Even the LART, which is often held up as the prototypical free hardware computer, suffered from this problem: the particular ARM-series CPU used in the LART design was discontinued[8]. When this happened, implementors were stuck with trying to find existing surplus or used components, or coming up with a new design to accomodate newer parts.

Preventing this kind of problem—or even providing economic motivation to phase it out—will present a more difficult legal problem than for software. Attempts to legally encode a definitive “Free Hardware License”, of the stature of the Gnu GPL, have been encumbered by this complexity, although the draft “Open Hardware General Public License”[9] (originally from Open IP Cores) is an interesting attempt. Today, however, the Open Cores website promotes using the unmodified GPL or BSD licenses for free-licensed hardware designs.

The love of money is the root of all evil

Injecting money into a development or innovation process carelessly can be amazingly destructive, much as U.S. President Eisenhower, in his closing address to the American people, warned:

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.

So, it shouldn’t really come as a shock that attempts to introduce money to free-licensed development have not been more successful.

Grants

Grants provide money in advance, when it is most needed, both to provide for the material needs of the project and to pay researchers for their time, making them the most obvious way to fund any public good. We’ve funded university and institutional research this way for ages. Many precursors of free software products got started like this, including the code that became the Unix family of operating systems. Clearly this system can and does work.

However, grant money, once given, is extremely hard to get back. So when a person applies for a grant they must endure a gauntlet of tests, intended to prove to the granting agency that that person is willing and able to fulfill the promise they make in their proposal. If a grant is received, will the project be completed? How much money will it cost? Real research is full of unexpected set-backs and cost-overruns. Real researchers are full of optimism and unrealistic deadlines. The skills for research, development, logistics, and management are rarely found all in one person—good scientists rarely make good accountants, let alone good receptionists.

This encourages the granting agency to be very selective and take few risks with whom they fund. Researchers must have a proven professional background, track-record of honesty, and a reputation to protect. This is why funding by grants requires the use of large government, foundation, and university bureaucracies, and only the professionals who have climbed the career ladder to positions in these organizations have a serious chance of benefitting from them. The “solitary inventor” is indeed dealt out of this game, just as Eisenhower predicted.

Real research is full of unexpected set-backs and cost-overruns. Real researchers are full of optimism and unrealistic deadlines

Attempts to extend grant systems to less certified individuals have drawn limited funds from donors, and would-be researchers are understandably reluctant to make the kinds of promises they must make to receive a grant. So, it appears that little can be done to make grants work better for free-licensed hardware designs.

Prizes

Prizes have been proposed as a much better solution than grants, and it’s not hard to see why: With a prize, the donor does not have to try to predict in advance who can achieve the proposed goal, nor how it will be achieved. Likewise, applicants don’t have to prove anything to the donor about their past performance—they just have to step up to the task at hand and do it. That means there’s no “artificial” barrier to entry. The success of the Ansari X-Prize, recently won by Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites with Space Ship One is a good example of how well prizes can work.[10, 11]

With a prize, the donor does not have to try to predict in advance who can achieve the proposed goal

Except for one problem, of course: money. Winning prizes is usually only an option for people already rich enough to fund their own research. Prizes do not provide money when it is most needed—during the development process, so they do little for people with ideas but no money. True, you can look for investors, but you still have to convince them in advance that you can do the job. It’s no coincidence that so many entrepreneurs started out in marketing!

It’s also instructive to note some less-appealing details of the X-prize competition: once Space Ship One emerged as the clear leader, some competitors began to slack off, because there was no second place to strive for. Prizes fundamentally encourage competition and discourage cooperation, and they have all the benefits and dangers of competition as a result. In a field where effective cooperation seems to be essential to produce real quality, they can be seriously detrimental, as can be seen by the problems encountered by both Source Exchange and Co-Source—the two “reverse auction” funding sites Raymond mentions in “The Magic Cauldron”, which are now long dead.