Who will make the Simputer?

The goal of the Simputer trust is to actively promote and proliferate the the use of the Simputer in India and other developing countries. We intend to do this not by making a monopoly of the Simputer but by throwing open all the designs -- both hardware and software -- to the public under a GPL like license. Commercial exploitation of the design attracts a small one time payment that has to be made to the trust.

The innovation is in making the hardware design open. This is not the same as an open architecture as it allows one to innovate upon our design but the modified design comes back to the trust in the spirit of the GPL. We will allow a small window of about an year to exploit the innovation before the design comes back to the trust. This makes it attractive for hardware designers to add value to the existing design.

We expect many people to make the Simputer. And put back the modified designs. Of course, there will be an odd manufacturer who will not put the design back. We cannot control that but we will allow the word Simputer (which is trademarked by the trust) to be used only by the licensees. In effect, we will use the brand name to control recalcitrant manufacturers.