I was sad to see you go pretty dormant soon after I was able to get my grubby hands on an Empyrean. Glad to see you're going to to give it another go, I'm along for the journey.
Thank you so much for the kind words of encouragement.
I wish it made more sense to move forward with Empyrean at this point, but the economics just don't pan out at all, unfortunately. I am going to keep an eye on the new RISC-V microcontrollers that are starting to become more available, and maybe I'll try to make a new Empyrean with one of those one day.
I wasn't aware of that, so thanks for pointing it out. I will probably end up buying a NanoVNA-H4 some time soon anyway, so I may have a chance to try that custom firmware. I don't think such precise frequency and phase measurement will be needed for any of the initial modules in Project Yamhill, but it could be useful for a future, advanced module, if things progress to that point.
As you mention, this is a well-known conundrum for Open Source hardware. The various licenses only work if folks respect the creator's license terms, and often don't work if the derivatives are beyond the (moral and legal) enforcement mechanisms. It's impractical to attempt lawsuits, or even shaming, towards an organization based in China.
It's not... open source... I guess but here are some things I'd be tempted to do if I were creating a new system that is subject to cloning:
* Make it clear from the beginning that you know that cloning is probably inevitable, but that to make the project sustainable, you won't be providing support for cloned products.
* Keep an eye out for clones, and identify them on your website. I think RTL-SDR.com has done a particularly good job about this, and they make it easy to understand why they do a better job than the cheap Software Defined Receiver dongles - https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/ and so whenever I reference an inexpensive RTL-SDR, I point at THAT site because their products are explained and documented very well.
* In the early days of TAPR, the TNC-2 (not sure about the TNC-1) designs weren't open source, but available only under license; payment of a license fee and a royalty for the first year's production. Granted this was in the days before Laissez-faire manufacturing in China of anything electronic meant that anything electronic (licensed or not) gets cloned. But that model did insure some immediate and some longer-term revenue to TAPR
* Official support forum that's ONLY accessible to those who have purchased a product from the original vendor. No discussion about clones is permitted - original vendor hardware only.
* Per incident high $$$ support - Have a cloned product and really want some (competent, not wisdom of the crowds) support? Go to the website and buy a support ticket, and the vendor will call you at an agreed upon time.
It's absolutely true that the license terms (or copyright laws) aren't really any impediment to overseas cloners. The Tragedy of the Commons rears its ugly head again and again. We're on our own to try to find ways to protect ourselves.
I am thinking that I may have to implement serialization of literally every product of a certain complexity or greater, and keep a database of these records, then only provide support to those who can provide a genuine SKU/SN combo. The SN will probably have to be some 64-bit number that doesn't start in a series with 0100 or something like that. This seems like a reasonable compromise to me. It's not stopping anyone from copying or extending the product, or updating or modifying the firmware.
The per-incident support idea would also be good if I had a dedicated staff that I could put onto that task. That's something that you would have to execute in a very fast and professional manner, or face serious problems. So it may be worth looking at for an organization of a certain larger size, but won't be feasible for a small start-up.
Trademarking product names may be a bit helpful to keep clones that steal your trade dress from being able to list on Amazon and other US-based online retailers, but I don't know how expensive and time consuming is. Having someone clone your product but call it something different defuses a lot of the problems that I've mentioned, so it may be worth trying this as well.
Whether you want to contemplate providing support... or not... in my opinion (and direct observation of various projects) you inevitably WILL end up providing support. Thus, given you're looking at this issue in advance of offering a product, it would make sense to me to think through the support issues and get your policies documented well in advance of offering a product, so no one can say that they didn't know about the support policy before buying.
Perhaps a fantasy scenario would help explain my thinking.
* Joe Ham buys a clone of a Project Yamhill subsystem on Alibaba and wants to update the firmware (that the unit was shipped with) to fix a known bug.
* Joe tries to update the firmware, but the unit gets bricked, and Joe cannot figure out how to fix it.
* In desperation to salvage something of his purchase, he eventually finds his way to the Project Yamhill support page, where he sees that he can only get help from you if he buys a support ticket.
* The ticket is priced at $75 per 30 minutes per incident. If a single indecent requires more than half an hour of involvement on your part, to continue requires the purchase of a support ticket. If it's a different issue, that's another ticket. Obviously you have some discretion about the terms, but you're within your rights to keep the terms strict.
* There are multiple reasons for this model - to minimize burnout, to generate some revenue, and most of all, to minimize the freeloader mentality when a clone buyer says "It's YOUR product / project / idea... why won't you support it?". To that you can say "I DO support it, to those who supported ME by buying my hardware, and I'll support you too if you are willing to pay SOMETHING for that support".
