About Weeno

Weeno is Normal and Everyday

Normal people should contribute to technology. Normal everyday people have unique viewpoints about the technological world that understandably escape technical insiders--who are often trapped inside a technology bubble of low-level thinking. Not surpisingly, normal everyday people hold the position of the Normal Everyday. It is so obvious yet it escapes the technical institution. The position of the Normal Everyday is needed in modern artifacts; otherwise, humanity falls victim to technology for technology sakes. `

Weeno and like projects break down the (technical) barriers to entry into hardware technology. Normal everyday people can and should create technical artifacts for other normal everyday people. `

Weeno is not only for the beginner but also for the seasoned technologists who seeks to employ rather than serve technology. Weeno removes the low-level workings from the mind of any individual; thereby, Weeno allows focusing upon the formal, functional, economical, practical, social, psychological aspects of technical hardware. `

    The Philosophy

    In social and political terms, Weeno the core tenents of the open-source and free-software community, those of: freedom of knowledge, freedom to use and reuse, freedom to examine the underlying code--the three logically leading to freedom to know--and, finally, access to peer reviews. `

    Software has seen very successful open-source and FSF projects including GNU, Linux, Apache, OpenOffice, GIMP, and so on. Hardware has seen considerably less open-source efforts; nevertheless, Wiring and Arduino opened up this realm with their remarkably effective combination of a simply code library with cost-effective hardware. LUFA-USB being a notable popular USB library for the Atmel AVR. `

      The Lesser GPL

      Weeno uses the Lesser GPL. The LGPL allows greater flexibility that is perfectly suited for not only academic, non-for-profits (NfP) and R&D institutions but also possibly-for-profit (PfP) ad-hoc projects and definitely-for-profit (DfP) corporations. Following, Weeno might be used by a prof in an academic institution teaching firmware and electronics with their stock of free evaluation kits offered by so-and-so provider; also, Weeno might be used by a R&D institution conducting an early proof-of-concept with a certain chipset; and, Weeno might be used by a company who wants a solid firmware library with strong platform compatibility. `

      The following passage in the LPGL (Paragraph 5) offers any institution the freedom to use Weeno in a proprietary application: "A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the Library, but is designed to work with the Library by being compiled or linked with it, is called a "work that uses the Library". Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work of the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this License." `

      The LGPL offers the freedom to prohibit freedom, which may seem contrary. Yet, theoretically freedom should include the freedom to constrain. In practice, it probably leads to the tragedy of the commons. Nevertheless, it follows from the motto, "If you love some[thing], set [it] free." `