Good timing, there is an Ask HN: Why isn’t open source hardware more popular? at Hacker News from bArray –

Long-form Question: Why isn’t open source hardware more popular in consumer markets?

Motivation: I’ve thought for a while about creating an open-source hardware venture, but I’m not sure I fully understand why the market isn’t more popular than it currently is.

Considerations:

• Form factor/style? It’s no secret that many consumers consider their devices as part of their fashion statement.
• Cost? Open source hardware is typically quite a bit more expensive, probably owing to lower numbers of runs and less automation?
• Capability? Maybe closed-sourced solutions are more polished out-of-the-box?
• Ater market support? Perhaps people feel left in the dark once they get their product without some dedicated support team? I guess your average consumer may not be happy about submitting a correctly formatted ticket to some Git interface for example.
• Availability? A lot of open source hardware ventures appear to do short runs in order to ensure they sell out the majority of their stock.

All replies are greatly appreciated 🙂

We posted a reply, there are millions of open-source hardware devices out there, so “popular” would need to be more defined, as well as what “consumer market” refers to in this context as well.

Open source hardware month @ Adafruit:

• Talking with Andrew “bunnie” Huang – Day 28, 10/28/2019.
• DIY Drones, which launched the largest open UAV communities – Day 27, 10/27/2019.
• OLIMEX open-source hardware made in Bulgaria – Day 26, 10/26/2019.
• Electronic Cats – Open hardware made in México – Day 25, 10/25/2019.
• 10 years ago we tried to make an open source flash light to make us puke … – Day 24, 10/24/2019.
• Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories – Day 23, 10/23/2019.
• MicroPython, bringing Python to hardware for everyone – Day 22, 10/22/2019.
• Open Hardware Month Hack Chat at Hackaday.io – Day 21, 10/21/2019.
• Parallax Open-source hardware – Day 20, 10/20/2019.
• Growing Your Open Business – A Digital Meetup for Open Hardware Month – Day 19, 10/19/2019.
• Open-source hardware at the Museum of Modern Art, posted on 10/19/2019 – Day 18, 10/18/2019.
• Open Hardware Licenses CC BY-SA, CERN, TAPR … – Day 17, 10/17/2019.
• Open Source Hardware Month at SparkFun – Day 16, 10/16/2019.
• How many Open-Source Prusa 3D printers are there? Posted on 10/19/2019 – Day 15, 10/15/2019.
• The RepRap Project Self-Replicating Open-Source 3D Printing – Day 14, 10/13/2019.
• The first 2 orders at Adafruit… now up to 2,161,166 orders – Day 13, 10/13/2019.
• Photos of the first Arduino (2005) – Day 12, 10/12 2019.
• In 2010 there were 13 Open Source Hardware companies that were making $1 million or more… – Day 11, 10/11/2019
• Opening Hardware 2010 at Eyebeam in NYC – Day 10, 10/10/2019.
• The Open Source Gift Guide, the early years – Day 9, 10/9/2019 (posted it on 10/10/2019, whoops)
• Before the iPhone, before the Raspberry Pi, before Amazon Echo Show, there was Chumby – Day 8, 10/8/2019.
• Mitch Altman Open-source hardware pioneer – Day 7, 10/7/2019.
• The Open Source logo(s) – Day 6, 10/6/2019.
• Open Source Hardware events all month long, EVENTS! – Day 5, 10/5/2019.
• Open Source Hardware Certifications and more! – Day 4, 10/4/2019.
• Teuthis Open Source MP3 Player 2001 – Daisy by Raphael Abrams – Day 3, 10/3/2019.
• What is the Open-Source Hardware Definition? – Day 2, 10/2/2019.
• Open hardware summit – Limor “Ladyada” Fried keynote 2010 – Day 1, 10/1/2019.

October is open-source hardware month! Every single day in October we’ll be posting up some open-source stories from the last decade (and more!) about open-source hardware, open-source software, and beyond!

Have an open-source hardware (or software) success story? A person, company, or project to celebrate? An open-source challenge? Post up here in the comments or email [email protected], we’ll be looking for, and using the tag #OHM2019 online as well! Check out all the events going on here!