Hi,<p>I am wondering what are the benefits/risks of making hardware products open-source. One question: How to make profit, when hardware is open-source?<p>a) Arduino is a nice example that open-source hardware can be profitable. Is this an exception (i.e. are there other open-source hardware companies that failed?)<p>b) What other examples of open-source hardware companies are there, and how do they differ from Arduino?<p>Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Sorry for the self promotion, but checkout my TEDx Talk on Open Source hardware and IP: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGhj_lLNtd0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGhj_lLNtd0</a><p>How do you make a profit selling something? It's pretty straight forward: You provide better service, quality, price, availability and innovation than your competition. Open source has nothing to do with profitability, the way you run your business does.<p>Arduino is a good example but there are many other healthy companies doing open source hardware: SparkFun, lulzbot, dangerousprototypes, seedstudio, TI, STmicro, I'm missing dozens more but the coffee is a little weak this morning. Mouser and element 14 even have OSHW categories that they sell. Tindie is a great place for discovering and selling shorter run, cool little open source widgets. Checkout the <a href="https://pinocc.io/" rel="nofollow">https://pinocc.io/</a> and Clyde Lamp kickstarters. My wife got her Clyde reward the other night - it's AMAZING.<p>How do these projects have sustainable income?<p>1) They sell the thing for more than it costs. Sounds simple but kickstarter is littered with projects that got this wrong.
2) Innovate to sustain (and increase) your number of customers, products, and income.<p>This is where the future is: I don't have the want/skills/time to build a good, aesthetically pleasing, desk lamp, so I buy a Clyde. The fact that it is open means I can change the user interface to fit my needs. Open source products will win because users will want customization that closed system simply cannot support.
One known risk is improper component selection and it can ruin your "open"
stance in the eyes of potential customers. For example, if you need 802.11
WiFi component in your design, then picking the wrong one can
result in being under an NDA, not having the freely available documentation
needed by open source hacker to write and maintain drivers, and other
"closed" nonsense from component vendors that prevents <i>your</i> openness.
This issue is particularly true for most all graphics chips/cores.<p>As for examples of open-hardware, there are many, but you'll need to search
them out and read through the carefully to determine how "open" they really
are. Like most buzzwords, "open" gets tossed around too loosely. Both finding
and evaluating open-hardware vendors is time consuming.<p>There are also variations of "open-hardware" in some places like China.
Andrew (bunnie) Huang calls the Chinese variation “gongkai” (公开).<p><a href="http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040" rel="nofollow">http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040</a>