You only have to look at the success of initiatives such as the TI BeagleBoard which is low cost, open and has a cult following. The key to success is that it is fully open source hardware which has enabled a much wider audience to get access to this technology fostering a cult following. A number of BeagleBoard clones have been released based on the original design files which maybe add a few features or make it available in geographic regions not well served by the distribution network. Big companies use these low-cost platforms alongside officially supported SV reference boards - reference board for getting official support, open hardware boards for internal design innovation and prototypes. They are also expendable! You can buy 10 BeagleBoards for the price of 1 OMAP3530 EVM for example!
The latest generation of devices from all major SoC manufacturers are so complex that bare metal programming is just not an option any more hence the need to provide software OS support in order to make them do anything useful. It is clear that open source / community priced software and hardware must be very tightly coupled with good support for any new hardware to be adopted.
Good communications and visibility in the right places helps get the community engaged.
You are right. This is exactly the point how big Open Source Software projects get their funding. I am working in the Java Enterprise Environment. Their you have the need for a rock solid web server. But it does not make sens that everybody develops it's own. Therefore Tomcat was created. Big companies pay contributors to adapt it to their needs and give it back to the 'community'. On the on hand they feed their competitors, since they can use their contributions and intelectual properties. But on the other hand their development costs for infrastructure (i.e. your development platforms) are way smaller. They simply could not afford to develop their own infrastructure.
The good marketing effects are a bonus too. Since having a 'committer' (a person who is allowed to write in the public repository) in an open source project is a good way to prove that you are an open company (and is an excellent way to influence the project).
@Zad:
I think it is the other way around (a bit ). Yes it is normal to 'copy' solutions. But Open Source Hardware brings in a new aspects: Sharing your results. If you find a slight improvement to the data sheet solution you can share it with others and get it back. Doing it 'oficially' Open Source gives other users the confidence to just use it without getting sued.
I think you are completely right. The real value is the packaged solution of a circuit, a PCB and software. I do not think that sharing this is the first steps for industries to go.
But sharing building blocks, patterns and simple solutions enable every participant to build bigger solutions. That is the reason why (in theory) scientific results are freely availlable.
E.g in the micro controller market there is a trend to use Eclipse, GCC and some plugins to build a microcontroller IDE. Developing this all by your own is very cost intensive. But if you just have to change a bit in gcc and provide a plugin for eclipse and package everything in a nice download bundle the costs are just a fraction. And if there are some bits that are incompatible for those stupid Mac OS X guys (I am one myself) then some guy with too muh time at hand investigates and fixes it. If he is able to send you the patch and you can incorporate it in your product you get Mac OS X (or Linux or whatever) support for free.
I think it is all very different in Open Source Hardware than in Open Source Software. But there is no reason that both cannot learn from each other.
To be honest, I see it as a new name for something that has been around since year 1. Much of what we as design engineers do is direct from the application notes, data sheets, or in some way "borrowed" from existing concepts, or what we learned at university, and so inherently 'open' anyway. It is the combination of software, hardware and packaging that becomes the protectable product. It is very rare that a hardware design is so innovative that it is protectable itself, rather it is the PCB, enclosure and other physical implementations that are.
Open Source Hardware exists purely as a gimmick to sell something else, quite often PCBs or a fully manufactured product. If the open hardware philosophy is taken to the obvious extreme, I see the inevitable result as being people seeing hardware engineering as trivial, and something that is so simple that it is given away. Although I have to that I think this will not happen, as the open concept will just fade along with all the other marketing buzz-words and trends.
Edited to add: No, I think the Atmel shortage is down to using external fab houses (correct me if I am wrong here). These are now prioritising high-profit and high-value customers such as Apple and related suppliers. This means that production runs keep getting bumped back down the timetable. Manufacturers are also keeping smaller inventories which makes supply problems more likely down the chain.
I use to work for a semicondutor company and I always though it amusing that we would invest significant sums of money to create "development" platforms that were sold at a loss and had no hope of recouping investment - all so that we could design a chip into a customer project. In many cases the development boards were written off as sales and marketing expense and yet we wouldn't enable the market to innovate with these boards. I do see some manufacturers providing more support (TI, Atmel) but I'm not sure they know how to engage the innovation potential of open source hardware.
Since I am in Open Source Hardware I allways wonder why the industry accepts Open Source Software – even contributes – but has so much problems with Open Source Hardware.
I think it is a long way to learn for companies that they can make more money if they give their stuff away for free.
Simple example:
Why not open source reference designs?
People will use it, see that it is better than something they can come up with. Use it in their designs, use it in their products. Build on top of it, provide free building blocks for problems.
The manufacturer sees more designs using their parts, sells more parts – Bingo!
Or do you think the Atmega shortage is unrelated to all the Arduino stuff?
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