Originally published at: http://blog.tindie.com/2014/09/so-you-want-to-start-an-open-hardware-business/
This month Popular Science featured Tindie in their article “The Rise of Open Hardware“. One of their questions was about open hardware business models; it’s question that comes up quite a bit: “How do you make money with open hardware?” To answer this, I think you must answer another question first: How big of a business do…
I think people confuse Open Hardware with Open Source Software. There is a huge difference between the two: copying software doesn’t cost anything. Copying any real physical artifact costs time, material and effort. As such, I think there are vastly fewer questions about Open Hardware product businesses than Open Source Software based ones. I’m quite happy to tell anyone willing to listen how they can build one of my crazy clock controller boards. But if they want to do it, they have to get the PCBs made, buy the parts, solder them all together… All of which - to do a single one - would cost them more (including the cost of their time) than just buying one from me.
Is there a threat that a big manufacturer could replicate my design and undercut me? Sure. But I think it’s naive to suggest that making them reverse engineer it (by keeping the design confidential) would be a significant impediment to them doing so.
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