When Open Becomes Opaque: the Changing Face of Open-Source Hardware Companies

Long-time Slashdot reader caseih writes: A thoughtful post on the Adafruit Blog chronicles the problems facing open-source hardware companies, and how more and more companies, including Sparkfun, Arduino and Prusa, are becoming more and more proprietary. In Arduino's case, they are deliberately trying to stamp out the clones undercutting them. The new Arduino Pro is not open source in any way, and the web site has now removed references to being an open source company. As always there are subtleties and nuances. In the case of Prusa, not only are Chinese companies taking Prusa designs and source to make proprietary, closed-source products, they are also actively patenting designs and algorithms they've taken from open source. The original submission ends with a question. "With Red Hat recently taking a step towards becoming a proprietary software company (which happens to use and work on open source projects) and now these reports, what are Slashdotters' thoughts on the future? "Are truly open source companies doomed to failure, especially when overseas companies do not respect or even understand the principles of open source development?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.