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13 Open Source Hardware Companies Make $1+ Million
kkleiner writes "Selling products whose design anyone can access, edit, or use on their own is pretty crazy. It's also good business. At the annual hacker conference Foo Camp East this year, Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried from Adafruit Industries gave a rapid fire five-minute presentation on thirteen companies with million+ dollar revenues from open source hardware. The thirteen add up to $50 million this year. While this business model is counter-intuitive for those accustomed to our current patent- and copyright-encrusted system, Torrone and Fried estimate that the industry will reach a billion dollars by 2015."
hi, i'm phil, from the video. it wasn't clear that the OSHW movement is making money? the title of presentation and the post has an actual number in it.
i work for adafruit and make magazine - i don't think it makes sense to scan in each company's tax returns, but generally speaking... most/all the companies listed are making money. decent money, many full time employees, benefits, bonuses, profit sharing - great ROI, access to credit and VC. keep in mind they were very kind to share any revenue numbers and over the last couple years there has been a recession, yet all these companies have thrived.
OSHW should be celebrated here on /. - it's a dream come true and many of the people doing it are following their dreams.
it's too bad many of the people here do not have any aspirations "making" anything besides trolly comments on /.