4 ms·

I'm firmly convinced that if a Chinese maker made a 100% open source keyboard or mouse, they could sell that for $30 instead of $3, and establish a global brand

I'm firmly convinced that if a Chinese maker made a 100% open source keyboard or mouse, they could sell that for $30 instead of $3, and establish a global brand to boot. Same thing for a lot of hardware, actually. Printers. Scanners. Etc.

Decade 6y ago
Isn’t that basically Keyboardio? Except it’s a San Francisco company selling them for $150; expensive, but still within reason for boutique mechanical keyboards.
- alostpuppy 6y ago
  Yea. And they are freaking fantastic.
gens 6y ago
http://www.miniware.com.cn/product/ts100-soldering-iron-package-electric-soldering-kit/ http://www.miniware.com.cn/product/ts100-soldering-iron-pack... An open source soldering iron, original by a Chinese company Miniware. I don't know how good their sales are, but the iron is so good it got that Louis Rossmann praised it (for the price, ofc). And it seems to be very popular (probably not nearly as much as Weller, but hey).
- gens 6y ago
  Turns out http://www.uychan.com/ http://www.uychan.com/ is the original. Since i can't edit, reply.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    These are great soldering irons for the money.
    - gens 6y ago
      Everybody says so. I'l have to get one for myself some day. With a cheap 24V scooter battery one could even use it in the field without a problem. Oh, and i seem to have underestimated Louis's recommendation. He likes it a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao39bPEyok4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao39bPEyok4 On the topic of open source for hardware; There's an open source software for Hantek oscilloscopes http://openhantek.org/ http://openhantek.org/ (not official) , which is yet another thing i'l have to get myself some day.
KirillPanov 6y ago
That's what gl.inet is (weird name though).
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Ive been kooking at rhem dor a while, any tries onw of their products?
  - ornornor 6y ago
    I use their yellow mini router with 2x Ethernet and 1x WiFi 2.4 just as a media converter between WiFi and Ethernet for the laser printer that is too far from an Ethernet plug. That printer doesn’t have a WiFi card natively so instead I use that router to act like it. It’s a stony hello box, powered by usb (directly off the printer, this HP laser jet has a USB port to add storage to it) It runs openwrt internally from the factory, and you can click “advanced” to access LuCI and openwrt. It has one button to set it to WDS repeater and pass dhcp through. It’s pretty good, and I have no complaints.
  - Decade 6y ago
    I have one of their dual-channel mini routers, the GL-AR750. The preinstalled OS is a fork of OpenWRT that comes bundled with Wireguard, Samba, and several other useful programs, but the package repository doesn’t have the variety of the OpenWRT repository. The hardware is fully supported by the OpenWRT project, so installing plain OpenWRT is easy. But it’s still a relatively slow device (650 MHz MIPS 24Kc) with throughput well below 100 Mbps when encrypting. The faster GL-AR750S is still well below 100 Mbps when encrypting. That’s the tradeoff of a small and cheap device that can be powered by a USB 5V power adapter. The more annoying part is that the 5 GHz WiFi has not been certified for DFS, and therefore DFS channels are disabled.
  - eointierney 6y ago
    I've a GL-AR750S-Ext and it's excellent. Small, reliable, and properly configurable. I also have a Linksys WRT1900ACS and it's a great piece of kit. The point is that no matter the hardware, having the community-empowered OpenWRT at one's disposal is literally super-empowering. Thank you the community. Thank you RMS.
whatusername 6y ago
The Creality Ender 3 is Open Source I believe. It's working on their brand - but isn't selling for a 10X price premium.
- Xorlev 6y ago
  It is! https://github.com/Creality3DPrinting/Ender-3 https://github.com/Creality3DPrinting/Ender-3 It uses http://marlinfw.org/ http://marlinfw.org/ with only modifications to the configuration (which, you need to do for any printer using Marlin). But the above link also includes the PCB design, mechanical design, and more. The whole 3D printing community is a lot like this. See http://vorondesign.com/ http://vorondesign.com/, an open set of design you can build yourself from off the shelf parts and a quality 3D printer.
jacobr1 6y ago
They can't though. Because if it was really open source, then another firm could just sell if for $3. Of course fabrication itself complicates things, but the gist remains.
- jononor 6y ago
  Arduino is able to sell quite a lot of official boards for XX USD, when the same products are available unofficially for X USD. Brand has value.
  - jacobr1 6y ago
    That is true. And interesting to see how the value of retailer-brands relative to manufacturer-brands shift. I'm finding buying a no-name product from a retailer I trust to vet their goods. When buying from an open-online-marketplace-platform I really want to buy from a trusted brand to ensure quality.
  - woofie11 6y ago
    Yeah. For a basic keyboard/mouse, I wouldn't hesitate to pay $30 more for the "official" product. I wouldn't pay $100 more, but for it seems like there's a huge opportunity: * Most mice on Aliexpress sell for $3 or so. I don't know the margin, but it's less than $3. * I can't imaging anyone would hesitate to pay $5 more, and I wouldn't mind $30 more. So yeah, off-brand could compete, and I'm sure students might buy it, but I think on-brand would do better. And in either case, it wouldn't hurt. The $3 Aliexpress mouse vendors don't have any real IP moat. This is commodity tech.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  what if it was OS but not FLOS? Non-commercial open license, but the original author(s) would still retain full right including commercial.
  - jacobr1 6y ago
    Then the competitor couldn't just take the exact design and replicate it at a lower margin than the designer. Removing allowable commercial terms makes it significantly less "open" though, to that extent that many would argue it isn't open at all, like the various "shared source" approaches commercial software uses. Another interesting approach would be something like the GPL, which I don't think is often used in hardware. Allow your competitors to use your design ... they just must contribute back improvements. Probably the incentives are wrong for this, but maybe not, it sorta seems like a bunch of the "no-name" chinese consumer goods operate like this. The produces are easy enough to reverse engineer that every just copies the basic idea and produces their own variants. This of course doesn't keep the inventor in an advantaged position, but at least keeps them competitive.

