This is pretty cool, albeit the organization of the projects is a little hard to navigate. In time, its likely to become a pretty amazing resource. In looking at a number of the projects, its pretty easy to see which are commercial focused, and which are someones great idea, but a lack of business acumen may mean the physicial hardware may be short lived. It comes down to the P-L side.
Some of those boards are priced such that each unit is being shipped with $10 or $20 along with it. Granted, there may be some loss leader approaches. Ie, sell hardware at or below cost, and make money on the service side, or peripherals… yet, cash flow is key. One can only give away so much hardware before the perhipheral or service side needs to start flowing, and I dont see it.
The other side, is an extreme commercial focus, the price of the hardware is so high, its likely only the most serious user will make a purchase, and the rest will likely depend upon the open source IP aspect only.
Obviously there is a balance point, where in prices will normalize, such that further development is not constrained due to negative cash flow, and/or exceedingly low sales volumes. The big thing is how long that will take. Sure, much of the open source model is driven by enthusiasts with day jobs, and thats cool. On the other hand, as the economy continues to deleverage, more and more may be forced into other avenues for income/food, and I think if excuted well; open source hardware and in addition perhaps the cottage industry manufacturing model might play a significant role in the income/food arena. It will be interesting for sure.
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1 user commented in " MAKE: Blog: Open source hardware 2008 – The definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2008 "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI think what finally renewed my interest in (open)hardware is the feeling of being boxed in by consumer devices. I started thinking back to all of the things I’ve made trivial, but necessary mods to, not the least of which was Ginnie’s herculean efforts to silence or reduce the dB level of every screaming, bleeping toy that crosses our threshold. Now that DRM is in everything from cars to home AV equipment to toys (Nintendo DSi has region codes for goodness sake!) They’re driving some of us to roll our own solutions in the same way that Microsoft’s iron-fisted grip on the PC industry over the past few decades fueled Linux, Java and the OpenSource software movement.
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