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In the COVID-19 crisis hardware makers promised to be open source to support frontline services.
Their designs are far from open, say physicists from the University of Bath in the UK. In a paper they contrast the claims of IT vendors with reality. What happened to the global invitation for collaboration over equipment design, asks Bath University physics researcher Dr Julian Stirling. While praising the ‘honourable intent’ to standardise instruments and save time and money, the good deed never materialised.
During the pandemic, many large tech companies - including Amazon, Microsoft and IBM - signed the Open COVID pledge. This act recognised the need to apply every tool at the vendor’s disposal to halt the pandemic and treat those affected. If they kept their word, intellectual property would be available free of charge wherever it can be used to fight Covid-19.
Pour lutter contre les épidémies, concevoir du matériel libre zdnet.fr - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from zdnet.fr Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has seen hardware developers clamouring to make open source technology to support our frontline services. Their intentions have been honourable - an invitation to teams across the world to collaborate in developing essential equipment such as ventilators, thereby making the process of producing critical instruments more effective, both in time and cost.
In practice, however, most developers of hardware have shown little openness in their sharing of designs, a fact lamented by a group of physicists from the University of Bath in the UK, in a paper published this week in
The Design Journal.
According to the group, the pandemic has highlighted serious flaws in a system that forces research groups around the world to start from scratch every time a tweak needs to be made to an existing instrument, simply because they can t get their hands on the original designs.