Research Study Ideas

Based on readings and media findings, drop ideas here. These will be discussed for in-depth research, sooner or later:

• In their paper "What is the source of OSH" the authors make a case that documentation is critical to and evidence of some form of openness in the development of hardware 'sources' ... The empirical basus of this article depends on gathering documentation produced by 132 different OSH products - those that are outside the traditional bounds of OSH studies (not DIY or electronics based). The documentation argument is convincing and interesting - it takes seriously differences in 'source' of software and hardware. There is - in my view - an interesting way to pick up this thread of OSH and build upon existing work in STS and CSCW which focuses on the types and roles of documentation created in techno-scientific projects. So - taking this focus on documentation into the OSH world of Covid-19 related hardware, we could for example try to understand how documentation was consulted, created, and made accessible by volunteers. A good reference for this kind of work in CSCW is https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10606-018-9333-1
  -- Potential RQs: Who is documentation aimed at? How is documentation as a parallel activity to source production conceived of by documenters?

• What are the major dilemmas to coordinating hardware work in OSHI? Based on relcone.org, and similar to open materials transferring, in making the Bill of Materials (BOM) more accessible

  • Why and how do people build OSHI? This looks at the motivations for each part of OSHI (e.g. documentation, BOM, design plans. etc.)
  • What other communities, outside of biotech, working with and building OSHI? What communities and subject areas need Open Material Transfer Agreements (OMTA)? Chart of OSHW certified projects in different subject fields (Bonvoisin, 2017) -- Potential RQs: What OSHI communities have been developed in response to COVID-19?

• What are IP diff between OSS and OSH? Venn diagram comparing OSS to OSHI

  • Patents vs copyright vs license leading to OSHI. Stories in which people built OSHI in order to disrupt patents. -- Potential RQ:

• OSHI business models under different economic and social models

  • Unfortunately, this is in Francais: Thomas, 2019--Business models for open source hardware. Find an English translation and/or the business models of OSHI according to different economic models. A table of business opportunities with OSH -- Potential RQs: Who is documentation aimed at? How is documentation as a parallel activity to source production conceived of by documenters?

• There are established web archiving workflows, and preserving software development and products are gaining support, but there is little to no work on the FAIR use of OSHI assets --> Potential RQ: How are OSHI projects being preserved? How can OSHI assets be archived and made accessible for future makers and users?

• This might go too much into the Making/makerspace/DIY space that is not wholly relevant to our review, but... Technological disobedience vs legitimized OSHI? When does OSHI become acceptable to society? In reference to

  • Cuba's DIY Inventions from 30 Years of Isolation
  • Cuba's DIY guidebook (1992) created "during 'The Special Period in the Time of Peace,' the Cuban government's euphemism for the 90s collapse of the country's economy that'd been set up for thirty years of isolation." (Mead, 2012).
  • Can we compare Cuba's movement to specific recent economic downturn events in the U.S.? OSHI during the early 1990's oil crisis, early 2000's dot-com bubble, housing bubble great recession, COVID crisis.
  • The dream would then to be able to compare that to other countries approaches to OSHI (obviously, personal interest in Vietnam during the various wars and colonizations, and Latin/South America just because they're an underrated region that has mandated open access/source similar to Eastern Euro).
  • Big dreams would be that this leads to a fulbright or other funding that would let me study those regions and there approaches to open movements. Which then ties into China's approach to OSHI which isn't widely accepted in U.S. OSH communities as it can be interpreted as stealing and plagiarism, but these are just cultural differences in attribution, IP, manufacturing, etc. (Gibb, 2015) -- Potential RQ:

• What are the incentives/disincentive to make a project OSH, but actually "openwashing". Looking at the barriers to documentation, transparency, and accessibility. Bonvoisin (2017) notes that accessibility takes a lot of investment and documentation is time-consuming. -- Potential RQ: Can we systematically come up with a a template/guide to help OSHI makers get over the barriers to entry in the documentation process?

• Compare documentation and community of OSH commercial companies to OSH projects (those without formal institutionalized formation). E.g. OpenSci R has budget dedicated to documentation. Creating roles specifically for technical writers, community builders, like Wikimedia, Mozilla, GitHub, GitLab, but what are the OSH companies/organizations? -- Potential RQ:

• Study on how communities become active and inactive. Looking at the failed attempts to community buildings vs. successful community building. Parallels to the community types, e.g. religion, dance, food, politics, etc. Complex assets result in why projects succeed and why they fail? Comparison of success vs. failures. What is andogynous to the tech being develped? What is specific about hardware and osh, and external variables that would influece the project? Specific of what is about osh organizationally, sociotechnically that lead to success or failure. -- Potential RQ: How have the OSH complex assets lead to the community thriving or dying?