OSHWA, an association that must not be lost sight of

OSHWA

In recent months several manufacturers and suppliers have misled about their products. The most striking case among these is the Spanish mobile phone that only had the brand sticker in Spanish. This worries users, many of them, but it also has a solution, at least in the Hardware Libre.

It has recently been created OSHWA, an association of Hardware Libre that distributes its own certificate indicating that it is Hardware Libre. So by seeing this certificate, we know that they are not deceiving us with the hardware that the board or device has.

OSHWA is an association that requires a series of conditions from manufacturers in order to issue the certificate. In addition, after approving the certificate, in OSHWA website we can find the plates or devices that have the certificate, so We can check if it is really true or the brand deceives us.

The OSHWA certificate can help us avoid future scams

The requirements to comply with this certificate are the same that a user should make to the Hardware to determine if it is Free or not. Thus, it is requested a list of bill of materials, software, schematics, design files, and other necessary documents to make derivative products. Come on, data that must be published or made public if it really is Hardware Libre.

At the moment there are few brands that have this certificate, we can say that only have some BeagleBone and Sparkfun boards, but it is true that there is a long list of products that are passing these tests for the certificate. Among them are Orange Pi or SBC 96boards, a brand of minipcs that is being very popular lately.

The best known names in this world, Arduino and Raspberry Pi, possibly end up passing it, however we do not know anything about them and since OSHWA is recent, its creators may not be interested in this certificate. Although we must say that such an association and certification is very interesting and it would not be bad if the entire hardware libre went through it, so we would know if they are deceiving us or not.


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