State of Open Con 2023

Open Hardware has long lagged behind free and open source software in terms of development, adoption, community engagement and financial impact. The last few years have seen a sea change with projects such as RISC-V catapult open source silicon into the mainstream, with the parallel increase in interest in open hardware for commodity microcontrollers, COVID-driven medical and clinical items such as ventilators, respirators and PPE, the development of open source hardware for open science, and even the deployment of open hardware within datacentres. Why has this happened, what does open hardware have in common with open source software, and how does it differ? Andrew Katz bring us up to speed with the state of open hardware, how it can offer huge benefits in terms of speed of development, community dynamics, and sustainability and how challenges such as manufacture, distribution and deployment are being addressed. Current issues include managing risk and liability for developers, how open hardware business models can be developed which address issues in regulated sectors such as medical devices and automotive, and how the development cycle can be harnessed to provide maximum benefit for community participants.