In a recent Resources article, FOSSlife provided an overview of open source hardware, noting that the concept refers to a set of design principles and legal practices, rather than to a specific object. In fact, it is defined as follows:
"Open source hardware is a term for tangible artifacts—machines devices or other physical things—whose design has been released to the public in such a way that anyone can make, modify, distribute, and use those things."
We continue to explore open source hardware as the community celebrates its tenth anniversary. In a recent episode of Make:Cast, Dale Dougherty talked with Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) Executive Director Alicia Gibb and Board President Michael Weinberg about the growth of open source hardware, its certification program, as well as the open source hardware maker response to COVID-19.
Ten years ago, a community came together around a definition of open source hardware to be clear about what it means to share designs for physical things, says Dougherty.
And, Gibb says, “that’s a really powerful way to think about your legacy living on as a piece of open source hardware. If you truly just want that piece of open source hardware to exist, if you want that piece of hardware at all to exist, open source it because then it will exist past yourself and past what innovations you could think of in an entire world of people dreaming up innovations.”
Read more and listen to the podcast at Make:.
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