Side note: People here often say that hardware is hard, but I think OSHW has the upside of de-risking it too (although I might be somewhat biased in my enthusi

Side note: People here often say that hardware is hard, but I think OSHW has the upside of de-risking it too (although I might be somewhat biased in my enthusiastic support of OSHW). If other people are producing it (from 3d printing at home to commercial manufacturing), you don't have manufacturing risks at all. The large costs and difficulty involved are probably mostly around manufacturing. Also by extending the development phase and working closely with customers you can find a product-market fit more naturally (and iterate if it fails... or just abandon it, I guess). If all goes wrong you've contributed an open source project... The hard part of course in that case is convincing your users and any company that decides to manufacture your hardware to pay you. But not unheard of, see LumenPNP (https://opulo.io/products/lumenpnp https://opulo.io/products/lumenpnp) My dream is a completely (or almost completely) open society, where most development is open and people collaborate more or less freely, and we have good mechanisms (and enough good sense individually?) to reward and invest in all this work.