• Camzing@lemmy.worldOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    More specifically, I have a generator. It is incased in plastic. It stopped working and it is not designed for large hands. My dad pulled out a generator that is 60 years old and it runs like a charm. Brigs and Stratton motor. Everything is on the outside easy to work on. Why can’t someone reinvent it and make it open source.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      At that age, there’s a great chance that the patent filing on that generator is about to become public property.

      Corporations have been working hard to make the common person forget that the only reason patents have ever been granted (officially) was to induce inventors to document their designs for future public use.

      It’s a big part of why the stuff you can get cheap from China nowadays is often surprisingly good quality, as long as it’s an older, tried and true, technology.

    • Jeena@piefed.jeena.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      4 months ago

      You mean to make a documentation on the design and how to build it from scratch? There is the Open-source hardware community which is doing stuff like that; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware

      It’s just a lot of work and much more complicated than open-sourcing software source code. That is - I guess - why so few people do it. On top of it there are not many people who would reuse it because for most people it’s cheaper and good enough to get a modern version from a commercial vendor.