Possible monitor/monkey box/coffin group project

Reading the rules I see the following (highlights by be):

All copyright, trade marks, design rights, patents and other intellectual property rights (registered and unregistered) in and on our website and all content (including any applications) located on the site shall remain the sole property of diyAudio or its licensors (which includes other users).

Further below is another paragraph that seems relevant:

By sharing any contribution (including any text, photographs, graphics, video or audio) with diyAudio you agree to grant to diyAudio, free of charge, permission to use the material in any way we want (including modifying and adapting it for operational and editorial reasons).

My guess is the former is meant to apply to things like the diyaudio store and the latter to forum posts. I'm not sure that is quite how it is written though. To be safe it may be wiser not to post detailed design like drawings here but only to github where handling copyright is both explicit and tracked. To be clear the risk is less what those currently running diyaudio are likely to do but what a later owner might do.

I am obviously not a lawyer, but something is very wrong here! If I post my ideas on diyAudio, these ideas should belong to me, not someone else, and surely not the diyAudio company running the website. Someone please illuminate me.

Not sure about wrong but it does seem confused. Ideas don't belong to people. Copyright is automatic and applies to written text and designs subject to a few things like license agreements, employment status (if employed by a loudspeaker company the company will own the copyright to a hobby design like this under the law of most countries), uniqueness, etc... If the ideas are expressed in something tangible like an invention/design then that invention/design can be patented but this cost money which is not relevant to the project here. If we wish to apply licensing conditions it will be copyright that enables us to do so. The protection it offers is fairly weak in practice and enforcement would almost certainly involve the risks and costs of going to court and so is not something any of us here is likely to want to get involved with. I am not a lawyer.
 
Anything I say is going to be off the record, and questions on this topic may go through the Helpdesk where Jason may be made aware of them.

The site will host and display threads, that goes without saying and is covered in the rules. Otherwise the site as far as I can see doesn't intend to stand in the way of projects like this.

The choice is yours, of course.
 
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Can vituixcad (which doesn't run on my desktop) write out plot values to a file with a simple format suitable for importing into a plotting program/script? This would enable values from other programs or scripts to be on the same plot in a standard format. Not needed for a while but likely in the future.

Similarly can your word processor write out in a format understood by pandoc in order to ease the generation of content for a project website when we have something to put up?
Until you asked, I had not explored the VituixCad file output options. Vcad can export the polar responses as *.txt files, along with the derivative calculated curves such as sound power, early reflection, listening window, etc.

I used power point to compose my documentation. There are a lot of file export options. XML is generally cross platform, would this be useful for pandoc (which I am unfamiliar with) ?
 
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I uploaded the document as pdf, pptx, and xml. I also created a folder for the polar responses and uploaded the 70 response files, this if for one of the baffle configurations. See if any of this is useful. I expect we will have to get a little more organized if we want to put all of the data for every baffle that is studied.
 
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Until you asked, I had not explored the VituixCad file output options. Vcad can export the polar responses as *.txt files, along with the derivative calculated curves such as sound power, early reflection, listening window, etc.

Good. This will ease the construction of comparative figures.

I used power point to compose my documentation. There are a lot of file export options. XML is generally cross platform, would this be useful for pandoc (which I am unfamiliar with) ?

Powerpoint is in the list. Various XML formats are supported. The objective is to generate web pages (and pdf files, ebooks or whatever) from a bunch of text files in folders containing a small amount of markup (e.g. this file I am about to post). If a wordprocessor can save markdown files then that is a single step (plus a bit of fiddling depending on what turns up). If it saves .doc, .docs,... files then it becomes 2 steps by using pandoc to convert it to markdown files (or many other formats).

Pandoc is more of a background program that gets invoked when the build the website button is pressed. I am proposing to use quarto which is a scientific and technical publishing system that wraps pandoc and adds a bunch of features helpful for technical writing using a set of text files in folders. Github has it's own system that is more general blogs and less technical writing.

Although not new to technical writing I am new to github and websites. There will inevitably be a period of fiddling about to find out what works smoothly and what is best avoided. I have had a quick play with your powerpoint file and google converted it to markdown with embedded images. It would need a bit of fiddling to extract the images and adjust the formatting. A bit to learn but seemed fine for a first go.
 
