On this post I was discussing the difference between the two terms, Free Design and Open Design, but I don’t see them separated in practice. Free Design does include Open Design. Openeness is a precondition for the type of freedom we’re targeting. Therefore, It’s not our intention to split communities. We’re just trying to show that there other things to think about in Open Design.

Currently, I’m trying to extend the notion of Free Design beyond the professional design circle. The freedom we’re targeting is precisely user freedom. It doesn’t matter if the design process is officially open or not, user’s will continue it after it’s done. People will adapt products to their needs and sometimes even change them in ways that current licenses don’t allow them to do. I believe that every use is also design. In that sense, Free Design is not something that we’re trying to push into society. It’s something that is already happening!

But if everybody is doing Free Design, why we need such a name? First for discussing it, second for potentializing it. We need to do both at the same time if we want to be relevant for society.

I agree that the Free name is not so good in English, but I cannot agree that Open Source has won over Free Software and the debate is over. If you compare search terms in Google Trends you will see that Free Software has more than double search volume than Open Source. Also, the recent move from one of the biggest Free Software community projects (OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice) shows that the debate is not over. Perhaps, we should use the Libre or stay with the portuguese Livre, as this community choosed to do.

But I don’t think it makes sense to have a Free Design against an Open Design now. It’s not a question of names, and adding a new name would just add confusion and maybe more conflict.
And, frankly, it’s boring to have the same conflict about terms (Free vs. Open) in Design as well: when I talk about Open Source, it’s because this definition clearly won the match with Free Software and people know and understand it better. It is easier to explain what FLOSS software is with the concept of Open Source, it’s not that I don’t like the ethics behind it. After people understand what it’s all about, then we can talk about the ethics; and while ethics for me are very important, I want to avoid any idealism in discussing with people.
Furthermore, the ethics of Design should be more than just sharing information. An open source weapon is more ethical if it’s called free design or just for the fact that the information is freely available? An unsustainable free design product is more ethical because it’s not called open source? I don’t think so; if you want to address the ethics of Open Design, then there should be more reflection on it before just adopting the Free term: software and design are different things.
And beware: Free Software only refers to the freedom of the users, not that the process is more participative. Therefore it’s not correct to use Free Design in that therms.

And Free Software and Open Source have an historical path, why should we reverse it now for Design? Bringing open source dynamics inside design should be more than just completely copying it, so it doesn’t make sense to copy this conflict as well. ;-)
I fear that this may just be a way for splitting the Open Design community into bad and good sides before it even reaches a stable state, trying to set the Free Design trend. I guess that then we should have also Free Hardware vs. Open Hardware, Free Data vs. Open Data, Free Biotechnology vs. Open Biotechnology, Free Government vs. Open Government and so on.

I prefer to focus more on how to develop such open processes and systems at the moment.
My approach has always been not of a binary exclusion open/closed but a gradient of inclusion with modular possibilities (like the Creative Commons one).

But it’s good to start a discussion about the ethics of Open Design, let’s keep talking about it! :)

But Design is way more than manufacturing process. We must think about how to open it in all of it’s steps. How to open product conception? product specification? product use?

One step ahead for the Open Design community would be to deliver more documentation about the conceptualization phase of the product together with CAD files or so.