Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Re: A Humble Request.... - "Open-Hardware"

[Moeller]

On 09.01.2011 18:31, J.D. Bakker wrote:
>> It's not a wrong question to ask for cheaper hardware that everybody can 
>> afford.
> It is if you're not willing to invest the time and money to make it happen.
That is the commercial point of view. GNU itself is very non-commercial.
It would be logical to combine the GNU Radio software with complete Open Source 
Hardware.

> As has been discussed several times in the past decade-and-a-half, the 
> realities of free/open hardware are significantly different than those of
> FOSS. Prototyping costs, closed firmware toolchains and the fluidity of parts 
> sourcing are but a few of the obstacles. While anyone with a computer
> (which can be essentially free if you settle for older hardware) can 
> contribute to the software side, hardware development costs real money, and
> those of us who aren't eccentric millionaires need *some* way of recuperating 
> our costs.
There are still radio amateurs, hobbyists and other people who like to share
knowledge about creating hardware. See the SSRP (http://oscar.dcarr.org/ssrp/) 
project.
You don't have to be a millionaire to finance your electronics hobby.
Wasn't it just $30 for the USRP FPGA, and some other low-cost chips on the 
mainboard?
Why not creating USRP hardware as a community project like GNU?
Of course the development and revision cycles are much slower than for
software, but people could share EDA files on a GIT server.
With open source hardware it would be easier to create variants,
e.g. a low-cost version with one RX-only channel, attach some extra 
functionality,...