Open-source hardware
Open-source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a similar concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as free and open-source hardware, meaning that the design is easily available and that it can be used, modified and shared freely. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design, in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.
It is not enough to merely use an open-source license; an open source product or project will follow open source principles, such as modular design and community collaboration.
Since the rise of reconfigurable programmable logic devices, sharing of logic designs has been a form of open-source hardware. Instead of the schematics, hardware description language code is shared. HDL descriptions are commonly used to set up system-on-a-chip systems either in field-programmable gate arrays or directly in application-specific integrated circuit designs. HDL modules, when distributed, are called semiconductor intellectual property cores, also known as IP cores.
Open-source hardware also helps alleviate the issue of proprietary device drivers for the free and open-source software community, however, it is not a pre-requisite for it, and should not be confused with the concept of open documentation for proprietary hardware, which is already sufficient for writing FLOSS device drivers and complete operating systems.
The difference between the two concepts is that OSH includes both the instructions on how to replicate the hardware itself as well as the information on communication protocols that the software must use in order to communicate with the hardware, whereas open-source-friendly proprietary hardware would only include the latter without including the former.
History
The first hardware-focused "open source" activities were started around 1997 by Bruce Perens, creator of the Open Source Definition, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, and a ham radio operator. He launched the Open Hardware Certification Program, which had the goal of allowing hardware manufacturers to self-certify their products as open.Shortly after the launch of the Open Hardware Certification Program, David Freeman announced the Open Hardware Specification Project, another attempt at licensing hardware components whose interfaces are available publicly and of creating an entirely new computing platform as an alternative to proprietary computing systems. In early 1999, Sepehr Kiani, Ryan Vallance and Samir Nayfeh joined efforts to apply the open-source philosophy to machine design applications. Together they established the Open Design Foundation as a non-profit corporation and set out to develop an Open Design Definition. However, most of these activities faded out after a few years.
A "Free Hardware" organization, known as FreeIO, was started in the late 1990s by Diehl Martin, who also launched a FreeIO website in early 2000. In the early to mid 2000s, FreeIO was a focus of free/open hardware designs released under the GNU General Public License. The FreeIO project advocated the concept of Free Hardware and proposed four freedoms that such hardware provided to users, based on the similar freedoms provided by free software licenses. The designs gained some notoriety due to Martin's naming scheme in which each free hardware project was given the name of a breakfast food such as Donut, Flapjack, Toast, etc. Martin's projects attracted a variety of hardware and software developers as well as other volunteers. Development of new open hardware designs at FreeIO ended in 2007 when Martin died of pancreatic cancer but the existing designs remain available from the organization's website.
By the mid 2000s open-source hardware again became a hub of activity due to the emergence of several major open-source hardware projects and companies, such as OpenCores, RepRap, Arduino, Adafruit, SparkFun, and Open Source Ecology. In 2007, Perens reactivated the openhardware.org website, but it is currently inactive.
Following the Open Graphics Project, an effort to design, implement, and manufacture a free and open 3D graphics chip set and reference graphics card, Timothy Miller suggested the creation of an organization to safeguard the interests of the Open Graphics Project community. Thus, Patrick McNamara founded the Open Hardware Foundation in 2007.
The Tucson Amateur Packet Radio Corporation, founded in 1982 as a non-profit organization of amateur radio operators with the goals of supporting R&D efforts in the area of amateur digital communications, created in 2007 the first open hardware license, the TAPR Open Hardware License. The OSI president Eric S. Raymond expressed some concerns about certain aspects of the OHL and decided to not review the license.
Around 2010 in context of the Freedom Defined project, the Open Hardware Definition was created as collaborative work of many and is accepted as of 2016 by dozens of organizations and companies.
In July 2011, CERN released an open-source hardware license, CERN OHL. Javier Serrano, an engineer at CERN's Beams Department and the founder of the Open Hardware Repository, explained: "By sharing designs openly, CERN expects to improve the quality of designs through peer review and to guarantee their users – including commercial companies – the freedom to study, modify and manufacture them, leading to better hardware and less duplication of efforts". While initially drafted to address CERN-specific concerns, such as tracing the impact of the organization's research, in its current form it can be used by anyone developing open-source hardware.
Following the 2011 Open Hardware Summit, and after heated debates on licenses and what constitutes open-source hardware, Bruce Perens abandoned the OSHW Definition and the concerted efforts of those involved with it. Openhardware.org, led by Bruce Perens, promotes and identifies practices that meet all the combined requirements of the Open Source Hardware Definition, the Open Source Definition, and the Four Freedoms of the Free Software Foundation Since 2014 openhardware.org is not online and seems to have ceased activity.
The Open Source Hardware Association at oshwa.org acts as hub of open-source hardware activity of all genres, while cooperating with other entities such as TAPR, CERN, and OSI. The OSHWA was established as an organization in June 2012 in Delaware and filed for tax exemption status in July 2013. After some debates about trademark interferences with the OSI, in 2012 the OSHWA and the OSI signed a co-existence agreement.
The FOSSi Foundation is founded in 2015 as a UK-based non-profit to promote and protect the open source silicon chip movement, roughly a year after the official release of RISC-V architecture.
The Free Software Foundation has suggested an alternative "free hardware" definition derived from the Four Freedoms.
Forms of open-source hardware
The term hardware in open-source hardware has been historically used in opposition to the term software of open-source software. That is, to refer to the electronic hardware on which the software runs. However, as more and more non-electronic hardware products are made open source, this term tends to be used back in its broader sense of "physical product". The field of open-source hardware has been shown to go beyond electronic hardware and to cover a larger range of product categories such as machine tools, vehicles and medical equipment. In that sense, hardware refers to any form of tangible product, be it electronic hardware, mechanical hardware, textile or even construction hardware. The Open Source Hardware Definition 1.0 defines hardware as "tangible artifacts — machines, devices, or other physical things".Electronics
Electronics is one of the most popular types of open-source hardware. PCB based designs can be published similarly to software as CAD files, which users can send directly to PCB fabrication companies to receive hardware in the mail. Alternatively, users can obtain components and solder them together themselves.There are many companies that provide large varieties of open-source electronics such as Sparkfun, Adafruit, and Seeed. In addition, there are NPOs and companies that provide a specific open-source electronic component such as the Arduino electronics prototyping platform. There are many examples of specialty open-source electronics such as low-cost voltage and current GMAW open-source 3-D printer monitor and a robotics-assisted mass spectrometry assay platform. Open-source electronics finds various uses, including automation of chemical procedures.
Chip design
Open Standard chip designs are now common. OpenRISC, OpenSparc, and RISC-V, are examples of free to use instruction set architecture.OpenCores is a large library of standard chip design subcomponents which can be combined into larger designs.
Complete open source software stacks and shuttle fabrication services are now available which can take OSH chip designs from hardware description languages to masks and ASIC fabrication on maker-scale budgets.
Mechanics
Purely mechanical OSH designs include mechanical components, machine tools, and vehicles. Open Source Ecology is a large project which seeks to develop a complete ecosystem of mechanical tools and components which aim to be able to replicate themselves.Open-source vehicles have also been developed including bicycles like XYZ Space Frame Vehicles and cars such as the Tabby OSVehicle.