What is Open-source Hardware?

In all my years as a IT specialist, one of the subjects that always caught my attention was how can the Open-source paradigm keep up commercially with the success of licensed solutions. You can offer a open-source software as a viable for the modern IT management, but the hardware costs will always have an impact on the IT budget, simply because you can not construct your own hardware and expect the efficiency and support a pay-up solution can offer.

Three years ago, I thought the same. But now, I think we are close to the moment when every IT department will be able to generate their own personalized solutions without much of an economic gap.

What is Open-source Hardware?

Wikipedia describes Open-source hardware (OSHW) as a set of:

"...Physical artifacts of technology designed and offered in the same manner as free and open-source software (FOSS). Open-source hardware is part of the open-source culture movement and applies a like concept to a variety of components. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned. Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, schematics, bill of materials, PCB layout data, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout data), in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released with the FOSS approach.

Meaning that instead of the schematics, hardware description language (HDL) code is shared, using HDL descriptions to set up system-on-a-chip systems either in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) or directly in application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs.

How can all this affect your IT management strategy? well, if we take in consideration that one of the major differences between developing open source software and developing open-source hardware is that hardware results in tangible outputs, which cost money to prototype and manufacture, your department can faces challenges in minimizing cost and reducing financial risks for individual project developers, while learning from community members how do proposed models work in a live environment.

I'm not saying you should develop all your hardware in-.house. That will be preposterous, for not saying a little insane. But the idea of working with certain hardware outputs that you can modify at will certainly have its charms.

So what is an open hardware license and what do I do with it?

An open hardware license is basically an agreement by the author(s) of the work that allows other people to use that work for free, without paying royalties, licensing fees, etc. as long as certain constraints are followed, like for example requiring anybody who uses the work to place the name of the original author(s) prominently on the final project, or release any derivative work under a similar license.

Software is distributed as a text file, often a compiled binary' is included as well. It has been well established that software code is copyrightable, so OSS license often rely on the rights and capabilities of copyright. Hardware, on the other hand, and especially electronics hardware, has multiple layers that may be licensed, like Mechanical layer, Schematic Layer, Layout Layer Parts List & Datasheets.

Richard Stallman once said "Whether or not a hardware device's internal design is free, it is absolutely vital for its interface specifications to be free. We can't write free software to run the hardware without knowing how to operate it". This is a must for an IT department who wants to implement the Open-Source Hardware paradigm in its operative strategy. We know that Software can be made with time, but hardware needs time and money. The same kind of "openness" principles from the Open Source Software "time economy" can make the transition nicely to the Open Source Hardware-based "time economy", but we have to be smart about it. After all, Open-Source Hardware lacks a way for individuals to come together, make a cool project, and get something out of it without investing nine tons of money on it, or in your cases, consuming all you IT budget.

So, what shall we do? As with everything, begin by the small things and create a business concept around it. Maybe you can enter a community like Arduino, work around a 3rd party open-source.hardware solution for your specific business needs and at the same time stay in touch with the latest developments. You can also find a business partner willing to turn the operation into profitable business while you tests your open hardware ideas on your own IT infrastructure.

There are many applicable business models, but the main idea is to find a way to make money out of innovation in the open source hardware.

Feel you can do it? Let me know what you think about it...