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And the survey says... (Open Source Hardware results are in)

fustini

The Open Source Hardware Association recently their 2012 community survey results:

In February of 2012 OSHWA conducted a survey of the international open source hardware community, which received 2091 responses from 70 countries. These are the aggregate results.

A majority responded that they have published design files online for a project they've worked on:

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I've been seeing the Open Hardware logo on more and more boards.  With almost 40% having used the logo, I suspect that will become a majority in the next year's survey results:

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Unfortunately, almost half release have released designs without an explicit license:

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Creative Commons and GPL are the next most popular, but I believe neither are the best fit for hardware.  The newer licenses specifically for Open Hardware, TAPR and CERN, only have 2% each.  Hopefully, they will grow in popularity as they mature and awareness spreads.

 

I quite like that the top response for "Why do you use Open Source Hardware?" is "because of community support and documentation around it".  A very close behind is "because I can refer to the design files to understand the hardware" followed by "so I can modify, repurpose and personalize it".  That really is the ethos of open source in a nutshell!

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Did anyone here fill out the survey?  Suprised, either good or bad, with any of the results?

 

Cheers,

Drew

  • Hi Drew,

     

    Good post.  It is good to see open source gaining traction with people.  It's the only way to spread the ideas and devices around the world for all to benefit.

     

    I did not fill out the survey, but I think the results are encouraging.

     

    DAB

  • Lets just hope the mega-corps and lawers keep their noses out of it. image

  • in reply to R_Phoenix

    indeed... also it's interesting to see what effect outside investment will have on the notable open source hardware companies.  Makerbot has been the poster child but have closed some aspects of their latest printer - the parts they felt were most valuable to cloners (mechanical frame/enclosure & the GUI software).  This was after they took $10 million in investment which allowed them to grow larger.  In turn, I think that cost of operating a larger company created anxiety about the revenue lost to cloners.  I believe MakerBot's goal is to spread 3D printing as far and wide as possible, and that the OSHW ideal is not always their top priority.  As was discussed during the Open Hardware Summit last September, it will be interesting to see how truly OSHW companies manage to stick with their ideals during growth.

  • I think the chief benefit of open source hardware is that it requires open documentation, so if OSHW catches on it makes a business case for a company to open up its documentation.  It is totally annoying that there's fantastic silicon out there like GPUs and FPGAs that you cannot program yourself.  image

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    That would be excellent: companies see the advantage to creating open documentation versus closely guarding it.