FOCBOX Unity & Enertion's Responsibility To Contribute to OS

[Deodand]

@DerelictRobot

these kind of things can be reverse engineered on the hardware side in very little time at all.

Exactly, If you know what you’re doing. I consider it the entrance exam if you want to make a clone/variant of the unity. I already did and released all the challenging parts making the FW support dual motors. If they aren’t even willing to put in a small amount of effort making a schematic, how good can we expect this new product they create to be?

In your super long post, I don’t really see any good motivations for why you need the schematic? We’ve had long discussions on the trade-offs here and I’d love to hear some other ideas on how releasing the schematics would help our customers. The main one I can think of is repair but we handle repairs pretty well as is and are more than happy to advise our customers if they want to go the DIY route.

@trampa what’s with the constant jabs in unity threads? I looked through vedder’s new update some really cool stuff in there if you want to use your vesc to drive subwoofers or chain a bunch together in a quadcopter. Also some improved calibration for motors that aren’t used in eskate. Really fun ideas and you can tell Vedder is super passionate about using the VESC in other platforms which is awesome. You keep quoting 20,000 lines of code though and how much better the vesc will work for eskate after the new update. But after looking through I draw the same conclusions as @Ackmaniac, the bulk of these updates doesn’t really do much for our application.

The main changes which apply to eskate are better support for dual/4wd setups over CAN-bus (Unity did this), improved flux-linkage detection (Unity did this), an automated motor detection routine to make things faster and easier (Unity did this), a braking fix for a bug that I found, as well as an app that has some baseline functionality but still has a long way to go regarding bugs/dropouts etc. He did all of these in different ways from my methods but the core ideas are the same. From the perspective of eskate, the VESC update was catching up to the ways the unity pushed forward, and not the other way around. We’ll continue pioneering forward and don’t need to spend too much time looking sideways as I’m passionate about the eskate application and want to create the best possible experience for our customers.

[DerelictRobot]

@Deodand

Exactly, If you know what you’re doing. I consider it the entrance exam if you want to make a clone/variant of the unity. I already did and released all the challenging parts making the FW support dual motors. If they aren’t even willing to put in a small amount of effort making a schematic, how good can we expect this new product they create to be?

That’s great that you have your own opinions, I have mine.

In my opinion, it’s not up to you to determine whether or not to contribute to an open source project which you and your employer are financially benefiting from.

@Deodand

In your super long post, I don’t really see any good motivations for why you need the schematic?

I thought I made it pretty clear that I don’t actually need the schematic personally.

What motivations do I need to convince you to do right right thing?

Are you not benefiting from derivative work and now trying justify why you should not have to contribute? It doesn’t work that way kid.

I’m not doing this entirely for myself, I’m doing this on good principle because not everyone has the skill set and experience backing their continued efforts towards learning that I do.

I am making this request because you are getting paid based on an enormous body of someone else’s work, and your employer has openly stated he doesn’t believe in Open Source and doesn’t care about it.

What you are doing is moving the goalposts and justifications for as to why you don’t think you should have to contribute back, and that is wrong. Furthermore you have a conflict of interest because you’re currently lining your pockets off a closed fork, for someone who doesn’t have any respect or understanding for the amount of work that goes into development like this.

If you don’t understand why this is immoral, I’m not sure what to tell you there champ.

This post comes across as defensive, and ultimately you have zero ground to stand on and your stance towards this would be torn apart within a larger open source community. Go float the question elsewhere and see the response, I encourage it.

If you do not believe you have a moral (and legal) obligation to pay it forward and give back to the community which you’re now making a living off of, then you have a lot to learn beyond the under-grad levels of Electrical Engineering it takes to design something like this.

Pretty disappointing response from you. I had hoped you came into this sport & community with a bit more open mind, and a bit less arrogance & possession over something you did a fractional amount of work on compared to those that came before you.

The idea that knowledge should be withheld is one of the very core tenets of malicious control.

[b264]

@onloop

We may release the schematic in the future. It’s definitely something that has been discussed internally and we may need to revisit this if we are unknowingly in breach of some license or law.

We are not experts on the law regarding this matter, so feedback from the community is appreciated.

The law says you must release the circuit schematics, the source code for the firmware, the source code for the GUI if derived from BLDC Tool or VESC Tool, but not the PCB gerber files or the design (aesthetics) files.

[topcloud]

Correct. Watching this thread, now.

[Deodand]

@DerelictRobot

I’m not sure what to tell you there champ

@DerelictRobot

doesn’t work that way kid

@DerelictRobot

someone who doesn’t have any respect

@DerelictRobot

beyond the under-grad levels of Electrical Engineering

First off, can you try and remain polite and professional? Not sure why you feel the need to take such an aggressive tone, I can assure you it doesn’t further your goal. It is important that people don’t conflate the open-source requirements of the hardware vs. the software but I’d love to see a discussion of exactly how those apply here. For instance pretty much all vesc variants/flavours have changes within them and have no official schematics released as there is mostly just the reference schematic for the 4.12 and an old schematic of the vesc 6 before it was formally released, if this is an issue it is more widespread than an enertion and should be looked at in that context.

[DerelictRobot]

@Deodand

First off, can you try and remain polite and professional?

Sorry, willful ignorance & arrogance from someone profiting off someone else’s open source work tends to get me a little salty. I’ll use nicer words if they offend you, but I’m not a big fan of censorship and this is a topic I’m deeply passionate about. Ignorance is no excuse on your part.

