Abstract Alambreado

Cleave Thompson finds himself talking with Massimo Banzi, creator of the Arduino chipboard, in it's Milan factory. It's all about Open Source, building something, sharing it and letting others make the best of it.

Arduino is a physical computing plataform, a single-board microcrontoller with open hardware designs, using a Creative Commons liecense, meaning that anyone can use it for free, reproduce and modify it. This license also obliges the new Arduino modifications to stay open and free, making this board evolve through out the users interests.

We all know about Linux and it's success, but, can Open Hardware have the same fate as a petty programm with absolutelly no costs in it's production?
This is what the Arduino creators wondered once they published their work, for the profit they made from every board was just enough to make a new one. And even mor important, what happens when the Chinese start selling their own half price cheaper versions? Surprisinglly enough, it us sustainable. Why? marely because of the fact that the creators, although they virtually make no profit from the actual physical board, they sell their experience as creators to every company who wants to implement the Arduino into any kind of technology they plan to sell.
And to top it off, cheap imitations make their consulting even more appealing.

" Basically, what we have is the brand," says Tom Igoe

So yeah, companies will have to change, they no longer need to waste their dreaming up ideas and trying to guess what their costumers want, the costumers know what they want, just let them do it.

There's thousands of increadible examples of how Open Source, both hardware and software, have lead to increadible inventions and appealing ideas that have benefited as much as the creators as for the costumers, happy to see this kind of economic growing.

Just think about the WRT54G router...