As you observe, what many think are protective licenses (short of actual patents) aren't any form of IP protection at all for the actual "designs. " Things leak into the public domain all the time this way and it isn't necessarily unscrupulous or illegal behavior to clone such items. Patents for design and trademarks for catchy names are the answer for those who truly wish to play in this "protect my IP" game. Short of that, things put on the Internet (not kept a trade secret) are fair game. Grim? Perhaps, but clever ways likely exist to live with and circumvent the reality that protecting designs from copying on the cheap is near impossible. Charging an hourly rate for support of clones makes a lot of sense... probably for legit hardware as well really. .. you gotta eat.
You’ve got the story right on DL2MAN’s (tr)uSDX. I own two, both legit versions, and have updated firmware on both units using the auth method you mention. He’s working with Guido PE1NNZ for a lot of the software he says - but I’m still pretty confused about the whole thing. I need an Arduino programmer to get the boot loader installed, then another programmer to actually load firmware (iirc).
I’m also confused about his legit sales channels - I was lucky to have found a real unit I think, and it was only when I was looking for firmware did I recognize that there were several knock-offs running around. I made a donation and ordered a second unit.
My sense is that some folks buy the cheap knock-offs ignorant that is what they are doing. I could well have. Although generally not our forte (unless we are a YouTuber), hobbists tend not to make a lot of effort into being easy to find and recognize as the real deal. A legit MakersMarket of sorts would do us well here — I imaging an Etsy for ham, curated by hams.
Some of the problem, I fear, is culture - maybe elements of the same culture that doesn’t have an issue in stealing others work would have folks seek out the most self-serving option for the approach to any project based on others’ work. I suspect this is correlated to those who have little original work themselves. I find it hard to imagine a ham who builds and shares or sells and yet knowingly steals. Encouraging and celebrating builders/makers might be a good way to support a healthy culture in IP ownership and respect for others’ vim n’ vigor to get something original out in the world.
I’m a new subscriber, mentioned by Steve. I found Steve bc someone pointed to his work around 900MHz spectrum allocation… which is interesting bc I’m building out a HaLow intranet for EmComm for my Town.
I was sad to see you go pretty dormant soon after I was able to get my grubby hands on an Empyrean. Glad to see you're going to to give it another go, I'm along for the journey.
73,
Michael N6MST
Thank you so much for the kind words of encouragement.
I wish it made more sense to move forward with Empyrean at this point, but the economics just don't pan out at all, unfortunately. I am going to keep an eye on the new RISC-V microcontrollers that are starting to become more available, and maybe I'll try to make a new Empyrean with one of those one day.
https://www.tinydevices.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=TinyPFA.Homepage would have given a very good frequency measurement tool ... But only for NanoVNA-H4 hardware
From the same tiny SA source software and some more. Pity you missed that
I wasn't aware of that, so thanks for pointing it out. I will probably end up buying a NanoVNA-H4 some time soon anyway, so I may have a chance to try that custom firmware. I don't think such precise frequency and phase measurement will be needed for any of the initial modules in Project Yamhill, but it could be useful for a future, advanced module, if things progress to that point.
As you mention, this is a well-known conundrum for Open Source hardware. The various licenses only work if folks respect the creator's license terms, and often don't work if the derivatives are beyond the (moral and legal) enforcement mechanisms. It's impractical to attempt lawsuits, or even shaming, towards an organization based in China.
You're in good company worrying about this. See Great Scott Gadgets - Testing a HackRF Clone - https://zeroretries.substack.com/i/44428106/great-scott-gadgets-testing-a-hackrf-clone. Link to the original story - https://greatscottgadgets.com/2021/12-07-testing-a-hackrf-clone/.
It's not... open source... I guess but here are some things I'd be tempted to do if I were creating a new system that is subject to cloning:
* Make it clear from the beginning that you know that cloning is probably inevitable, but that to make the project sustainable, you won't be providing support for cloned products.
* Keep an eye out for clones, and identify them on your website. I think RTL-SDR.com has done a particularly good job about this, and they make it easy to understand why they do a better job than the cheap Software Defined Receiver dongles - https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/ and so whenever I reference an inexpensive RTL-SDR, I point at THAT site because their products are explained and documented very well.
* In the early days of TAPR, the TNC-2 (not sure about the TNC-1) designs weren't open source, but available only under license; payment of a license fee and a royalty for the first year's production. Granted this was in the days before Laissez-faire manufacturing in China of anything electronic meant that anything electronic (licensed or not) gets cloned. But that model did insure some immediate and some longer-term revenue to TAPR
* Official support forum that's ONLY accessible to those who have purchased a product from the original vendor. No discussion about clones is permitted - original vendor hardware only.
* Per incident high $$$ support - Have a cloned product and really want some (competent, not wisdom of the crowds) support? Go to the website and buy a support ticket, and the vendor will call you at an agreed upon time.
