Open Source Hardware

I'm violating the "metacool employees shall not write blog posts past 10pm on a school night" rule by posting this, but I'm simply too excited not to.  As a recovering mechanical design engineer who has a thing for software in general -- and a big thing for open source software in particular -- Brad Feld's recent post about Bug Labs is just plain cool.  I can't wait to see what comes out of this.

Of course, there's nothing that says that only software creation can benefit from an open source approach.  Mozilla has shown that you can take an open source approach to marketing.  And Threadless says something (if not something deep) about open sourcing content.  These are exciting times to be in the business of creating stuff.  Yes indeed.

This notion is nothing new.  The ur open source piece of hardware is the Chevy small-block V8.  Hubba hubba.

Comments

[BWJones]

Ah, but might I remind you that open source hardware is how computers *used* to be shipped. The first computer I ever bought myself was an Apple ][+ and had with it all documentation of the hardware schematics on how it was built, what chips were used and how they were connected. Not only was it useful, but it was incredibly educational, particularly for a then 13 year old boy.

[Diego Rodriguez]

I had the same experience!

Great point.

[martin]

Since i am not old enough - ;) - to remember those computers, and my only memories are from closed and made to monopolize machines, this news seems to be another great step towards a really open economy, where any developer would compete to gain us, consumers, instead of compete to gain governments or institutions favour, like what's happening today in Chile (for spanish speaking people, http://sss.cl/noalacuerdoM-G/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=29 )