Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
1.
History of the Open Hardware Movement
Catarina Mota
“Above all things physical, it is more important to be beautiful on the inside—to
have a big heart and an open mind and a spectacular spleen.”
—Ellen DeGeneres
The history of
open source hardware
has been written by the Open Source Hardware Asso-
ciation's Research Chair, Catarina Mota. Included in her history is an overview of the
movement and the community. Catarina is a well-respected scholar in open hardware who
wrote her PhD dissertation on the social impact of open and collaborative practices for the
development of physical goods and technologies. The history of the movement, as it is
written here, and any future updates can be found on the research branch of the OSHWA
website:
www.oshwa.org/research
.
The following text was written by Catarina Mota.
Open source hardware was preceded, influenced, and shaped by several prominent cases
in which important technologies were developed collaboratively and out in the open. Its
historical antecedents include the open source and free software movements, from which it
derived its principles; the Homebrew Computer Club and hacking traditions, which flour-
ished when early computers were sold in kits or shipped with schematic diagrams; and the
ham radio community, from which it inherited a long tradition of amateur engineering and
knowledge-sharing practices.
Despite the deep roots of these legacies, open source hardware became known as such
only in the 2000s. This was mostly due to the rise of the Internet, which made sharing hard-
ware designs possible; the commercial success of open source software, which gave it pub-
lic visibility; and the decrease in costs of production tools, which made it feasible. This
chapter describes the emergence and evolution of a series of organizations and initiatives
that, in conjunction with a growing number of projects and businesses, have helped solidify
open source hardware.
