

Build It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware Work? - troystribling
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/16-11/ff_openmanufacturing?currentPage=all

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jwilliams
Aside from hardware there are the more fuzzy areas in the embedded/hardware
world where Open Source can make a lot of inroads - anything from Firmware
through to VHDL/Verilog designs for FPGAs.

The later is useful because it's more accessible in a way - you have a
standard Altera or whatever board, and simply upload your design to exercise
it. You can also simulate, debug, etc. This puts it on the software end of the
spectrum, but ongoing wins here will eventually broaden.

<http://www.opencores.org/> is already doing some good work on this.

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habs
I have been very tempted to buy one of these..If you're interested in the
Arduino project, you have to check out <http://www.freeduino.org/> .Contains a
host of info on the Arduino board.

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ph0rque
Open applications on an open OS on an open laptop... now all we need is an
open design of a high-tech factory.

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olefoo
Isn't that what reprap is supposed to evolve into?

Watching people try to enforce IP rules on physical fabrication ought to be
entertaining.

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ph0rque
> Isn't that what reprap is supposed to evolve into?

Yup... but I don't know if reprap will be able to provide electronic parts on
par with current ones in the next 5 years. An open-design factory (that takes
up a building) is feasible right now, however.

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troystribling
I heard a recent podcast in which the inventor of reprap was interviewed
[http://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=3812...](http://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=381248).
In the interview he said that in a new version, to be released next year, it
will be possible to lay down strips of a conductor within plastic materials to
make circuit boards.

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ph0rque
Yup, even better, they've been trying to print motors (with magnetic
components). But I still think we're ~5 years away from printing a consumer
electronics device. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

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jdavid
i have been wanting to see an opensource media player that can compete with
the zune and or ipod. using android would be a good OS for it and make apps
portable so the largest difference would be if the mobile phone was installed
or turned on. my hunch is that an openhardware product that had the following
might work REALLY well.

-small form factor ~ 3.5"x2"x .25" -flash based storage ( internal flash and maybe external port ) -bright LCD display with 320x200 display -wifi -supports OpenGL ES (nvidia tegra would be great) -battery -gps -bluetooth -wii based accelerometers.

nokia has a set of products that are a good start, but i think we could do
better.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Now that I've read the entire article, I think the author makes the same
mistakes that the Chinese ripoffs do. He's talking about the guys selling the
$400 museum monitor going out of business because they're so expensive. But
price is only a small part of the solution. I'm willing to bet that the mfr
knows his market, understands their needs much better than the cheap
newcomers, has a better distribution network and reputation in the field. It's
really hard to compete solely on price unless you're selling cheap consumer
commodity goods which this is anything but.

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troystribling
You could have said the same about Linux compared to Solaris, pUnix and
Windows 15 years ago. Now Linux is the dominant comercial OS.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
OK, but how many small companies will fight for 15 years to get a piece of
what is really not a very large market (museums)?

The point is that price is probably not enough of a competitive advantage to
topple the market leader. Given enough time anything can happen, but you have
to be reasonable about what's likely.

~~~
troystribling
I agree that price is not enough but I do think price/performance is. I
believe this is why the consumer Linux desktop has not been as successful as
enterprise Linux.

It may take 15 years for the idea of open source hardware to be accepted. Once
people are comfortable that lower price does not imply lower quality I doubt
that it will be a hard sell. I agree that now that may not be the case for the
museum environmental sensor market but until someone try's it will not be
known.

Open source software achieves its cost savings by eliminating or greatly
reducing many levels of organization and overhead that exist in proprietary
software vendors (i.e. sales, marketing, human resources, project
management,..) not by reducing quality. Larry Augustine has a good article
describing this <http://www.sandhill.com/opinion/editorial.php?id=54>. It is
reasonable to think that the same thing could happen with hardware.

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kwamenum86
Open source software is appealing because it's free. There is a very low
amount of commitment when you download the source for open-source software.
You can sort of poke around and come back to it as you please.

Open-source hardware requires you to commit money (would have mattered more to
me when I was a student), and a little more time to really get anything useful
out of it. And when all is said and done, it is considerably more difficult to
distribute your creation.

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Dobbs
You just managed to prove that you have no understanding of what Open Source
is actually about.

The entire purpose of open source if you go back to the origin is about the
Freedom to build upon, produce, and learn from other's software. Stallman was
frustrated with the printer at the lab because he couldn't fix a flaw that he
had previously fixed on a earlier printer.

With hardware if their is a flaw or it just doesn't quite meet the need you
have then you can take the design and fix the flaw, or build upon the base to
get what you need. That is the purpose of Free, Open Source Software and
Hardware.

Open source has little to nothing to do with being free that has been a side
effect of giving the source away, why charge for a product if anyone can build
it themselves?

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yters
The combination of open source hardware and software is very exciting.
Especially if someone can create viable home fab.

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Kaizyn
Is anyone else concerned that if all of the easy money in high tech is
undercut then there won't be any more profits to fund continuing innovation?
As neat as something like Arduino may be, it's not exactly cutting edge
technology.

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HeyLaughingBoy
It doesn't have to be cutting edge. I do some hardware/embedded SW
moonlighting. Since a lot of the smaller projects seemed to have a common
platform, I made a run of PC boards so I didn't have to reinvent the wheel
with every new project. If I had known about the Arduino at the time I
wouldn't have bothered: I'd just have used their design with my firmware and
saved a bunch of time.

The point of this is to build on someone else's work. Just like I can use
Apache without having to build my own webserver, I can use the Arduino design
and add my customizations to it.

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tocomment
I live near NYC, I was actually thinking of taking their arduino class in two
weeks. <http://www.eventbrite.com/event/190440613>

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olefoo
I like the idea that the internet of things will be built with a diversity of
agendas.

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ph0rque
"I hear the sound of a thousand business models crumbling."

