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."

Comments

1 million revenue is chump change

[timmarhy]

notice how they talk about revenue but not profit? you can have 1 million in revnue and still be losing money hand over fist. not only that 1 million is fuck all money, buying the hardware and employing a few workers will easily come to 1 mil.

if this is meant to be some measure of success...... FAIL.

A bit more open about it??

[freeworldtech]

I am really surprised at the comments I see on this. I would have thought of all places this sort of thing would find a few more defenders at Slashdot. I think open hardware is a great idea with just as much if not more potential as it has in software. It sure isn't going to be as quick to happen but I would love to see large scale design efforts for things like cars done in the way the FSF does software.