Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
century or has the patent system changed its standards?” The Industrial Revolution is
trumpeted as a time of high innovation, when many of the first million patents were awar-
ded, with the railways and steam engines being the poster children of technology at the
time. The Industrial Revolution is often paralleled with the Internet Age, with both seen as
eras when inventors focused on shortening time and space. The Internet, which was
largely built upon open source software, has had a sister movement of hardware grow
over the past decade. Open sourcing hardware is proving to be as lucrative as open
sourcing software, and this revolution will likely be as important as the Industrial Revolu-
tion. First, however, we must reconcile the incentives that inventors want and the public
benefit derived from the inventors' creations.
Maturity of the Open Source Hardware Movement
As was stated in the Introduction, it would be irresponsible to write this topic as though
every aspect of open source hardware has been figured out. Remember, the definition of
open source hardware was created by the community and for the community. Communit-
ies, along with technologies, change over time. The definition upholds “the spirit of” open
source hardware as a consideration for labeling your hardware as open source. This senti-
ment leaves the definition somewhat open ended because the community cannot see into
the future and know what upholding the definition of open source hardware will look like
in 20 years.
Much of the gray area within open source hardware is due to the fact that openness
does not yet extend to all layers of hardware. For example, it is not expected that an open
source hardware company will mine the copper to ensure openness on that layer. The lay-
er of opening raw materials may be considered in the future, or potentially never. So-
mething that seems easier for this particular community to alter the openness of are the
closed source programs that we use to build hardware. Eagle is one of the most popular
programs for electronic layout, but is closed source. There are open source alternatives,
such as KiCad and Fritzing. This leaves the community with the question of whether open
source software design tools need to have open source code, or whether Eagle should be
used because it is the most popular and therefore most accessible option, with an existing
community of users who already know how to use Eagle. Making a decision as a commu-
nity either to use only open source software in our tools or to put pressure on Eagle to cre-
ate an open version of its software may be something that slows growth in the movement.
Integral pieces of hardware, such as the chip, are also often closed. However, I'm ex-
cited to say that while this topic was being written, Parallax announced its open source sil-
