- A German hacker (“kardan”) proposes an open-source hardware (OSH) distribution network in Germany that sells kits/products and funnels any surplus into a foundation to seed new projects, explicitly avoiding personal profit.

- The group debates how to structure a universal hardware package repository: participants want Debian-style dependency tracking (“apt-get for hardware”) with metadata covering materials, CAD files (IGES/STEP), and assembly instructions, but acknowledge that physical dependencies are harder to resolve than software libraries.

- Early prototypes of the repository are shown: kardan spins up a Rails-backed web demo at http://oshw.0xb5.org/ to let anyone add/edit projects, while fenn and kanzure caution that relational tables may be too rigid for distributed development.

- kanzure’s research focus is on automatically extracting linear dynamic equations from hardware designs; he and fenn discuss bond graphs, “through/​across” variables, and Campbell’s “functional parameters” as ways to model how components interact, but worry the math is still too brittle.

- kanzure posts links to eclectic DIY resources: weather-satellite image reception with homemade gear, a 1995 expert system for shop-floor use, and even a tongue-in-cheek reference to a “DIY lobotomy” book.

- Materials sourcing is addressed: scraped databases (mindat, McMaster-Carr, onlinemetals) are considered for populating the repository, though availability and supplier links remain spotty.

- Real-time collaboration tools are floated—kardan mentions Gobby and Riseup’s Crabgrass—yet kanzure insists most development will stay in text editors and version control, not web apps.

- kanzure experiments with low-tech optics: hollow-core polymer fibers (water- or air-filled) for cheap optical data links, citing a paper on microstructured PMMA fibers that transmit IR.

- A running joke mocks anti-open-source paranoia, quoting a Wired comment that “open-source mustangs” and “commie wagons” will destroy America.

- kanzure leaves a breadcrumb for future work: a Lisp snippet in the a-design test suite (test.lisp) that shows how MG-change structures encode component dynamics.