Decade 6y ago

Isn’t that basically Keyboardio? Except it’s a San Francisco company selling them for $150; expensive, but still within reason for boutique mechanical keyboards.

alostpuppy 6y ago
Yea. And they are freaking fantastic.

gens 6y ago

http://www.miniware.com.cn/product/ts100-soldering-iron-package-electric-soldering-kit/ http://www.miniware.com.cn/product/ts100-soldering-iron-pack... An open source soldering iron, original by a Chinese company Miniware. I don't know how good their sales are, but the iron is so good it got that Louis Rossmann praised it (for the price, ofc). And it seems to be very popular (probably not nearly as much as Weller, but hey).

gens 6y ago
Turns out http://www.uychan.com/ http://www.uychan.com/ is the original. Since i can't edit, reply.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  These are great soldering irons for the money.
  - gens 6y ago
    Everybody says so. I'l have to get one for myself some day. With a cheap 24V scooter battery one could even use it in the field without a problem. Oh, and i seem to have underestimated Louis's recommendation. He likes it a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao39bPEyok4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao39bPEyok4 On the topic of open source for hardware; There's an open source software for Hantek oscilloscopes http://openhantek.org/ http://openhantek.org/ (not official) , which is yet another thing i'l have to get myself some day.

KirillPanov 6y ago

That's what gl.inet is (weird name though).

