Hacker News Reader

Comment by petra | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious why the chinese don't build open-source friendly stuff. They already sell mostly commodities. What's there to lose if someone builds stuff for you ?

View on HN

Tangentially, read some of Matthew Garrett's other posts on garbagey IoT devices. It's not that they're unfriendly to open-source exactly -- most of them are running horribly insecure GPL-violating embedded linuxes -- it's that they give no thought to licensing at all.

Their stuff is more "gongkai": https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107

Because it's so cheap, nobody's going to make the effort to translate the documentation into English and put it on the Internet. But on the other hand if you go there and ask in Chinese you can get quite a lot of information.

It still sounds like something doesn't work quite well . The Chinese in general doesn't have a maker culture, a free open-source culture.

On the other hand, just translating the documentation of this led lightbulb interface would have taken very little time, and would have probably created a nice app that would appeal to western buyers and increase sales.

Maybe there's an opportunity for some site to make this process happen ?

It's my impression that the Chinese have more of a maker culture than almost anywhere else - it's a country full of people who grew up in villages and have now built factories and started companies that manufacture most of the world's stuff.

From an interview with a chinese maker[1]:

"There are almost no Chinese makers in Shenzhen doing it purely as a hobby. I’m pretty active in the community and I have not met them.

Our makerspaces — the few real ones we have — are primarily for educational purposes. We have a couple of places with laser cutters or a small 3D printer for the kids to learn on, but there’s no place you can go swipe a card and use real machine tools in the middle of the night like lots of other major cities have.

...

As far as most Chinese people’s thinking, hobbies are for old people. If you have seen newspaper articles about actual Chinese makers — who have made homemade robots, dialysis machines, submarines, prosthetic arms — they are nearly all older or retirees. Young people in China just don’t have the time or freedom usually.

...

On the other hand, if you are working on a hardware startup or just want to get stuff made, then sure, I think Shenzhen is pretty unbeatable[for making]."

[1]https://exolymph.news/2016/07/05/sexycyborg-shenzhen-3d-prin...

I'm building www.facebook.com/kokonautweathersensors which uses a nodeMCU so it's open source.

There's also a lot of stuff at seeedstudio.com or electrodragon.com that is open source too.

Also, this episode describes where China/Shenzen is at right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4wbFdePb-k

Your domain www.kokonautweathersensor.com gives unknown host.

Unfortunately, the website isn't up yet. I'm focusing on getting people to participate in a pilot project to get feedback and tests right now. I think the Facebook Page should communicate enough of what the device does for now.

Outdated paranoic "intellectual property" guarding in corporations. Would love more openness from hardware manufacturers, too.

If people bought more stuff from seeed studio which is in that business model, than perhaps LG or Apple or Philips which is not in that business model, then China would be better known for open source stuff.

I've bought stuff from seeed studio before. Nice stuff, nice people. Obviously your mileage may vary WRT individual pieces of hardware.

I'm thinking more about full complete products.

For example connected stuff(either to app or site). Also there's a case to be made for letting people change the embedded software inside their bluetooth headphones, noise cancelling earphones, routers,mp3 players[1], android tv boxes, and any other products with complex software.

[1]There's a custom rom for that called rockbox

Reply on news.ycombinator.com