OSCON 2007 - Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried

Open Source Hardware: A Start...
Phillip Torrone, Senior Editor, MAKE Magazine
Limor Fried, Adafruit Industries
Open source hardware is a term slowly working its way into many new projects and efforts, but what is it? There are a few definitions, some of which come from "open source software," which is usually considered software's "source code under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form." So how does this translate to hardware? This session will focus on electronic hardware, the layers they can be divided into, different document types, licensing concerns, and a show-n-tell of hardware. From the O'Reilly Media Open Source Convention, July 27 2007.

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Socrates said: 2 years ago

It is axiomatic that wires cannot be copyrighted. In that sense, all hardware is "open source." The only part of an electronic device that can be protected is the software.

If a device is made from commercially available chip there is no reason you can't copy it. Remember, the IBM PC was made from commercial chips and once the BIOS functionality had been replicated the IBM "clone" business was created.

So as long as the BIOS and OS is open source, the whole project is open source.

Paul