The Free Manufacturing Initiative

The Free Manufacturing Initiative promotes the ability of independent manufacturers around the globe to manufacture and sell products in the global economy. There are many reasons why manufacturing is often difficult or impossible when working with products that include modern technology with complex copyright, patent, trademark, and licensing considerations. The Free Manufacturing Initiative aims to identity, study, and develop techniques for ameliorating these difficulties. With a goal of simplifying these considerations, the Free Manufacuring Initiative provides a definition of a Free Manufacturing Product with the goal of simplifying the process for any independent manufacturer to manufacture and sell a product without worrying about these otherwise complex "intellectual property" considerations. In the future, the Free Manufacturing Initiative plans to provide a rubric for scoring Free Manufacturing Products along a number of different dimensions, including total capital required to begin manufacturing.

Definition of a Free Manufacturing Product

A product that the Free Manufacturing Initiative considers a Free Manufacturing Product must satisfy all of the following criteria:

  1. All software used in the product is Free Software.
  2. All software used to design the product is Free Software.
  3. All designs for manufacturing the product are Free Hardware Designs.
  4. All dependencies for manufacturing the product have documented and publicly available interfaces.
  5. All dependencies for manufacturing the product are commodities with more than one supplier.
  6. All machinery and manufacturing processes used in creating the product have open interfaces with more than one supplier.
  7. No nondisclosure agreement is required to manufacture the product.
  8. No group membership is required to manufacture the product.

Definition of Free Software

The Free Manufacturing Initiative stands on the shoulders of giants, and in this spirit, we refer to the definition of Free Software provided by the FSF (Free Software Foundation): What is free software? In summary, any software that offers a Free Software license is considered Free Software for the purposes of the Free Manufacturing Initiative's definition of a Free Manufacturing Product.

Definition of Free Hardware

Similar to the definition of Free Software, we refer to the definition of Free Hardware and Free Hardware Designs provided by the FSF (Free Software Foundation): Free Hardware and Free Hardware Designs. In summary, any hardware design that offers a Free Software license is considered Free Hardware for the purposes of the Free Manufacturing Initiative's definition of a Free Manufacturing Product.

Members

Corporate Members

  • Brain Computer Enterprises, Cooperative Inc.

Individual Members

Contact

Email: sysop@freemanufacturing.org