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As open-source software continues to grow, vendors are offering multipoint open-source solution bundles consisting of hardware, open-source software, consultation, configuration services, and support, making it much easier to purchase, deploy, and maintain these types of products.
What is open source hardware? Briefly, these are projects that creators have decided to completely publish all the source, schematics, firmware, software, bill of materials, parts list, drawings and "board" files to recreate the hardware - they also allow any use, including commercial. Similar to open source hardware like Linux, but hardware centric.
Reverse-engineering open source drivers for hardware devices will only reduce the pressure on manufacturers to provide such drivers, Dirk Hohndel told an audience at the Australian national Linux conference today.
Again this year MAKE Magazine blog has publishes the annual Open Source Hardware Guide listing no less than 60 open source hardware projects, ranging from simple microcontroller boards to a fully functional cell phone.
Free software has many benefits: you can get more secure software, faster updates, lots of tutorials and, definitely, a new way of making software and software that builds communities. From this, the next logical step was Open Hardware.
Qi Hardware is now shipping its first "copyleft hardware" device, the ultra-portable Ben NanoNote. The palm-sized notebook is designed to be a hackable hardware platform for Linux developers, akin to what the Arduino board is for electronics projects.
The growing success of open source software has naturally spurred on others to apply its lessons elsewhere. Open content is perhaps the most famous translation, notably through the widely-used Creative Commons licences.
Nokia researcher Jamey Hicks recently proposed a Open Source Hardware License (OSHL) for approval by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Is there a need for a hardware-specific license? If so, what makes hardware different from software?
I recently wrote about the latest iteration of the Open Source Hardware Definition, which provides a framework for crafting open hardware licences. It's a necessary and important step.