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Sell the hardware for profit, give away the design files under an open source license. Assembled ready-to-run hardware is a serious value add on top of an open-

Sell the hardware for profit, give away the design files under an open source license. Assembled ready-to-run hardware is a serious value add on top of an open-source hardware design. A strongly built brand should also be valuable in such a niche. So I'd look mostly towards trademarking of the brand as IP protection mechanism for such a project.

gmueckl 8y ago
In hardware, the design alone may be worth next to nothing. The ability to produce something at volume with a constant quality often depends on knowledge, experience, tooling or other resources that are not present in any design documentation. Sometimes, it is not even possible to replicate these things.
- jononor 8y ago
  You are right that manufacturing is tricky. Supply chain management and Quality Assurance are complex topics that alone can be full-time jobs to stay on top of, and can take a lot of work to replicate for potential competitors. It is an area that is vastly underestimated by most Kickstarters. At least those that don't operate in a very similar space, and have already invested this time. But even then parts are often designed for a particular manufacturing process or supplier (though it is said that best practice is to always have multiple suppliers for any given part). However for the PCB part of electronics, this has become a lot simpler the last 5 years. There are now many excellent and very affordable manufacturers that will do between 10-1000 boards (assembled & tested), available by just registering an account online. But manufacturing of enclosures, cables/interconnects, final assembly is still a tedious, hands-on process for the buyer.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    PCBs and CNC milled or 3d printed parts are a bit of an exception in that the processes and services are stadardized enough that replication is not that hard unless something really crazy is going. But everything that relies on more traditional mass production methods (injection molding, casting, ...) is much more dependent on the actual execution of the manufacturing process and the part designs will generally accomodate that, for example by avoiding certain geometries or incorporating ways to account for manufacturing tolerances during assembly. I am not an engineer myself, but I had to work with mechanical engineers occasionally and I learned that the amount of work that goes into making some seemingly simple parts manufacturable at scale and at cost can be surprising.

gmueckl 8y ago

In hardware, the design alone may be worth next to nothing. The ability to produce something at volume with a constant quality often depends on knowledge, experience, tooling or other resources that are not present in any design documentation. Sometimes, it is not even possible to replicate these things.

jononor 8y ago
You are right that manufacturing is tricky. Supply chain management and Quality Assurance are complex topics that alone can be full-time jobs to stay on top of, and can take a lot of work to replicate for potential competitors. It is an area that is vastly underestimated by most Kickstarters. At least those that don't operate in a very similar space, and have already invested this time. But even then parts are often designed for a particular manufacturing process or supplier (though it is said that best practice is to always have multiple suppliers for any given part). However for the PCB part of electronics, this has become a lot simpler the last 5 years. There are now many excellent and very affordable manufacturers that will do between 10-1000 boards (assembled & tested), available by just registering an account online. But manufacturing of enclosures, cables/interconnects, final assembly is still a tedious, hands-on process for the buyer.
- gmueckl 8y ago
  PCBs and CNC milled or 3d printed parts are a bit of an exception in that the processes and services are stadardized enough that replication is not that hard unless something really crazy is going. But everything that relies on more traditional mass production methods (injection molding, casting, ...) is much more dependent on the actual execution of the manufacturing process and the part designs will generally accomodate that, for example by avoiding certain geometries or incorporating ways to account for manufacturing tolerances during assembly. I am not an engineer myself, but I had to work with mechanical engineers occasionally and I learned that the amount of work that goes into making some seemingly simple parts manufacturable at scale and at cost can be surprising.