Choosing to release a piece of software under the terms of a free software license is an important step through which many programmers and writers first approach the free software community. However, the myriad of licenses available can sometimes confuse and disorient the user, sometimes making this first step much harder than it should be. Let's try and make things clearer.

At the Gran Canaria Open Desktop Summit in July 2009, the Open-PC project was announced. The statement said the project aimed to "cooperatively design a Free Software based computer by and for the community". Further this PC would use only hardware for which there are free software drivers available. This would be a PC with the minimal compromise required for running a free desktop.

In conjunction with Software Freedom Day, the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) has made a call for governments to purchase hardware that will not limit its choice of what software to run.

"...Even though MakerBot is both a hardware and software solution, the ideals and infrastructure that the free software movement has pushed forward has given us the scaffolding to build the 3D printing hardware we share with our community and the world using the GPL license..."

The tools and techniques for creating hardware designs are very different from those used for software; and because of this, developing open hardware is a significantly different and greater challenge than creating free software.

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.

In the past few years we've seen a lot of hardware-based innovation (or at the very least expansion). New products and markets have arisen built around hardware and its use. Smartphones, tablets, netbooks and gaming systems are all examples of markets that have expanded and some if not most of the products make use of free software.

Free software began as a political movement where the central aim was the propagation of freedom. Later, it became a development methodology too and later still, free software also became a way of making serious money. Glyn Moody examines this evolution

Playing around with radio-frequency transmission and reception used to be restricted to those of us with hardware skills. That has been changing for some years, though, as processors get faster and software techniques advance; now, many radio transmitters and receivers are built with simple (but flexible) hardware.