Understood the discrepency in prices.
It's weird.
THLP is french but if I select shipping to france, price get much higher by about 20 percent. 😱

Screenshot_20250222-224719.png
 
Still pondering how to make a possible leading thing fit. To reintroduce something mbrennwa brought up earlier, for those that are considering contributing to the design (i.e. performing some simulations, drawings, measurements,... and submitting a write up to the project repository) what are acceptable licensing conditions? From the behaviour of people like TG in switching to hiding parts of his designs I would guess he has had problems with his designs being used for commercial purposes without acknowledgement. Can anyone confirm this is the case and how much of a problem it might be for a good DIY speaker design? If it is significant how much would it bother those that are considering contributing?

A license can make it explicit what is in or out in terms of exploitation. Not sure we can do much about crossing the line apart from following TGs lead by, perhaps, only supplying CAD files on request. Are we happy for DIY suppliers to supply kits? Are we happy for companies to build the design and sell it? Thoughts?

It would of course be preferable to address this sort of thing after a design has come together and it's value known. Not sure this an option though?

PS What is the legal status of posts to this forum?

Have been following the thread off and on...

The monetization of the design by other parties: for example someone providing DIY kits; or it can be even someone selling fully finished speakers based on the community developed design - in both of the cases it would seem fair that some sort of monetary value go back to the "designers" - but in case of a community project, how to even do that?

But first we need to know what likely contributors are happy with and what not. For example:

1. happy for commercial companies to exploit the design for free without attribution
2. happy for commercial companies to exploit the design for free but only with attribution
3. unhappy for commercial companies to exploit the design without some form of payment
4. unhappy for commercial companies to exploit the design at all
5. ???

I am assuming we can take it as read that everyone is happy for DIYers to freely build the design? But should we hold back and supply on request one or two details if we opt to limit commercial exploitation in someway?

My preference is 2. which is pretty much the BSD license used by hifijim for one of his projects. Not sure I know enough to answer the question about holding back one or two details. What are other peoples views?

As of now, point # 2 looks like a sensible approach.

Point # 3, 4 might be the feeling of some folks from the community, but it will be difficult to monitor or take action in case it happens.
 
Because in France the tax rate is 20%, you can't buy it without the tax. When it is shipped outside the EU, there is no tax added, it then comes down to import fees and taxes in the country it is being sent to, plus whatever shipping costs.
Nop that is not the reason.
If I select Germany for example, they include 19% tax but it is about 16.5% less.

Screenshot_20250223-090458.png
 
Nop that is not the reason.
If I select Germany for example, they include 19% tax but it is about 16.5% less.
I have no idea why you get such different figures, when I put just the tweeters in my cart and change between France and Germany while logged in the difference is very small, and seems to equate to the VAT amounts. Maybe you should ask TLHP directly, they have always responded quickly when I asked them a question.
 

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Well it seems at this early stage a group project hasn't got enough momentum to sustain itself. I had intended to be a contributor then reluctant administrator (plus a bit defining the spec). I won't have enough hobby time for at least 18 months to keep the project moving along continually but still intend to contribute a bit of design at a leisurely pace plus get the github end working. Perhaps momentum will build when things start happening.

Hifijim has started to contribute to a couple of tasks to examine the pros and cons of varying the baffle width from 350mm out to perhaps 500mm and the price in performance of keeping sharp edges for aesthetics. Needs some more work on the woofer and midrange responses plus the effects of waveguides. Would be useful to compare BEM and the edge/point simulations in virtuixcad and similar programs. It will also help with learning how to handle text, plots and get them up on a website.

Next week after a bit more software development I propose to run some BEM simulations on the topic of baffle widths and sharp/rounded edges. Would be useful to compare simulations with akabak and virtuixcad to get a feel for possible differences with different simulation programs. Then pull it together and post it on the website. And the project will have started.
 
I find this quite comforting - while I enjoy following the driver selection discussion in the split-off thread, going more into depth will need some time and maybe less excitement.

Although a leisurely pace has been more enforced than chosen it has one or two advantages and may work. I can see one or two ways it might fit with the software I am developing as a real world test case. Hopefully others can see a similar overlap with their own projects.
 
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