Jun 5th 2008
From The Economist print edition - online
Consumer devices: Revealing the underlying technical details of electronic gadgets can have many benefits, for both users and manufacturers
Illustration by Fraser Hudson
“It’s a new day for consumer electronics,” says Chumby’s Mr Tomlin. “The community makes suggestions and shares hacks. And we don’t try to sue our innovators. We make heroes of them.”
THE idea of “open source” software is familiar to many computer users. Enthusiasts get together on the internet to create a new program, and as well as giving it away, they also make available its source code—the software’s underlying blueprint. This allows other people to make additions and improvements, and those are made available, in turn, to anyone who is interested. You do not have to be a programmer to benefit from the open-source model: many people use the Linux operating system or Firefox web-browser, for example, both of which have been developed in this way.
Now the same approach is being applied to hardware, albeit in a modified form. The open-source model cannot be directly carried over to hardware, because software can be duplicated and distributed at almost no cost, whereas physical objects cannot. Modifying source code and then distributing a new, improved version of a program is much easier than improving and sharing the design of, say, an open-source motorbike. Some day, perhaps, fabricating machines will be able to transform digital specifications (software) into physical objects (hardware), which will no doubt lead to a vibrant trade in specifications, some of which will be paid for, and some of which will be open-source.
But until that day, the term “open-source hardware” is being used in a narrower sense. It refers to an emerging class of electronic devices, for which the specifications have been made public, so that enthusiasts can suggest refinements, write and share software improvements, and even build their own devices from scratch. This is not as daft as it sounds. Even if all the details needed to build something are available, few people will have the tools or the inclination to do so.
