aren’t filled with actual your oWn components at food. They contain plans for making food using other

home? to some that is the open _{foods, which is hardly that}
much different from plans

source hardWare dream. to create a technological thingamajig using other thingamajigs.

But unlike cookbooks, open source hardware faces several challenging questions. How would business benefit from open sourcing hardware? A cookbook publisher sells cookbooks, but tech companies sell products—they sell the prepared food. Why give away the recipes? Who is really going to make their own cell phone? What use are these plans anyway?

developed over the years which tease apart these distinctions, and software developers choose a license that suits their goals. In practice, much of open source software is also free software, and so the two concepts have become closely aligned.

This reality of open source software development leads directly to the most obvious complication for translating the open model to hardware—how can “stuff” be free? One reason that open source works so well for developing software is that software is virtual and can be replicated at virtually no cost.

The answer, of course, is that “stuff”— real, physical stuff—can’t be free. The costs of building circuit boards from scratch can run into the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fabricating integrated circuit (IC) chips requires facilities that cost into the billions of dollars.

But information for how to make stuff, using building blocks already available, is the meat and potatoes of open source hardware. Imagine an open source iPhone. Many people agree that the iPhone is cool technology, but to some, it is a gadget filled with unrealized potential, locked down by Apple’s business methods. To varying degrees, the same applies to most consumer electronics. Open source hardware advocates envision a future liberated from proprietary control over physical products.

Speaking of meat and potatoes, open source hardware might seem like an obtuse, if not radical, concept for developing technology, but it shares much in common with cookbook publishing. After all, cookbooks

Open Source in 3d

Many layers of technology make up a physical product, and there is no clear consensus in open source hardware how far—or shallow—one can drill to enjoy the “open source” label. For example, a mechanical CAD diagram can supply you with the layout of components in a product, but is a diagram alone useful enough to contribute to “open sourcing” a piece of hardware?

Hardware vendor VIA recently released the OpenBook, a subcompact notebook designed to compete in a class with the Asus Eee PC and HP Mini-Note. In addition to releasing the OpenBook computer itself, though, VIA opted to release the CAD specifications for the device as well.

What would a consumer do with the CAD files? Probably not much. But, says VIA, other vendors could use them to create their own subcompact notebooks. Perhaps they will replicate VIA’s reference design, or modify it, substituting different components in place of the originals whether for improved form or function.

Why would VIA give anyone, not to mention other vendors, any of their product