[sdiy] what is DIY?

[Senso]

>Struggling with the criteria for what is and what is not DIY, I've 
>come up with an answer:
>
>A devices qualifies for DIY status if the designer freely provides 
>all the information needed for others to build their own copies of 
>it. Note the word "freely," as in "for free."
>
>A product does not qualify (by my standard) if you have to buy a PC 
>board to get the schematics, for example.
>
>On the other hand, selling PCBs or kits or complete products is fine 
>so long as the schemo is available for free.
>
>How's that?
>--
>john
>

Hi John,

I can still see some flaws in this.
If an available kit or PCB-with-schemo's can be entered by the 
original designer of the kits is a question of semantics. If he 
designed and built one to start with, it's obviously a DIY project 
and that machine in question could of course be entered, Any 
commercially available kits after that are not fully his "DIY" 
project, because they will be put together by someone else.
So bought PCB's and kits yes, because that is still something you 
have to built yourselves. But then it could only be an entry IMHO if 
the person not only built it himself, but did something original with 
it, with some modifications, an unusual housing, break-out box, 
whatever. Otherwise it would just be a copy of someone else's DIY 
project.
Complete products with schematics? They don't have *anything* to do 
with DIY. I can easily buy a Roland workstation WITH schematics. ;-)

Senso



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