Free Hardware, the beginning of a revolution

When I started my undergraduate studies in Electronic Engineering, my great motivation was being able to discover and understand how the electronic devices around me worked; but over the years I came to understand that what began as a great motivation faced the fact of seeming to become a great utopia… simply impossible.

I was faced with patents, intellectual property, and the inevitable warranties and limits of use from traditional manufacturers. So he only had two options, either he left everything aside or he insisted on it despite the logical legal consequences, but as in most situations there is always another alternative, and this was a new visitor who was peeking out shyly but confidently. on the horizon: free hardware was already gaining momentum.

Free hardware emerged in the 70s as a radical movement of electronics and computing enthusiasts to share their designs and schemes in the construction of their devices. But it was only until the late 90s, with the inclusion of the free software philosophy and its popular 4 freedoms, that it became popular, in the words of Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine at "The next industrial revolution"

But it is this relationship between free hardware and free software that has allowed this gigantic growth, but “the difference is that hardware is not an intangible, so there is a cost of acquisition of the materials. What it allows is not having to start from scratch to do many things. To be able to grab circuit platforms that have already been developed and are freely accessible, as in the case of Arduino ”, explains Diego Brengi, engineer at the Free Software Electronic Development Laboratory of the National Institute of Industrial Technology of Argentina.

And it is precisely arduino, an open development platform, who has allowed accompanied by a DIY culture, (Do It Yourself- Do it yourself) and Crowdsourcing (Collaborative work) provide a large part of the most interesting designs in this field, whether they be 3D printers or macro projects such as the one developed by the American company Local Motors, who allow their clients to upload the plans of the cars they want and then "print" them on microfactories associated with Local Motors, without spare parts, with lower costs, and in a sustainable way.

A project that has already caught the eye of industry giants like Ford, or like the participatory urban planning project Dream hamar in Norway that allows creating "an interactive lighting system that communicates the lights of the city with the Internet." All these systems controlled with a simple cost plate close to 16 euros, which has become the most important embedded design in recent years.

"Here is a historic opportunity to build another kind of society," says Bauwens, one of the world's leading technology and development consultants, who raises the following question:

"Do we perceive the creative power that can be unleashed in a world in which people can exchange not only their thoughts and ideas, but also their designs and then be able to build them and invent machines and mechanisms?"

Nowadays, open hardware has allowed us to face a paradigm shift and the opening to a new range of productive and innovation possibilities, which day by day gain more strength in all areas of society.

“Open hardware means having the possibility of looking at what is inside things, that this is ethically correct, and that it allows improving education. Educate how things work ... "

David Cuartielles, member and founder of the Arduino project