How many times have you encountered a cheap electronics module and had absolutely no clue how it actually worked so you could learn from it? Or when your day-to-day appliances break, and there is no way for you to find a reliable source or schematic to repair it yourself—especially right after your warranty wears off?
That is exactly where open-source hardware designs shine. And the approach seems simple on paper: Just release all the source files of the design.
That’s it. Yeah... except sometimes just dumping files isn't enough. Not only that, but traditional companies absolutely hate this idea. To them, open source means the money they spent on Research and Development gets handed straight to the public for anyone to copy, modify, manufacture, and sell.
Our philosophy on this is completely different at Mechaxil. Here is how we think hardware should be done, and why the "risks" of open source aren't as bad as traditional businesses think.
1. Stop Reinventing the Wheel: The Power of "Open Core"
First of all, look at the hardware landscape. Countless designs use the exact same commonly used parts and topologies. They share the same roots, yet every single time a new company builds a product, they redesign it completely from scratch because the existing implementations are locked away.
This is where Open Core designs shine.
Instead of starting from a blank canvas, you can easily base your product around proven, open-core designs. This drastically increases design reliability and speed. Best of all, if an error or a bug is found in the design, a user can fix it, push the update, and keep it open so everyone else receives a better version.
Leveraging community knowledge requires way less effort than designing from scratch, which saves everyone time. It also makes it incredibly easy to track changes and publish unified documentation for easier troubleshooting and right-to-repair after your warranty drops.
2. Code is Only Half the Battle (Open Source Needs Documentation)
However, the current state of open hardware is lacking. If you just zip up your Gerber files, upload them to GitHub, and call it "open source," that’s quite a stretch.
Humans have unique ways of thinking and understanding. We can’t always understand someone else's hardware layout just at a glance. For a project to be truly open source, it needs in-depth documentation about the "whys," the know-hows, and the core design decisions.
Sometimes, the majority of an open-source project isn't the physical PCB layout—it's the documentation. The beautiful thing about this is that documentation is a living ecosystem. It can be continuously improved after publication through direct cooperation with other makers and engineers.
3. The Elephant in the Room: Knock-offs and Mass Production
People always ask: What about the cheap clones? If you upload your design, won't factories mass-produce it, ruin your business opportunities, and undercut your sales? Why would someone buy your design for double the price?
Honestly? We think this is the best part of open source, and here is why.
Knowing that anyone can manufacture our designs forces companies like us to constantly step up our game. We can't just rest on our laurels or overcharge you for basic hardware. It forces us to maintain flawless production quality, offer rock-solid reliability, and create customer-first shopping policies.
A faceless clone factory might copy our traces, but they can’t copy what we offer alongside the board:
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True Reliability & Component Sourcing Quality
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Genuine Warranty & Direct Technical Customer Support
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Environmental Guarantees (RoHS / WEEE compliance)
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A Long-Term Vision for the Hardware Ecosystem & Future Upgrades
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Fast, Local Shipping Times
If you just want a bare-bones knock-off for half the price that might work, you can buy it. That pressure forces companies to keep their prices human and reasonable. But if you want a guaranteed experience, an ecosystem, and a brand that supports your journey, you buy original. And the best part? If you are a maker who loves to customize things, you don't have to buy either—you can just build your own!
4. Why We Choose CERN-OHL-W to Protect this Ecosystem
To turn this philosophy into a legal reality, we needed a license that matches our worldview. We chose the CERN Open Hardware Licence v2 - Weakly Reciprocal (CERN-OHL-W) for our current and future boards, like the Pico IO Board.
There is a common misconception about the "Weakly Reciprocal" tag. It doesn't mean you can make private tweaks to our board design and keep them secret. If you modify our board layout, the license forces you to share those modifications openly. It protects our community's work from being closed off by bad actors.
However, the "Weak" part protects you, the maker. If you take our open-source board and plug it into a massive, complex, proprietary commercial project of your own, your project stays private. The license doesn't "infect" your entire creation.
It’s the perfect middle ground: it keeps the core hardware free and open for everyone, while giving you the complete legal safety to build whatever you want on top of it.
What are your thoughts on open hardware licensing? Have you ever had a project saved (or ruined) by the availability of schematics? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.
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