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Have you considered the value in OSHW is not necessarily in enabling well-trained engineers so much as making "effective engineers" out of hobbyists? Sure, one
by drone 13y ago
Have you considered the value in OSHW is not necessarily in enabling well-trained engineers so much as making "effective engineers" out of hobbyists? Sure, one trained in electronics can look at a PCB and surmise its function - but for one not trained, they would do to understand what each section of that design does, and why it does it. "Why would part X be used in this design? What is its function?"
OSHW to me, is more enabling the long tail of invention. To be fair, I think a lot of the users of OSHW development platforms are looking for the right combinations of components to make their software designs effective. I see a lot of stuff out there that is little more than re-packaging of a dev kit in a cheaper to produce form, but with software that enables it to fulfill a new purpose.
So, yes, a lot of us do see OSHW as a meaningful activity with a meaningful outcome. I'm sorry that you think it's pointless for people to share their electronics designs (Sheesh, can't everyone who wants to make something buy something else that does exactly that and copy it by looking at a board?) Truth be told, we could say the same thing about software: I can observe what it does given any specific input, therefore I could replicate it - who needs source code?!
- krapht 13y agoDon't get me wrong, OSHW does have some value exactly as you said: it's a great learning tool for hobbyists and those new to field without the money to reverse engineer a product. But that is not the buzz that is being written by journalists and Silicon Valley cheerleaders who foresee a future of boutique micro-manufacturing and bespoke designs for everyone. A game I like to play when this type of article comes up is to replace every instance of the word hardware with furniture. So when someone talks about open source hardware, pretend they are talking about open source furniture. The hyperbole used in this type of article will become quickly apparent.
- drone 13y agoI do see a lot of boutique micro-manufacturing in the future for electronics, just not for "everyone." In my mind, the trend is going towards enabling small-market, very "niche" products from fairly amateur inventors. This market still isn't being served well by the HMLV EMS houses. The size of an acceptable, affordable, EMS run should approach 1 in the not-so-distant future. But, yeah, this is people writing about a trend - at least the OSHW writing as a whole is still less exasperated than the 3D printing articles, which mostly seem to boil down to: "OMG, you'll be able to make anything in 30 seconds at home for free!"
- Kliment 13y agoThough open source furniture is not at all a bad idea. I built a very location-specific wardrobe recently[1] that has a pretty unusual design, and would have loved to have a library of similar stuff somewhere that I could grab ideas and subassemblies from. In this case, all components except the custom-printed ones are straight from the hardware store, anyone who feels like it can build it, and it costs less and performs better (given the unusual location) than anything you can buy. It's exactly what I would want OSHW to be. I'll be happy to scan in and share my design sketch for it and the BOM if anyone is interested. It's technically GPL licensed because the rollers are derived from a GPL-licensed 3d printer extruder design, but I can't very easily distribute the resulting product. [1] http://imgur.com/a/HLbWF http://imgur.com/a/HLbWF