Following the previous post, let’s still talk about Open Design in the Fashion Design sector and about the EDUfashion project (and its openwear.org brand). Few weeks ago I was invited in their event: EDUfashion Conference – Refashioning fashion: new scenarios of clothing – 2nd June 2011.

I didn’t talk about Open P2P Design and how to co-design open processes and systems; instead I talked about the business models behind the current Open and DIY projects. Running an Open business is part of the big theme “how to co-design open systems”, and it’s something I’m increasingly investigating more and more (and it seems there is a lot of interest in it).
Here’s my presentation; soon I will blog about a longer presentation about the same issues I gave in Berlin few days later:

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After the video of Neil Gershenfeld at the Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, here’s now the video of Massimo Banzi about the state of Arduino and of its community from the same event. One of the interesting things to note in his speech is the fact that Arduino is not evolving too quickly, its speed is slow enough for the community to adapt to its evolution.
And don’t forget that the first ArduinoCamp is going to be held on 18th-19th June in Milan (see you there!).

Few months ago, Platoniq commissioned me a report about business models for Open Hardware, DIY Craft and Fab Labs, for their crowdfunding project Goteo. It is now available in Spanish from Platoniq’s YouCoop website, and here in English, under a Creative Commons license (see below). Just note that the two versions may slightly differ (it happens when you work on two different versions of the same document); the idea is to transform it in a collaborative book in the future, here on openp2pdesign.org.
Here’s the first part, about business models for Open Hardware.

Definitions of Open Hardware

The current Open Source Hardware Draft Definition is intended to help provide guidelines for the development and evaluation of licenses for Open Source Hardware and it says that Open 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“. The main difference with Open Source Software is that Open Source Software is collaborative, while Open Hardware is derivative: here a fork is the rule, not the exception.
Even if Open Hardware has become famous in the past 5 years, it has been around for years: The Apple I was built by hand by Steve Wozniak, and he and Jobs were members of the Home Brew Computer Club. The hardware hacking community has never gone away; it has just adapted to the changes in technology. Open Hardware is still in its first steps though, just like Open Source Software was in the 1980s, when the GNU project began, before all the infrastructure was created.
Interesting overviews of Open Hardware can be found on Make Magazine’s Blog, MIT Technology Review, Computerworld, O’Reilly Radar. Lists of existing Open Hardware projects can be found on the GOpen Hardware 2009 website, on the P2P Foundation website (here and here), on Make Magazine’s Blog, Open Innovation Projects and Open Knowledge Foundation. Open Hardware projects are not limited to gadget and interaction design projects, but they can also be about development aid projects.
Patrick McNamara defined 4 possible levels of Openness in Open Hardware projects, that can help us understand them better:

1. Closed: any hardware for which the creator of the hardware will not release any information.
2. Open Interface: all the documentation on how to make a piece of hardware perform the function for which it is designed is available (minimum level of openness).
3. Open Design: in which enough detailed documentation is provided that a functionally compatible device could be created by a third party.
4. Open Implementation: the complete bill of materials necessary to construct the device is available.

Arduino: a successful open hardware project

Arduino is arguably the most popular Open Hardware project: an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software; many versions of the Arduino hardware have been commercially produced to date. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. You can read a comprehensive introduction to Arduino on Wikipedia or on Alicia Gibbs’ thesis.
Most of Arduino official boards are manufactured by SmartProjects in Italy. The Arduino Pro, Pro Mini, and LilyPad are manufactured by SparkFun Electronics (USA). The Arduino Nano is manufactured by Gravitech (USA).
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After some months of waiting, the documentary about Arduino (the most famous and successful Open Hardware project) is now finally ready and online at http://arduinothedocumentary.org/.
The documentary was made by Rodrigo Calvo Eguren y Raúl Díez Alaejos and it was commissioned by Laboral Centro de Arte, an exhibition centre for art, science, technology and advanced visual industries located in Gijon, Spain. Moreover, Laboral just opened a Fab Lab last November.

Other interesting resources about Arduino are:

• Build It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware Work?, an article written by Clive Thompson on Wired;
• New Media Art, Design, and the Arduino Microcontroller: A Malleable Tool, a thesis written by Alicia Gibb.

Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.

I discovered that another documentary on DIY culture, Hackerspaces and the Maker movements has just been released yesterday by Ryan Varga on Vimeo.
Even if a bit short (16 minutes), it is a good documentary, and its release shows how these topics are gaining popularity and coverage rapidly.

We Make Things. from Ryan Varga on Vimeo.

One of the first documentaries of this kind was Handmade Nation, a DVD documentary and a book. Here’s a trailer:

And now we just have to wait Electromagnate to finish a documentary that explores the state and direction of the Maker and Hackerspace movement in America. (more…)

The concept of Open Hardware arrived even on the Economist’s pages too.

Companies, for their part, say an open approach can help them get to market quickly with products that give customers what they want—without the need for market research. Such advantages, they say, outweigh the drawbacks of exposing what are usually seen as corporate secrets.

