Graphene As an Open-Source Material (techcrunch.com) 26
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The 2D wonder-material graphene could greatly benefit from the widespread experimentation of open-source use. In its current state, graphene is primarily researched by scientists in universities and labs, but by making graphene a material that is open to be improved upon by anyone, we might see the fulfillment of the potential that graphene has been hailed for since its discovery. Graphene's capabilities are staggering -- it is essentially 2D, flexible, 200 times stronger than steel, conducts heat 10 times better than copper and conducts electricity 250 times better than silicon. Its abilities are far-reaching and extremely potent, making graphene applications nearly endless. As it stands, graphene research is limited to a select few technology companies -- Samsung, for instance, has the most graphene patents to date. Otherwise, most graphene research is done in university labs. In the same way that open-sourcing has built up software and related technologies, open-sourcing could also viably allow a wider range of individuals and communities to help unlock graphene's unrealized potential.
Graphene is fundamentally different from software in that it is a physical resource. Since the material's discovery, quantity has been a serious issue, preventing the material from seeing widespread use. Natural reserves of graphene are few and far between, and while scientists have discovered ways of producing graphene, the methods have proved unscalable. In addition, graphene would need a way to be experimented with by the average user. For those who don't have the same equipment researchers do, how can they go about tinkering with graphene? In order for graphene to become an open-source material, a solution for these two problems must be found.
Graphene is fundamentally different from software in that it is a physical resource. Since the material's discovery, quantity has been a serious issue, preventing the material from seeing widespread use. Natural reserves of graphene are few and far between, and while scientists have discovered ways of producing graphene, the methods have proved unscalable. In addition, graphene would need a way to be experimented with by the average user. For those who don't have the same equipment researchers do, how can they go about tinkering with graphene? In order for graphene to become an open-source material, a solution for these two problems must be found.
Stop misusing the term (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop misusing the term "open source." It's pissing me off. It's not code. Call it something else.
Re:Stop misusing the term (Score:5, Interesting)
Stop misusing the term "open source."
The article is a tongue-in-cheek parody. There is no way that Tech Crunch would write something so stupid as serious journalism, and even if they did, Slashdot would not post something so obviously silly.
In addition to the absurdity of applying the term "open source" to a physical material, they ridiculously compare the conductivity of graphene to silicon, which is a semiconductor.
It is just a joke. That is the only plausible explanation.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, the professionally paranoid spy vs spy types also refer to open source as public available espionage information, no coding involved.
The probably smart step is not working with graphene as a material but as a surface on other material but the graphene interactions are what you are after the supportive material is largely neutral or supports the electro magnetic interactions. So how to create a grapheme layer on other materials.
Open Source Beyond Impossible Burger Meat (Score:5, Insightful)
In the same way that open-sourcing has built up software and related technologies, open-sourcing could also viably allow a wider range of individuals and communities to help unlock Beyond Impossible Burger Meat unrealized potential.
Beyond Impossible Burger Meat is fundamentally different from software in that it is a physical resource.
In addition, Beyond Impossible Burger Meat would need a way to be experimented with by the average user. For those who don't have the same equipment researchers do, how can they go about tinkering with Beyond Impossible Burger Meat ? In order for Beyond Impossible Burger Meat to become an open-source material, a solution for these two problems must be found.
Someone needs to call up Microsoft, and ask them how to push Beyond Impossible Burger Meat.
How to become a millionaire... (Score:1)
First... get a million dollars.
Unobtanium comes to /. (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is too stupid even for /.
Gold, yes we should open source gold. It has amazing physical and electrical properties. The only problem is gold is expensive. So we should open source go,d do everyone has all the gold they need and can experiment with it.
Please would some editor who has 2 brain cells to rub together delete this moronic article. I have been on /. since the early days yet have never even considered asking for an article to get deleted for pure stupidity.
The time to start is now.
Open source the deleting of stupid and pointless articles.
Re: Unobtanium comes to /. (Score:1)
Already is or simply cannot be (Score:5, Informative)
Open-source methods? Like what?
"The term 'open source' refers to something people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible." [opensource.com] So, publication. Did researchers stop publishing academic articles about the production and uses of graphene?
"As they do with proprietary software, users must accept the terms of a license when they use open source software -- but the legal terms of open source licenses differ dramatically from those of proprietary licenses." [opensource.com] So, licenses. But you cannot copyright graphene, or processes for using or producing graphene. Sure, you can copyright descriptions, but nobody has to agree to your license to read descriptions, or to describe the same processes using different expressive language. You cannot copyright the basic elements of a recipie [copyright.gov], nor any "idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." [cornell.edu]
Patents can only partially enable copy-left-like principles, because all I have to do is avoid doing the thing described in the issued claims (if you obtain any). Anything else is fair game. Oh, and there's a pesky experimental use [syr.edu] exception which means that I can improve upon even your claimed graphene invention and then deny you the ability to use the improvement at scale if I obtain my own patent.
Open-source, to the extent that it improved upon academic and other unrestricted publication of software code, was a hack specific to the computer coding domain because copyright automatically vests in virtually any coding contribution and using the code necessarily involves copying something subject to copyright.
Devices, processes, compounds, and articles of manufacture do not have comparable restrictions. You can perform small scale research using essentially anything that you can get your hands on, and you can publish only if you wish, and nobody else really gets a say in any of it (for unregulated materials like graphene).
So, tell me what this means, besides applying a very useful software development principle to quite badly to real world development practices.
Re: (Score:2)
"In its current state, graphene is primarily researched by scientists in universities and labs, but by making graphene a material that is open to be improved upon by anyone, we might see the fulfillment of the potential that graphene has been hailed for since its discovery."
No, because given the population identified in the summary, I'm talking about hobbiests conducting "open source" experimentation, which is not a corporation conducting R&D for a commer
NO ONE HAS A PATENT FOR GRAPHENE (Score:1)
Um, graphene IS cheap to make (Score:2)
...by anyone. Since 2018.
https://www.futurity.org/makin... [futurity.org]
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
More important open source project (Score:2)
in silico FTW (Score:2)