commit: b87173d4ddfab7e442de10f4d4a4ffd483669596
parent ca5efc8e88013422c8d318611708d9200fe036ee
Author: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2022 17:56:33 +0200
open hardware
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 50 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/blog/Open-hardware-graveyard.md b/content/blog/Open-hardware-graveyard.md
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+---
+title: The past and future of open hardware
+date: 2022-07-25
+---
+
+They say a sucker is born every day, and at least on the day of my birth, that
+certainly may have been true. I have a bad habit of spending money on open
+hardware projects that ultimately become vaporware or seriously under-deliver on
+their expectations. In my ledger are EOMA68, DragonBox Pyra, the Jolla Tablet
+— which always had significant non-free components — and the Mudita
+Pure, though I did successfully receive a refund for the latter two.[^1]
+
+[^1]: I reached out to DragonBox recently and haven't heard back yet, so let's
+ give them the benefit of the doubt. EOMA68, however, is, uh, not going so well.
+
+There are some success stories, though. My Pine64 devices work great —
+though they have non-free components — and I have a HiFive Unmatched that
+I'm reasonably pleased with. Raspberry Pi is going well, if you can find one
+— also with non-free components — and Arduino and products like it
+are serving their niche pretty well. I hear the MNT Reform went well, though by
+then I had learned to be a bit more hesitant to open my wallet for open
+hardware, so I don't have one myself. Pebble worked, until it didn't. Caveats
+abound in all of these projects.
+
+What does open hardware need to succeed, and why have many projects failed?
+And why do the successful products often have non-free components and poor
+stock? We can't blame it all on the chip shortage and/or COVID: it's been an
+issue for a long time.
+
+I don't know the answers, but I hope we start seeing improvements. I hope that
+the successful projects will step into a mentorship role to provide
+up-and-comers with tips on how they made their projects work, and we see a
+stronger focus on liberating non-free components. Perhaps Crowd Supply can do
+some work in helping to secure investment[^2] for open hardware projects, and
+continue the good work they're already doing on guiding them through the
+development and production processes.
+
+[^2]: Ideally with careful attention paid to making sure that the resulting device does not serve its investors needs better than its users needs.
+
+Part of this responsibility comes down to the consumer: spend your money on free
+projects, and don't spend your money on non-free projects. But, we also need to
+look closely at the viability of each project, and open hardware projects need
+to be transparent about their plans, lest we get burned again. Steering the open
+hardware movement out of infancy will be a challenge for all involved.
+
+Are you working on a cool open hardware project? [Let me know][0]. Explain how
+you plan on making it succeed and, if I'm convinced that your idea has promise,
+I'll add a link here.
+
+[0]: mailto:sir@cmpwn.com