In some ways, open-source hardware is a throwback to the 1970s and 1980s, when early computers were sold in kits or shipped with schematic diagrams to make it easier for users to customise them. But the open-hardware trend has been reborn in recent years, thanks to the rise of the internet and the success of open-source software. Some enthusiasts point to 2005 as a crucial year: that was when work began on devices such as the RepRap (a rapid-prototyping machine that will, its makers hope, be able to replicate itself) and the TuxPhone, an open, Linux-powered mobile-phone. It was also when Sun Microsystems, a computer-maker, decided to publish the specifications of one of its microprocessors, the UltraSPARC T1.

Open-hardware business models are difficult to understand, because by turning users into product developers, they turn tradition on its head, says Eric von Hippel, professor of innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the author of “Democratizing Innovation”. That makes it necessary for companies to consider the users’ motivations too, he says. “The users have a built-in business model—they build to satisfy themselves,” he says. “The business model is ‘I can get stuff for myself, I can get a better design and I can benefit.’ The innovation is paid for within the activity itself.”

As well as tapping a valuable new source of ideas, an open approach can also lead to savings in market research, as users act as focus groups, indicating what new features they would like (and then helping to develop them).

Going open-source may also help to keep customers. “Once you’ve opened the guts of a machine, you’re a much more loyal customer,” says Mr Talley, who got a Chumby for Christmas. Sun says the primary advantage of open-sourcing the designs of its processor chips is an elusive marketing boost to its other products, such as server computers. “It builds a community that will buy our hardware,” says Sridhar Vajapey, who runs Sun’s OpenSPARC program.

An alternative approach is to make money from something other than the hardware. Chumby Industries, for instance, expects to make most of its revenue by piping advertising to its devices. “It’s a traditional media model, only with user control,” says Steve Tomlin, the firm’s founder and chief executive.

Some examples of Open Hardware that can be found in the article and in the comments are:

• Neuros OSD
• Chumby (wikipedia)>
• Tuxphone (wikipedia)>
• RepRap (wikipedia)>
• OpenMoko
• Gumstix (wikipedia)
• iRobot (wikipedia)
• TV-B-Gone
• BugLabs
• OpenSparc
• Free Telephony Project
• Adafruit Industries/ladyada.net
• Akvo: The open source for water and sanitation

via | Ponoko

The news of the publication of VIA OpenBook‘s CAD files has spread rapidly in the web. It is worth now to read some thoughts and quotes that Michel Bauwens of P2P Foundation published in the Foundation Blog.

Citing various sources, Bauwens notices how the openness of this project is actually very limited (CAD files relate solely to the plastic shell, while hardware and its related software remain closed), especially if we compare it to OpenMoko. Therefore, here are four different levels of openness for Open Hardware projects:

Closed: Closed Hardware is any hardware for which the creator of the hardware will not release information on how to make normal use of the hardware, in such a way that that information may be freely shared with others. A sure sign of closed hardware is requiring the signing of an NDA to receive documentation on how to make use of a device.

Open Interface: In the case of Open Interface hardware, all the documentation on how to make a piece of hardware perform the function for which it is designed is available. In the case of computer hardware, this means that all the information necessary to produce fully functional drivers is available. This is the minimum level of openness that makes hardware useful to the open software community. Surprisingly, large amounts of integrated circuits fall into this category. Any device for which you can get a complete data sheet from the manufacturer, with no limitations on sharing the data contained within, meets the Open Interface definition.

Open Design: Open Design hardware is hardware in which enough detailed documentation is provided that a functionally compatible device could be created by a third party. It is not at all uncommon for the programmer’s guides for a microcontroller to have complete instruction encoding formats, memory maps, block diagrams of the processor core, and other technical details that would make it possible to reproduce a compatible microcontroller. Open Design hardware allows you to see what was implemented and what it should do, but still keeps the finer details of how it was implemented closed.

Open Implementation: Hardware for which the complete bill of materials necessary to construct the device is available fall into the category of Open Implementation. In the realm of computer chips, this means the hardware definition language description of the device is available. For a circuit board, this would include the schematic. Everything needed to reproduce an exact copy of a device is available. This is the hardware parallel to the concept of open source software. The debate between ‘open’ and ‘free’ (libre) that exists in the software space exists for hardware as well. In this regard, the only hardware that can truly be claimed to be free, in the same manner that the Free Software Foundation defines free, is that which falls into the Open Implementation category. Unfortunately, unlike software, an idea and the desire to produce a hardware device that is free and open is not sufficient. Certainly in the semiconductor space, the ability to do so is beyond the individual and in most cases, beyond even a reasonably equipped development group.

Finally, here Bauwens reports an interview to members of Open Graphics Project (appeared on the Free Software Magazine), the project of a completely open source 3D card. In this interview we can find what are the specific obstacles to the Open Hardware diffusion (and which may be useful to reflect on the deployment of a more generic Open Design).