Open Hardware and Collaboration

Open Source Hardware (OSHW) follows the lead of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and has similar goals: ensuring developers can share their work without artificial hurdles, improving quality through peer review, avoiding vendor lock-in and providing for a fair playground in which projects can thrive and accommodate contributions without compromising their long-term future. The paper introduces OSHW and then attempts to answer a number of questions: (i) what are the perceived benefits and issues of OSHW, in general and in the context of public research facilities? (ii) what is new with respect to FOSS? (iii) what makes OSHW projects succeed or fail? The paper uses real examples of OSHW projects and practice throughout mostly CERN-related because they are as good as any other and well known by the author and concludes with some thoughts about what the future holds in this domain.