This article originally appeared in Open It Agency‘s ‘OS is Coming‘ advent calendar series. As Open Source Hardware becomes more widespread, so too do misconceptions about it. One common confusion we see is using ‘open source’ interchangeably with ‘Do-It-Yourself’ – though these are very different concepts. When we advocate for a future where open source is the default for the products and systems around us, we’re not saying that you will get up in the morning, solder together your open source toaster, then go about your day building and taking apart every object you come across. Every open source project gives public access to their designs, blueprints, or sourcecode, meaning that anybody can, in theory, build it themselves. But that doesn’t mean that they necessarily have to. For simple things like open source birdhouses or lemon squeezers, sure, these projects are usually going to be built by the users themselves, maybe from scratch, or maybe from kitsets. But when we look at more complex, technical, or expensive projects, such as an open source video camera or an open source car, most users will in fact not make the product from scratch – it may be very complicated, may require special skills or machinery, or be very expensive to produce in low quantities. Despite this, users can benefit from the open source nature of the project in other ways. The Apertus cinema camera project, for example, is creating a platform – a modular framework – to allow component manufacturers, customization services, and filmmakers themselves to collaborate. Everybody is designing and improving modules for a common format. This means smaller, more...
