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#1 pic_micro23

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Posted 01 November 2010 - 05:48 PM

Hello, I'm curios about what the business model is for Secret Labs. I'm really enjoying netduino but as a developer I'm always trying to find a way to pay the bills and develop a open source project. So I apologize special to Chris Walker about this question since I'm grateful for all the effort he and his team are putting into this. I'm curious about how to make a living from a open source project like this. So I was wondering how Secret Labs makes money out of it? -Consulting Services? -Licensing the name "Netduino"? Thanks

#2 Chris Walker

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Posted 01 November 2010 - 07:25 PM

Hi pic_micro23, Great question. Let me explain a few reasons why Secret Labs builds Netduino. First and foremost, it is our passion. In a way, Netduino is a gift to the open source community--something we've built because we want to empower people to build great electronics projects. Because we want to help the open source accessory makers turn their accessories businesses into full-time endeavors. And because we believe in education and we wanted to create something innovative for schools to introduce students to the exciting world of electronics. Second of all, it's too hard to build electronics. It's expensive. It takes a long time. And it requires a set of people with specialized skills. Direct sales is now easy to do. Eagle has done a great job providing low-cost tools for 2-layer board creation. So we wanted to build a set of simple tools which enable electronics people to build software for real products inexpensively, and which also enable software people to start building electronics. Netduino Mini makes this vision possible as well. Finally, Netduino is a business card of sorts for Secret Labs. Yes, we do make a small amount of money with Netduino (which is important--this allows us to support Netduino and create more open source products). But more importantly, it publicly demonstrates to our commercial clients what we can do. [For a side note on Secret Labs, we build products for other companies--and we step in to rescue projects that are millions of dollars over budget. We design products end to end (diving deep into usability, design, hardware, software, manufacturing, etc.). We don't take on many projects, but we really enjoy working on the ones we do build. And most of what we work on we can't/don't talk about--which is part of why Netduino is a great "business card."] So yes, we do do some consulting. But more than that we build things. Hopefully great things. And Netduino is a great way to show part of what we can do--and to empower the community to build both personal projects as well as the world's next great electronics products. As far as how to make money with open source hardware, two words: accessories and kits. That's where the profit margins are strongest. [An average shield kit costs $5-$7 and sells for $15-$20.] The other cool thing is that accessories and kits are what show off your talents. It's where users turn their "neat development board" into "wow, look what I built" projects. Chris

#3 pic_micro23

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Posted 02 November 2010 - 07:30 PM

Chris,Thanks for sharing this info. I think your project will bring people with different skills to the same project. It would be nice if for future version of netduino the JTAG solder pads can be accessible (not including the connector to keep cost down). Anyways... This is an awesome project.

#4 light

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Posted 24 January 2011 - 03:47 PM

I have a question regarding Licensing, Trademarks, ect. Can I give a manufacturer the .brd files and get them made for personal or commercial purposes? On the board it has the website and Netduino trademark. When making the board, do I leave the marks or do I need to remove them? Thanks Ron

#5 Chris Walker

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Posted 24 January 2011 - 06:47 PM

I have a question regarding Licensing, Trademarks, ect.
Can I give a manufacturer the .brd files and get them made for personal or commercial purposes?
On the board it has the website and Netduino trademark. When making the board, do I leave the marks or do I need to remove them?


Hi Ron,

If making your own commercial boards, you'll need to remove the "netduino" trademark and site URL. The hardware is open source, but your derivative/clone would not be an actual Netduino board.

Chris

#6 light

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Posted 24 January 2011 - 10:38 PM

I would still need to give some credit to Secret Labs / Netduino, right? Also if I am running your exact Netduino port on my hardware, do I just explain that it is running the Netduino software on my (non Netduino) board?
Thanks
Ron

Hi Ron,

If making your own commercial boards, you'll need to remove the "netduino" trademark and site URL. The hardware is open source, but your derivative/clone would not be an actual Netduino board.

Chris



#7 Chris Walker

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Posted 24 January 2011 - 10:41 PM

I would still need to give some credit to Secret Labs / Netduino, right? Also if I am running your exact Netduino port on my hardware, do I just explain that it is running the Netduino software on my (non Netduino) board?


Hi Ron,

Yes, please. The hardware is licensed as CC-BY (attribution required). So please document it as "based on Netduino from Secret Labs".

If you're running the Netduino firmware, please include the attribution for that too ("Runs Netduino firmware v4.#.# from www.netduino.com").

Chris




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