Evil Mad Scientists’ open-source EggBot prototype.
generation licenses use “flavor of openness”
designations to help make navigation even easier.
Open Source Hardware in 2020
Ten years in, the open source hardware
community continues to grow. OSHWA’s
certification program includes hardware from
over 40 countries on five continents. Open
Hardware Month activities in October include
a similarly international set of events. GOSH
continues to help spread open source hardware
in the international science community.
The global response to Covid vividly illustrates
the importance of open source hardware
approaches. Teams from around the world came
together to rapidly create, innovate, and distribute
a broad range of medical supplies to communities
that needed them most. Their open approach
allowed improvements and best practices to
propagate quickly, and for communities to easily
modify equipment as needed.
If 2010’s original open source hardware
workshop was about exploring a theory of open
source hardware, 2020’s open source hardware
community proves that theory out every day.
The Next 10 Years
Open source hardware is all about collaborative
innovation, so the next 10 years will look
very different from the first 10. While we
cannot anticipate all of the challenges, some
opportunities are clear:
Marking the path for open source hardware
success There are scores of examples of
successful open source hardware companies.
While they are beginning to highlight common
factors for success, we are far from a playbook
(or playbooks) for successfully creating open
source hardware. Further distilling the lessons
for open source hardware success will make it
even easier for a broader open source hardware
community to succeed.
Diversify open source hardware — Although
the open source hardware community is already
an international one, it will continue to work to
be a community that welcomes and celebrates
members from a broad range of backgrounds
and experiences. In addition to individual diversity,
the open source hardware community will also
The RepRap movement established an open source
trend with the 3D printing community.
Ted Ullrich, Wildell Oskay, Adrian Bowyer
work to incorporate more types of hardware and
hardware applications.
Easier academic paths — Some of open source
hardware’s strongest advocates are in academia.
Unfortunately, it can be hard for traditional
academic structures to recognize contributions
to open source hardware. The academic portions
of the open source hardware community continue
to work to make sure that contributions to
open source hardware are valued equally with
contributions to less open projects.
More open components — One of open source
software’s great strengths is that any given piece
of open source software is built upon a number of
open source libraries and other building blocks.
The open source hardware community will work
to build more open components, allowing open
source hardware practices to extend deeper into
the hardware world.
Keep growing the community — The open
source hardware community has grown in the
last 10 years, but there is plenty of room to keep
going. As open source hardware becomes more
common and accessible, the community will
continue to expand, finding (and building) new
ways to use open source hardware.
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