Good afternoon open source hardware avant-garde!
tl;dr: OPEN_NEXT needs input to 1) validate released ICT tools and 2) scope further developments of the same (all tools are of course open source) by June 26
long ↓
In the past 2 years we’ve developed a a variety of IT tools in the EU-H2020-funded project OPEN!NEXT (https://opennext.eu/) to support design reuse of already published OSH. After all it’s now time to validate to what extent these tools are practically useful for actors in the field of OSH. The goal of this is to identify 1) the core value these tools have for you and 2) blind spots or features we still need to work on.
In other words: Your feedback will set the foundation for further development to be carried out and new projects proposals to be submitted.
Of course the source codes of all tools are published under a free/open license.
For the following tools we’re currently looking for feedback:
- Wikifactory (the platform is not open source, but the tool below is)
Wikifactory is an online platform aiming to provide a dedicated development environment for open source product development.
The University of Bath (@hpy) created a tool that provides users with valuable metadata on OSH projects (e.g. file types in the repository or history of open/closed issues). This is now being implemented on the Wikifactory platform but is also applicable to other platforms such as GitHub.
Please respond to this short survey to help them help you! → EUSurvey - Survey - The Library of Open Source Hardware (LOSH)
LOSH is a distributed knowledge base for OSH designs and features a meta search engine for OSH. Concept and underlying metadata specification are based on efforts of the Open-KnowHow initiative. The mission: If there’s an OSH design published on the internet, you should find it on LOSH.
find the survey here: EUSurvey - Survey
André from OSEGeV is dedicating his master thesis to LOSH and carrying out major development efforts. To include the community and end users in the development process he’s currently running multiple interviews & surveys – and he’s looking for participants that are working with hardware in some ways professionally or in their free time (Makers/Designers). If you are interested to take in such an interview, then please contact him
Mail: andre.lehmann@posteo.de
Telegram: @Aisbergg
- OSH repository checker
This is a command-line tool to quickly run checks on OSH repositories (e.g. “is the project using an hardware-specific open source license?” or “does the project use open source file formats for electronic files?”. Think of it as an OSH repository linting tool
find a full list of current checks here: src/checks · master · OSEGermany / osh-tool · GitLab
There’s no survey for this tool; if you find this useful, please go ahead, test it and file bug reports and feature requests on GitLab (using issues) → looking forward to follow up on them
OSEGermany / osh-tool · GitLab
This is it; as said input from the OSH community would be super valuable, so we can make sure that the final releases are actually useful for many people.
Since we’d still need time to evaluate the results and wrap-up the final report, we’d need your input by June 26 
Also, if you need more info or want to get in touch with the developers and researchers behind these tools directly → don’t hesitate, I’ll get you connected
THANKS; looking forward to your input