The Current State of Open Source Hardware: The Need for an Open Source Development Platform
Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is a new paradigm attempting to emulate the Open Source Software movement. While there are several flagship OSHW projects, this product development paradigm has yet to live up to its full potential. This paper reviews the curre
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Abstract Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is a new paradigm attempting to emulate the Open Source Software movement. While there are several flagship OSHW projects, this product development paradigm has yet to live up to its full potential. This paper reviews the current state of OSHW and reveals the lack of a robust and simple development platform as being a major barrier to the uptake of OSHW. The authors argue that an Open Source, Cloud-based platform would be the most viable direction.
Keywords Open source hardware Open source hardware collaboration platform Open source software
1 Introduction While free software is becoming as commonplace as your very own personal computer, free physical products are more of a rare phenomenon. However, it is our strong believe that this will change in the not too distant future, following the emerging paradigm of Open Source Hardware (OSHW). Free products may only be the minor benefits of OSHW as it might revolutionise the way new technologies are created and the way we interact with physical products in our everyday life.
A. Hansen (&) T. J. Howard Section of Engineering Design and Product Development, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] T. J. Howard e-mail: [email protected]
A. Chakrabarti and R. V. Prakash (eds.), ICoRD’13, Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering, DOI: 10.1007/978-81-322-1050-4_77, Ó Springer India 2013
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The Open Source movement has in recent years managed to challenge even the biggest international software companies, threatening the closed systems [1]. Open Source Software development has been able to capitalize from the development in communication technologies, enabling dispersed individuals and communities to efficiently share information. While Open Source Software (OSS) is motoring ahead and changing the realm of software development, one wonders why engineering design and the development of physical products still seems to be a mere bystander yet to embrace the full potential of the Open Source methodology. Some obvious barriers arise when trying to transpose the paradigm of Open Source Software into the realm of physical products and engineering design, e.g. problems regarding test and validation. However, engineering design has become more and more digitalised through the use of CAE. This realization should allow a better utilization of communication technologies in engineering design and foster hope for a further adoption of the Open Source methodology in the development of physical products. A key aspect of the future success of OSHW is the development of a robust collaboration platform. Using the words of Koch and Tumer ‘‘Why are robust collaboration tools openly available to the programmer, but not to the designer?’’ [1]. It seems evident that this must change if OSHW development is to counter OSS in efficiency and success. Another important realization is that, for now, OSHW communities do not work on or share partial designs [2]. If
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