@Deodand

Not sure why you feel the need to take such an aggressive tone, I can assure you it doesn’t further your goal. It is important that people don’t conflate the open-source requirements of the hardware vs. the software but I’d love to see a discussion of exactly how those apply here.

You clearly don’t understand. And that’s fine. Maybe this topic will enlighten you.

There’s a difference between doing the bare minimum to meet ‘legal requirements’ and dragging your feet along the way, and doing something with the intent of contribution and free sharing of knowledge.

How long was Enertion in violation of the OS license? Did it not taken legal pressure from Vedder himself to get them to finally release the Source Code?

They didn’t do it out of good will or to benefit the community, they did it because they were finally left with no other choice.

Just how they’re willing to release the original FOXBOX schematic only now, after it’s no longer being sold. If you don’t see that as BS, I sincerely do not know what to tell you.

[Deodand]

The focbox schematic has always been available actually, under the hardware reference files download from their website. I remember looking at like a year ago or more.

[DerelictRobot]

@Deodand

The focbox schematic has always been available actually, under the hardware reference files download from their website. I remember looking at like a year ago or more.

Then why could I only find v1.3/4?

And when I requested it from Enertion they sent me a 1.7 with the same date as the day I’d requested it on.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to point me to the existing link? (They didn’t, they generated a new file).

Why isn’t all of this just on your Enertion Github repo?

[JohnnyMeduse]

@DerelictRobot

And when I requested it from Enertion they sent me a 1.7 with the same date as the day I’d requested it on.

They could send you a letter with a paper version of the schematic… and still comply to the GPL licence.

The only thing that need to be share on a open source is the file you use and remix… If they didn’t use Vedder schematic they don’t need to make it open source… Look at Flipsky… Maytech… and other, they should be sharing there schematic since it is a remix from the original. Why aren’t you putting your effor them?

Let me guess… Because they aren’t Enertion… If you want the greater good of the community, you should also go after them.

But you just want to rub you dick in Jason face…

[DerelictRobot]

Who says I haven’t requested the same of them?

@JohnnyMeduse

The only thing that need to be share on a open source is the file you use and remix… If they didn’t use Vedder schematic they don’t need to make it open source…

You should read up on this topic before making assumptions. I encourage it.

And please don’t place words in my mouth.

@JohnnyMeduse

But you just want to rub you dick in Jason face…

And please leave Jason’s and my own penis out of this.

[JohnnyMeduse]

@DerelictRobot

You should read up on this topic before making assumptions. I encourage it.

Maybe it is you who should read more…

[topcloud]

How about this, guys.

@b264 is correct

@deodand could you, in good-faith, post links to the schematics, along with the source, and put this issue to rest?

To be clear: nobody here wants Enertion technology and we understand Enertion relies on Unity sales for income.

This isn’t an anti-Enertion thing; this is a pro-community thing.

@JohnnyMeduse is also correct, there’s no guarantee or SLA on this stuff. We just expect more as the community.

Can we keep those two things separate and focus on the resolution - and avoid further escalation?

[DerelictRobot]

Wow. Flagging posts to censor now are we. Seriously guys? This isn’t the first time this has been abused.

Do we need to call Mom in here?

My post was entirely relevant to this, I was showing an example of open source releases as I feel they should be done.

FOCBOX Unity & Enertion's Responsibility To Contribute to OS

Censoring someone because you disagree with them only furthers my points made here. Christ. Be better than this.

[dareno]

How is providing background and expertise to back up a thread off topic?

[DerelictRobot]

It isn’t. But censorship seems to be a common theme here.

[Venom121212]

Can’t we all get along? We need more unity

[banjaxxed]

Every day guys? this stuff is destroying the quality trolling

[trampa]

Relax everyone! This is getting pretty emotional. Benjamin has an ethos page up for a reason. Read through it with care and try to understand the motivation. The amount of work Vedder dropped into the code base is overwhelming, and without his effortless work our boards would probably still be rolling on RC-Car ESCs. He was friendly enough to share all of his efforts with the world and applied the GPL to his enormous code base and schematics. The idea behind it is to help others to gain knowledge for their own projects and allow integration of code into their own developments. Open source is all about sharing ideas and solutions to problems, so that everyone can learn from another. Spreading knowledge helps the world to get smarter and hopefully better. At least it helps to understand how thing actually work, in a time where code is taking massive control over our lives. Even this Forums software is OS! OS also means to be respectful, simply because developers rely on respect when the code is in the public domain. Code developers also need financial support to allow them to spend more time on writing more code. Open source doesn’t necessarily translate to “free of charge for takeaway”.

If you run a fork with substantial changes, people should at least be given a chance to design their own hardware to work in combination with the changed code base. That is my opinion.

Please remember: Without Benjamin’s openness there would not have been any VESC derivate at all. No nothing to base anything on!

I will meet Benjamin on Friday night, and will ask him about his opinion. I think his opinion should be taken into account, since he spent years of coding the software that allows us to skate the way we skate today and allowed @Deodand to design a derivate of the soft- and hardware.

[DerelictRobot]

@trampa

He was friendly enough to share all of his efforts with the world and applied the GPL to his enormous code base and schematics. The idea behind it is to help others to gain knowledge for their own projects and allow integration of code into their own developments. Open source is all about sharing ideas and solutions to problems, so that everyone can learn from another. Spreading knowledge helps the world to get smarter and hopefully better.

This is one of the best things you’ve written on these forums.

Thanks for your insight and contributions here.