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Ive been kooking at rhem dor a while, any tries onw of their products?
- ornornor 6y ago
  I use their yellow mini router with 2x Ethernet and 1x WiFi 2.4 just as a media converter between WiFi and Ethernet for the laser printer that is too far from an Ethernet plug. That printer doesn’t have a WiFi card natively so instead I use that router to act like it. It’s a stony hello box, powered by usb (directly off the printer, this HP laser jet has a USB port to add storage to it) It runs openwrt internally from the factory, and you can click “advanced” to access LuCI and openwrt. It has one button to set it to WDS repeater and pass dhcp through. It’s pretty good, and I have no complaints.
- Decade 6y ago
  I have one of their dual-channel mini routers, the GL-AR750. The preinstalled OS is a fork of OpenWRT that comes bundled with Wireguard, Samba, and several other useful programs, but the package repository doesn’t have the variety of the OpenWRT repository. The hardware is fully supported by the OpenWRT project, so installing plain OpenWRT is easy. But it’s still a relatively slow device (650 MHz MIPS 24Kc) with throughput well below 100 Mbps when encrypting. The faster GL-AR750S is still well below 100 Mbps when encrypting. That’s the tradeoff of a small and cheap device that can be powered by a USB 5V power adapter. The more annoying part is that the 5 GHz WiFi has not been certified for DFS, and therefore DFS channels are disabled.
- eointierney 6y ago
  I've a GL-AR750S-Ext and it's excellent. Small, reliable, and properly configurable. I also have a Linksys WRT1900ACS and it's a great piece of kit. The point is that no matter the hardware, having the community-empowered OpenWRT at one's disposal is literally super-empowering. Thank you the community. Thank you RMS.

whatusername 6y ago

The Creality Ender 3 is Open Source I believe. It's working on their brand - but isn't selling for a 10X price premium.

Xorlev 6y ago
It is! https://github.com/Creality3DPrinting/Ender-3 https://github.com/Creality3DPrinting/Ender-3 It uses http://marlinfw.org/ http://marlinfw.org/ with only modifications to the configuration (which, you need to do for any printer using Marlin). But the above link also includes the PCB design, mechanical design, and more. The whole 3D printing community is a lot like this. See http://vorondesign.com/ http://vorondesign.com/, an open set of design you can build yourself from off the shelf parts and a quality 3D printer.

jacobr1 6y ago

They can't though. Because if it was really open source, then another firm could just sell if for $3. Of course fabrication itself complicates things, but the gist remains.

jononor 6y ago
Arduino is able to sell quite a lot of official boards for XX USD, when the same products are available unofficially for X USD. Brand has value.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  That is true. And interesting to see how the value of retailer-brands relative to manufacturer-brands shift. I'm finding buying a no-name product from a retailer I trust to vet their goods. When buying from an open-online-marketplace-platform I really want to buy from a trusted brand to ensure quality.
- woofie11 6y ago
  Yeah. For a basic keyboard/mouse, I wouldn't hesitate to pay $30 more for the "official" product. I wouldn't pay $100 more, but for it seems like there's a huge opportunity: * Most mice on Aliexpress sell for $3 or so. I don't know the margin, but it's less than $3. * I can't imaging anyone would hesitate to pay $5 more, and I wouldn't mind $30 more. So yeah, off-brand could compete, and I'm sure students might buy it, but I think on-brand would do better. And in either case, it wouldn't hurt. The $3 Aliexpress mouse vendors don't have any real IP moat. This is commodity tech.
Chris2048 6y ago
what if it was OS but not FLOS? Non-commercial open license, but the original author(s) would still retain full right including commercial.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  Then the competitor couldn't just take the exact design and replicate it at a lower margin than the designer. Removing allowable commercial terms makes it significantly less "open" though, to that extent that many would argue it isn't open at all, like the various "shared source" approaches commercial software uses. Another interesting approach would be something like the GPL, which I don't think is often used in hardware. Allow your competitors to use your design ... they just must contribute back improvements. Probably the incentives are wrong for this, but maybe not, it sorta seems like a bunch of the "no-name" chinese consumer goods operate like this. The produces are easy enough to reverse engineer that every just copies the basic idea and produces their own variants. This of course doesn't keep the inventor in an advantaged position, but at least keeps them competitive.