Ask HN: Why isn't open source hardware more popular?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21376798

by bArray • 7 years ago

5 8 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Long-form Question: Why isn't open source hardware more popular in consumer markets?

Motivation: I've thought for a while about creating an open-source hardware venture, but I'm not sure I fully understand why the market isn't more popular than it currently is.

Considerations:

* Form factor/style? It's no secret that many consumers consider their devices as part of their fashion statement.

* Cost? Open source hardware is typically quite a bit more expensive, probably owing to lower numbers of runs and less automation?

* Capability? Maybe closed-sourced solutions are more polished out-of-the-box?

* After market support? Perhaps people feel left in the dark once they get their product without some dedicated support team? I guess your average consumer may not be happy about submitting a correctly formatted ticket to some Git interface for example.

* Availability? A lot of open source hardware ventures appear to do short runs in order to ensure they sell out the majority of their stock.

All replies are greatly appreciated :)

srikanthsrnvs• 7 years ago

Nature of the industry I'd say.. Cost for eg is a big factor; Hardware inherently requires money to build (materials etc), while software is just an investment of time.

I suppose it's a direct mapping of human nature, where we inherently prioritize return on an investment of money rather than time, which makes sense too

dyingkneepad2• 7 years ago

Most open source that thrives (with notable exceptions) are things that companies have interest in (e.g., helps them make or save money somehow), so most of the contributions it receives are from people who are getting paid to make that contribution.

For open source hardware, would there be any financial advantage for you? Would someone save/make money by contributing to your open source hardware? Why would someone contribute to your project or simply want to read its source?

I am not saying those answers are "no", I'm genuinely asking you to reflect on that.

Also, it's likely you would have to license other people's IPs and I have no idea if those licenses would forbid you from open sourcing your HW.

bArray2• 7 years ago

most of the contributions it receives are from people who
are getting paid to make that contribution

I can see this from a software perspective, but is the same true for a tangible device aimed at a consumer?

Why would someone contribute to your project or simply
want to read its source?

My answer to this is:

1. There is a growing number of people who are concerned about security and I believe the general public is becoming more aware of such concerns.

2. The ability to customize a product or buy some modification and/or make that modification with relative ease and freedom.

3. Higher quality manufacturing and/or parts, or a unique feature offering not offered in mainstream products.

I'm sure there are other points too, depending on what the target consumer hardware is.

Also, it's likely you would have to license other people's
IPs and I have no idea if those licenses would forbid you
from open sourcing your HW.

Possibly, again depending on the target device. I guess that "open hardware" in this case is "as-open-as-possible hardware".

dyingkneepad2• 7 years ago

I see that you seem to be giving an answer for the "general case", while I was trying to think about the specifics of a certain piece of hardware.

Regarding point 1, sure, open hardware is indeed a good addition to the privacy and security sectors. If you have hardware focused on those problems, open hardware will definitely be an advantage.

Regarding point 2, the "ease" part in software actually means "really easy" since it only requires you to recompile and redistribute, but with hardware things will definitely become a little harder since it requires making the physical thing. You need an entire ecosystem for that.

3. None of that requires open hardware. Sure, having the specs allows you to verify the quality to some extent, but I'm assuming only very restricted sectors would care about that.

That said, I would already be happy if the industry simply reverted the current shift of "move everything to closed firmware" that is happening :(. Open drivers with closed firmware is very disappointing.

justin886787698• 7 years ago

Proprietary hardware supports secrets that ACT against people building upon the encrypted (protected by IPR) code. It's an attempt to artificially create a monopoly, for the benefit of the owner, NOT society.

If you are a greedy capitalist, your want to support proprietary source code. If your into state surveillance, you will need it to prevent others auditing your secret code. In fact, proprietary is just off limits for the public to know, to examine, to check, confirm and or establish there isn't any back doors built in.

Open source and open hardware, doesn't want to HIDE secrets, it's about insuring the work gets to be checked, confirmed, proven... imagine building a life support system for a Mars mission, who wants to trust their life with a unknown instructions, and even if the code was decent, it doesn't lend to corrections during the space flight by the astronauts themselves to change, modify or adjust for unknown events, bugs, flaws and design mistakes...

If your going to produce open hardware, NEVER design it for artificial vendor locked in markets, instead support universal hardware that makes it the most used by everyone everywhere, because it permits building upon, auditing, just everything anyone would need to advance, develop and build.

Software engineers should produce the code once, and have it run on every computing device globally.... hence the need for universal hardware, or the implementation of adopting the universal hardware protocol...

These artificial vendor platforms, are nothing but designed exclusively for running monopolies in a money market economy.

The Church did the same long ago, by withholding the knowledge to the commoners. Once the technology of duplicating books became possible by other individuals, an explosion of knowledge could then be shared and developed.

We are entering an intellectual economy, but on the heels of the old gatekeepers, whom wish and want to remains the overlords still. So change will favor their enforcement, but you never change things by just fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete!

Open hardware does that, it makes the old proprietary hardware no longer a monopoly. Why limit hardware to doing just one thing... for one purpose, when open hardware could be reused, recycled, even upgraded and combined with other hardware...

Forcing people to be locked out, requiring jail-breaking their devices is what proprietary code is all about.

Open hardware lets everyone become engineers, because they discover news ways of making things function, work and operate on hardware that builds upon prior work. No 787 aerocraft could be built if it was not for the combined effort given by a great deal of many different individuals over a long period of time to achieve the results so many just take for granted today.

How many other things require previous work to exist in order to develop something better?

beckingz• 7 years ago

Open source hardware is hard to build a viable business off of because any decent manufacturer can create clones from the designs, and sell those at a price that you cannot afford to match them at.

To make it work, you need to do something like Adafruit where people buy from you because of quality and to support your mission to build more open source hardware.

ptorrone• 7 years ago

good timing for this... we (adafruit) have been posting a post-per-day, all month for open hardware month.

https://blog.adafruit.com/?s=%23OHM2019

there are millions of open-source hardware devices out there, so "popular" would need to be more defined for this question, etc. here are all the posts..

bArray2• 7 years ago

Nice piece and great work [1] - I will make a point to read all of your posts :)

[1] https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/10/28/ask-hn-why-isnt-open-so...

Ask HN: Why isn't open source hardware more popular?

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