DIN SPEC 3105 Is an Open Source Standard, and "a New Chapter," for the Open-Hardware Community

Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN), the German Institute for Standardization, has launched its first specification aimed squarely at the open hardware community — and it's done so under a permissive license.

DIN, which is responsible for a range of technical specifications used throughout industry, is currently running a pilot program in which it is working alongside the open source and open-hardware communities with a view to collaborative efforts — both in the publication of specifications and in their future development.

DIN SPEC 3105 is the first fruit to be born from the pilot: A specification detailing requirements for technical documentation in open source hardware projects, and which itself is published under the permissive Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License International.

"I like to think that this document writes a new chapter in the history of open hardware," engineer Jérémy Bonvoisin opines, following the publication of both the specification itself and a paper he co-authored looking into the standardization of practices in open source hardware. "Eight years after OSHWA [Open Source Hardware Association] brought to life the Open Source Hardware definition, we now have a clear reference of what the 'source' of open source hardware is."

"The icing on the cake: This is the first standard to be published by DIN under CC license and to adopt an open and community-based process for any of the new version to come! It’s both a progress for open source hardware AND for standardisation processes as such!"

There are two ways to receive the standard, the license for which allows for commercial exploration as well as the development of derivatives providing any resulting material is also licensed permissively: The first is to order a PDF, free of charge, from publisher Beuth; the second is to download it from the OSEGermany GitLab repository.