Lucille Chapuis
- @Lucille
- | She/Her
La Trobe University
Dear Wildlabers,
Our task team is working very hard to design a low-cost autonomous hydrophone for research, education and citizen science. The team is technically brilliant at troubleshooting engineering challenges to come up with an open source unit that is as affordable as possible, while being scientifically robust. However, we all lack a commercial background, and we are after some advice and resources, more specifically to the following questions:
- How to develop a business model that supports conservation technology and scale it while maintaining the values that we all share (open source, low-cost, sustainable, ethical and responsible etc.)?
- What are some successful examples of balancing open-source initiatives with the need to generate revenue to sustain the project long term?
- What strategies can help manage intellectual property concerns while remaining committed to open source principles?
- How to decide on partnership with other businesses?
- What are the best ways to engage potential users (e.g. citizen scientists, researchers) in the design and improvement of open-source conservation technology?
Thank you in advance for sharing your insights!
1 October 2024 10:10pm
Interesting questions, @Lucille
@chouffe asked similar questions about the business model in his answer to a post about 'What members would like to find in the recently launched funding and finance group?'.
Have you done any searching? Here on WILDLABS or elsewhere on the internet? As group curator of the Funding and Finance group, I am very interesting in aggregating some answers. I just did some quick digging and the answers that I found are not encouraging from a financial perspective: open source software development in itself simply doesn't pay any bills. Not in nature conservation, nor anywhere else.
People are suggesting alternative incomes. ( Getting Paid for Open Source Work, The 6 Best Ways to Make a Living from Open Source, 9 Simple Ways to Make Money With Open Source , and the list goes on )
Interestingly, one of them is 'apply for funding'. Here perhaps the wise money is on looking for sources outside of nature conservation, to whom nature conservation is an example field where open source funding can do a lot of good and will look good in their funded project portfolio.
To contrast this, for sponsors in nature conservation, software development may be something costly, boring, and not hip anymore. The Boring Fund was not invented for nothing, but even there software development itself is not listed - "we will not be funding technology innovation, adoption, or scalability initiatives". Maybe the upcoming round of the WILDLABS Awards will.
I would also consider starting a crowdfunding campaign.
Another common answer is, see if your open source ware can find a commercial application. Pay the bills with that and keep doing the pro-bono work for nature conservation.
Lastly, do search for 'open source' in WILDLABS general search ( not the Resources search ). There is a long and massive discussion thread here.
A very practical tip: you posted your question in the group for Emerging Tech, which is a good choice, but not the only one. You can still edit your post and select multiple groups. Besides Funding and Finance ;-), I would suggest the 'Open Source Solutions' group.
4 October 2024 3:23pm
Hi, @Lucille - this sounds super cool, congrats! I have a couple ideas of resources for further reading/connections that might help.
- The Business Model Canvas has been pretty hot for a decade or so, and could be a useful exercise for your team if you haven't already given it a whirl (wikipedia link below, but tons of reading around how to do it/its value elsewhere too)
- The Open Science Shop (and its member groups; second link below) have been thinking through some of these same questions around open-sourcing + revenue generation + IP protection. See, for example, the blog on turning open designs into profit (third link below)
- Beyond (and I believe in lots of collaboration with) the group here and the Wildlabs team, Arm has been putting a lot of resources into supporting efforts like yours. I believe they were heavily involved in working with Wildlabs on The Inventory seen here, and maybe there's someone from Arm on this forum who might have other ideas for partnerships.
Open Science Shop
Join our global network of local open science hardware vendors and manufacturers
Commercialization of Open Source Hardware: Turning Open Designs into Profit
In this post, we take a closer look at cases of Open Source Hardware (OSH) projects that have successfully been commercialized.
Just a few thoughts...hope they help, and good luck/happy open-sourcing!
Phil
Brianna Johns
Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH)
4 October 2024 8:21pm
Hi @Lucille,
That's such a good question! Interest in business models for open source hardware is growing, which is great to see.
Snowballing off of what @insituphile said, I previously worked quite a bit with the Open Science Shop. Their goal is to create a collective of distributed manufacturers, and they are currently testing this manufacturing model with the OpenFlexure Microscope. As they have started to grow this network, they've been documenting what they've done in the form of blog posts here. I recommend reading these (especially the first one) if you are looking for resources regarding business models and/or manufacturing practices. They also have a contact form if you would like to get in touch with them directly.
I can also recommend this article, which describes different business models for open hardware, and Localeconomies.org , another great initiative to document different manufacturing practices related to open hardware.
I hope this helps!
Bri
Lars Holst Hansen
Aarhus University
6 October 2024 9:50am
Hi Lucille!
I would not be shy to contact @alex_rogers (maker of the AudioMoth) and ask him for advice. He is very approachable and also a Wildlabs member.
Without knowing too much of the details, it seems to me it seems like they have a very good model going.
Best regards,
Lars
Frank van der Most
RubberBootsData