After the first example of a real Open Design mass product, we have now another example like this, showing us how Open Business strategies are understood and spreaded now. VIA Technologies, the world’s largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets, from Taiwan, published in the last week the CAD files of his last product: the notebook VIA OpenBook.
Files are available here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
There are many reasons behind such strategies, but mainly two reasons are the most probable here.
First, this move is a way to lay the foundation basis for the development of an hackers/modifiers/supplyers/manufacturers ecosystem around the product. Second, this is a strategic move in the subnotebook market, which is rising in these months (just see the Asus eeePC phenomenon).
Indeed, an open design product gives more probabilities that innovation and competition will eventually shift in other areas: no more in the manufacturing of a subnotebook but in the construction of an open peer-to-peer ecosystem of users and enterprises.
Moreover, VIA is mainly a computer components manufacturer, not a notebook one: everyone could manufacture an OpenBook, but will most probabily end using (and therefore buying) VIA’s chipsets and motherboards.
Releasing the “source code” of an open design product brings a positive side-effect that makes a little step further toward environmental sustainability. Open design products can be manufactured locally, avoiding therefore the need for long travel for the finished goods (unfortunately it is not the same for the raw materials) and so fossil fuels consumption and CO2.
And as we know everything about this product (it is open) we can manufacture it and repair it in such a way it will last longer than other products and then there will be less need to change it frequently. Sure, these are not great steps toward sustainabilty, but we should consider these side-effects too for an open and sustainable business.
via | the Inquirer
Tags: Product Design, Technology
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