Open Source has many benefits: you can get more secure software, faster updates, lots of tutorials and, definitely, a new way of making software and software that builds communities. From this, the next logical step was Open Hardware.
Free software is based in four main freedoms:
•freedom to execute programs
•freedom to access source code
•freedom to distribute copies
•freedom to improve and release that source code
ow, there are people talking about
Open Hardware ... Open Hardware? Is it
a misspelling? Well, active projects like Arduino IhUp://www.arduino.ccl] and
Squid Bee [http://www.squidbee.01".91] demonstrate that Open Hardware is a real and alive concept. But, what do these words mean exactly? Can you just use free software concepts and apply them to hardware?
First of all, it's important to understand that software and hardware belong to separate worlds. While software matters are usually ruled by copyright, hardware must be protected by patents. According to the US and European Copyright
Office, copyright is a form of protection (. .. ) granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture, published or unpublished. It lasts 50-70 years after author's death, depending on specific country laws. On the other side, everyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent.

There are also differences between the US, European and Japanese Patent Offices. The USPTO is the only one which is based on a first-to-invent system (instead of a first-to-file), meaning that a patent is granted to the person who first conceived and practised the invention, rather than to the person who first filed the invention with authorities. There are some other differences, but the most important one in our case is that software patents are allowed in the US but not in Europe.

It would be difficult to explain how Open Hardware was born. Someone basically thought that an open computer was necessary in order to develop better drivers and write completely architecture adapted programs . In fact, there is an initiative called Open Hardware Certification program which (from the website) is a self-certification program for hardware manufacturers. By certifying a hardware device as Open, the manufacturer makes a set of promises about the availability of documentation in order to program the device-driver interface of a specific hardware device. Enough documentation device must be available for a competent systems programmer to write a device-driver.

From another more philosophical point of view, you can find a free design for an active RFID device OpenBeacon, Open Hardware phones like TuxPhone and even an Open Hardware car called Oscar. All these projects will be released according to copyleft principles.

More and more Open Hardware projects can be discovered in Open Circuits , which provides a wild to upload all kinds of useful information. These are just some examples which claim to be Open Hardware, although none of them define what that means.