Talk:Open Hardware Business Models
Analysis of Current Landscape
Im not sure what appealing financials incentives would need to look like for semi-independent full-time developers. But I think the 3D printing universe is an interesting example of what is possible in open hardware business development. It has more of a wild west dynamic of fully independent members that happen to cooperate on design/supply chain, sometimes. While ose is mostly centralized under one roof with a single mission. Thingiverse, 3Dhubs.com and Instructables are also interesting organisims living off the sometimes closed/open source culture. Maybe each ose machine needs someone like a Prusa or Lulzbot to come along and be a dedicated steward and entreprenuer. Though the danger of that is that the machines have drifted further and further from the RepRap ideal and designs have focused on mass manufacturability instead of distributed manufacturability like the D3D. Once ose can fully define the tool ecosystem required for each machine, it could insist that any machine labled "ose" must be able to be built using the rest of the gvcs.
I think there are three ways an end consumer might get a product: Order all the parts from the wiki and built it themselves. Order a prepackage kit from an ebay seller that bought in bulk and can offer at a cheaper price (often seen for 3D printers/reprap). Order a fully assembled box from ebay or a dedicated/branded website (like direct from prusa). In the 3rd example the seller would have to have more faith in the design bc of warranty liabilty/bad reviews, and inturn would be incentivised to contribute to the products improvement.
Also the 3Dhubs.com or Opendesk.com business models are interseting. They match local machine owner/operators to customers and facilitate the transaction. But they are also easily bypassed after a customer and builder have met from using the service. Perhaps ose could do something similar for tractors. Also, there could also be a business-to-business aspect, if one builder specialized in the hydraulics package for example, they could act as a local sub-contractor to the final assembler.
