[PLUG-TALK] Another Intellectual Property Issue - Cars

[David Mandel]

Clearly what the world needs is an "Open Source" car.  Well, a car would be
tough, because it wouldn't be practical to get any vehicle certified to run
on US highways given all the rules and regulations that exist.

However, a tractor or off road vehicle is another matter.  I have always
thought it would be useful to have a book (or web site) of designs for
homemade farm equipment that could be made by most anyone using inexpensive
off-the-shelf parts that could be purchased from major big box stores.
Places like:
Autozone
Home Depot
Harbor Freight
Fry's
and a few others.

A few books and/or web sites along these lines exist (See farmhack.org for
example), but the best books are ancient and the best web sites have a long
ways to go.

In particular, I would like to see a cheap way of building something like
an 1947 Allis-Chalmers "G" Cultivating Tractor.  Small market gardeners
love these tractors, but they haven't been manufactured for decades;
although I believe Tuffbilt is now making something like this once again.
(Note; The Allis-Chalmers "G" Cultivating Tractors are so prized that no
one junks them.  Instead they are remodeled - often being converted to
diesel by replacing the motor with a kubota engine.  Alternatively, many of
them have been converted to electric motors.)

David


On Sun, Sep 13, 2015 at 4:32 PM, Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>
wrote:

> On Sun, 13 Sep 2015, Dick Steffens wrote:
>
> > I hadn't heard of this one before today. Automakers are trying to get an
> > interpretation of DMCA that make tinkering with your car a copyright
> > violation.
>
>    I suppose that if the carmakers prevail they can then be sued when
> someone
> hacks their on-board ECUs and causes vehicles to malfunction or crash. A
> few
> multimillion dollar awards for that, plus a requirement that all vulnerable
> vehicles be parked until the vulnerabilities are fixed (with the
> manufacturer paying for replacement vehicles), will cool their enthusiasm.
>
>    Greed and stupidity will always be with us.
>
> Rich
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG-talk mailing list
> PLUG-talk at lists.pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-talk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pdxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-talk/attachments/20150913/48c6df9e/attachment.html>