Open Design

From the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_design

"Open Design is a term that applies to the investigation and potential of open source and the collaborative nature of the internet to create physical objects. People apply their skills and time to projects for the common good, perhaps where funding or commercial interest is lacking. Open design image

The "Open Design" movement is currently fairly nascent but holds great potential for the future in developing products and physical systems. There are certain barriers to overcome for open design when compared to software development where there are mature and widely used tools available and the duplication and distribution of code cost next to nothing. Creating, testing and modifying physical designs is not quite so straightforward because of the effort and time required to create the physical artifact."

More Information

For related concepts, see Open Hardware, Open Source Hardware.

Open Design organisations: ThinkCycle, DesignBreak, Open Design Alliance

Episodes of Collective Invention, at http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/meyer.pdf

(Peter B. Meyer, August 2003) An article on several historical examples of what could be called "open design.