I look forward to seeing what you come up with!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Thanks for the very thoughtful comment, Steve!
It's absolutely true that the license terms (or copyright laws) aren't really any impediment to overseas cloners. The Tragedy of the Commons rears its ugly head again and again. We're on our own to try to find ways to protect ourselves.
I am thinking that I may have to implement serialization of literally every product of a certain complexity or greater, and keep a database of these records, then only provide support to those who can provide a genuine SKU/SN combo. The SN will probably have to be some 64-bit number that doesn't start in a series with 0100 or something like that. This seems like a reasonable compromise to me. It's not stopping anyone from copying or extending the product, or updating or modifying the firmware.
The per-incident support idea would also be good if I had a dedicated staff that I could put onto that task. That's something that you would have to execute in a very fast and professional manner, or face serious problems. So it may be worth looking at for an organization of a certain larger size, but won't be feasible for a small start-up.
Trademarking product names may be a bit helpful to keep clones that steal your trade dress from being able to list on Amazon and other US-based online retailers, but I don't know how expensive and time consuming is. Having someone clone your product but call it something different defuses a lot of the problems that I've mentioned, so it may be worth trying this as well.
73,
Jason
Whether you want to contemplate providing support... or not... in my opinion (and direct observation of various projects) you inevitably WILL end up providing support. Thus, given you're looking at this issue in advance of offering a product, it would make sense to me to think through the support issues and get your policies documented well in advance of offering a product, so no one can say that they didn't know about the support policy before buying.
Perhaps a fantasy scenario would help explain my thinking.
* Joe Ham buys a clone of a Project Yamhill subsystem on Alibaba and wants to update the firmware (that the unit was shipped with) to fix a known bug.
* Joe tries to update the firmware, but the unit gets bricked, and Joe cannot figure out how to fix it.
* In desperation to salvage something of his purchase, he eventually finds his way to the Project Yamhill support page, where he sees that he can only get help from you if he buys a support ticket.
* The ticket is priced at $75 per 30 minutes per incident. If a single indecent requires more than half an hour of involvement on your part, to continue requires the purchase of a support ticket. If it's a different issue, that's another ticket. Obviously you have some discretion about the terms, but you're within your rights to keep the terms strict.
* There are multiple reasons for this model - to minimize burnout, to generate some revenue, and most of all, to minimize the freeloader mentality when a clone buyer says "It's YOUR product / project / idea... why won't you support it?". To that you can say "I DO support it, to those who supported ME by buying my hardware, and I'll support you too if you are willing to pay SOMETHING for that support".
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
As you observe, what many think are protective licenses (short of actual patents) aren't any form of IP protection at all for the actual "designs. " Things leak into the public domain all the time this way and it isn't necessarily unscrupulous or illegal behavior to clone such items. Patents for design and trademarks for catchy names are the answer for those who truly wish to play in this "protect my IP" game. Short of that, things put on the Internet (not kept a trade secret) are fair game. Grim? Perhaps, but clever ways likely exist to live with and circumvent the reality that protecting designs from copying on the cheap is near impossible. Charging an hourly rate for support of clones makes a lot of sense... probably for legit hardware as well really. .. you gotta eat.
You’ve got the story right on DL2MAN’s (tr)uSDX. I own two, both legit versions, and have updated firmware on both units using the auth method you mention. He’s working with Guido PE1NNZ for a lot of the software he says - but I’m still pretty confused about the whole thing. I need an Arduino programmer to get the boot loader installed, then another programmer to actually load firmware (iirc).
I’m also confused about his legit sales channels - I was lucky to have found a real unit I think, and it was only when I was looking for firmware did I recognize that there were several knock-offs running around. I made a donation and ordered a second unit.
My sense is that some folks buy the cheap knock-offs ignorant that is what they are doing. I could well have. Although generally not our forte (unless we are a YouTuber), hobbists tend not to make a lot of effort into being easy to find and recognize as the real deal. A legit MakersMarket of sorts would do us well here — I imaging an Etsy for ham, curated by hams.
Some of the problem, I fear, is culture - maybe elements of the same culture that doesn’t have an issue in stealing others work would have folks seek out the most self-serving option for the approach to any project based on others’ work. I suspect this is correlated to those who have little original work themselves. I find it hard to imagine a ham who builds and shares or sells and yet knowingly steals. Encouraging and celebrating builders/makers might be a good way to support a healthy culture in IP ownership and respect for others’ vim n’ vigor to get something original out in the world.
I’m a new subscriber, mentioned by Steve. I found Steve bc someone pointed to his work around 900MHz spectrum allocation… which is interesting bc I’m building out a HaLow intranet for EmComm for my Town.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, I really appreciate it. Welcome to the publication and thanks for the subscription!
My call is AG6WR.