeed, Local Motors, iMoov are already doing it, and I’m exciting to see how this will generally unfold. We’ll find ways of turning high-tech innovation into radically affordable developments, my latest favourite example being the 50c microscope: Foldscope.
As a last note, if you haven’t read I, Pencil – A Family Tree by Leanard Read, it certainly bodes well with these philosophical reflections above. Entertaining too, dating back to 1958. Enjoy!
Good points all and I wholeheartedly agree! Love the Pencil essay! I think there is an important distinction between play, invention and product development.
Play: To me is just the simple unguided making of something. Making for making’s sake. Designing something, printing something. Could be for yourself, for others. Doodling with things. I’d like to encourage a playful legal & social environment where people feel uninhibited and can make whatever they fancy. I think this is the optimal way to encourage the collision of ideas. The mashing up and remixing of may diverse things. Taking a tortoise shape and turning it into a lamp. Many mayor inventions and breakthroughs have come about through serendipity. It is also the major method to unlock the unlikely and bring about the truly new. I’d love for our license to encourage this.
Invention: Is to me a single person (or small group working in concert) purposefully making a product or technology that has a purpose. This is a process that has a goal, a desired output. This is needed and indeed is happening. Few invent while many play. But, the playful can inspire inventions and the inventors inspire the playful. So both are needed in my opinion.
Product Development: Is working in concert with a small group with a diverse skill set in order to take a thing and turn it into a working consumer grade product. This is to me the next step. What we primarily want to enable is the collaborative development of innovative products that fill hereto unexplored niches. We’re OK with these products having a business model and people making money from them. But, our primary interest is to make sure that this knowledge does not end up in a silo locked away. YouMagine believes in open hardware and is looking to help bring about the spread of knowledge/designs/files/things/ideas. No silos, what you invent belongs to all. But, cognizant that some may want to restrict access to their inventions for whatever reason we want to let these people find a way that makes sharing comfortable for them. This to get them to at least share a bit. For this to occur we definitely need structures, ways of cooperating, tooling and legal protections in place.
In my opinion any license should encourage and make possible these diverse scenarios. So an inventor who makes a thing and may want to sell this thing. A group that would want to collaboratively develop a commercial thing. Or a group who makes a collective thing and gives this away such as e-NABLE. Or someone that just wants to give. They should all be protected and feel free to create or share.
So totally agree with this “I see YouMagine and similar platforms betting on the ontological position of there being abundance in innovation, by incentivising the sharing of design on open terms in order to truly enable the creative capacity of the public at large, least not to hoard ideas to the lonely confines of one’s sole brain or organizational complex.”