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Date:	Fri, 4 Sep 2015 18:13:28 +0200
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Subject:	Re: [geda-user] Interesting blog post from a commercial EDA vendor
From:	"Javier Serrano (javier DOT serrano DOT pareja AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
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On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 5:18 PM, Markus Hitter (mah AT jump-ing DOT de) [via
geda-user AT delorie DOT com] <geda-user AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
> Am 04.09.2015 um 16:05 schrieb John Griessen:
>> You should not give up on the open
>> hardware concept Markus -- there are success
>> stories different than makerbot.
>
> I'm not aware of one. Not even Arduino. The Arduino folks put tremendous
> efforts into coming along with an easy to use package, but wherever you
> look, people buy cheap clones.

It works in many places, including Arduino the way I see things, but I
guess you have your own narrative and I respect it. I can however try
to rebate the assertion that no success story exists by giving our own
example at CERN. Our friends in the Knowledge Transfer group even
prepared a nice brochure about it [1]. Disclaimer: success in OSHW
means different things to different people, and I see a lot of "no
true Scotsman" arguments in the discussions, justified or not.

I would also like to comment on the "Chinese" problem you describe.
Since the only interaction with Chinese I have had is with them fixing
some problems in an OSHW timing system we use [2] and very generously
sharing the knowledge they acquired in the process, I will use the
term "cheap knock-off" instead. I don't remember if it was in his TEDx
talk [3] or elsewhere, but Nathan Seidle (founder of Sparkfun)  said
cheap knock-offs are a fact of life, and in his case they are largely
*independent* of whether he publishes his designs as open source or
not. So if hardware price is your only, or even just your main,
commercial argument, then you might be in trouble in general. As you
probably know, Sparkfun is a very successful company. Trying to
understand their success should be a good exercise for whoever is
thinking of starting an OSHW business.

I attribute a large part of the success of OSHW at CERN to the fact
that we are very careful when we qualify companies for
calls-for-tender. We select only companies which employ people who
understand the designs, can help debug them, support them, etc. There
is still competition price-wise, but not the race-to-the-bottom type.
All of the other OSHW success stories I know are also customer-driven,
in the sense that people buy not only hardware but also "openness" and
all the good things that come with it.

Cheers,

Javier

[1] http://www.ohwr.org/attachments/3841/OHL.pdf
[2] http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.4223
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfu_MKgu2Ik

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