First of, hello all!
Sorry that my first post on these forums will be a bit negative. Here i go.
First when i read this i thought, wow, amazing. A real open rebreather project.
Imagine all the combined knowledge of the rebreather community building
and perfecting an rebreather. See the OSS community, eg Linux, BSD, Firefox, etc etc.
Then after reading around a bit i realised, ok the label "open" is missleading but the rebreather seems to be a nice and well thought piece. And since im currently looking to buy my first rebreather it was interesting enought to look into it further.
Then i read something about a built in function that allows disabling and unlocking features in the rebreather. So what this is, its basically DRM. That is you buy the product but dont really control it, It controls you.
What is next step? One have to reverse code engineer the firmware to actually remove those restrictions to actually have no restrictions?
DVD, DeCSS anyone ?
Control before freedom of choice, what i can and cant do ?
Shouldnt this choice be up to the diver himself?
So imho, the proper name should be Restricted Revolution Rebreather.
Shure there is allot of feedback between the engineers and people in here but what does that contribute in the end?
Lets say some people in here have really good ideas and presents them as an feature. Then it might get patented and that knowledge lost and locked in to the company that is owning the patent?
I don't want to get into politics to much its just that ive seen companies waving the patentflag to many times especially in the software world.
This is something for homebuilders to reconsider.
The whole idea with open is that anyone can see how it works, contribute to it and make it better. After each itteration it will be a better product then the previous (hopefully). A patent prevents this.
When it comes to the safety as stated on the DeepLife site:
"
1. Full disclosure of the FMECA
2. Full disclosure of the operation of the safety systems
3. Shown to protect the user all credible failure scenarios, including a list of conditions that have caused near misses and fatal incidents reported on rebreathers.
4. Shown to have a billion hours between Critical Failure.
"
I think its all good and i support it 100% as long as it doesnt interfere
with my freedom.
Maybe its not possible to apply an OSS like model to physical products, i dont know..
Sorry for ranting like this, i hope i'm wrong with this since i truly belive this is
a good product and have potential. I just got so very disapointed when reading about this when i got my hopes up at first.
