A Commercial Perspective on Open Source Hardware - An Interdisciplinary Law and Management Investigation of the Personal 3D Printing Industry

Abstract

The personal 3D printing technology is without a doubt interesting because of its potential to democratise manufacturing and free creativity, but there is another reason why the technology is interesting from an academic perspective; it was initially started as an Open Source project and development of the technology continues to be pushed forward by the Open Source community (Lipson & Kurman, 2010).Furthermore the number of commercial firms manufacturing 3D printers has exploded in the last couple of years and the majority of these personal 3D printer-manufactures are deeply embedded in the Open Source community. While the potency of the Open Source development is well-established in the world of software (Y. Benkler, 2002; Fosfuri, Giarratana, & Luzzi, 2008; Lerner & Tirole, 2004; G. Von Krogh & Spaeth, 2007), it is comparatively unexplored in relation to physical products. The few studies conducted on Open Source development of physical products have mainly focused on the transferability of the Open Source principles from software to physical product in general (Abdelkafi, Blecker, & Raasch, 2009; Raasch, Herstatt, & Balka, 2009) while the commercial perspective on the phenomenon has largely been ignored.In this thesis I attempt to remedy this knowledge gab by conducting an in-depth analysis of the Open Source firms in the personal 3D printing industry and their ability to capture profits from the Open Source innovation.