This article from Make is an overview of the nascent Open Source Hardware movement. As I read it I think “Sure, this makes sense for Make, and the Instructables people, because us revealing our work is how THEY make their money. But what about us?” and then I read the developer’s page from Chumby’s site, where they make everything open source, schematics, hardware, much of their source code, etc. How do they do that? And still make money?

I need to figure this out. This is what I want to do. How can I make money while involving the community too?

This post from Make talks about Ambient Inc’s release of their chipset and schematics so other vendors can embed their stuff.

What if I make a gateway and sell it, and I make devices and sell them. Or, I don’t make devices so much as scriptable transceiver boards that work with my gateways and web systems. Then use instructables and make etc to show people how to easily make very cool complex net-connected projects. ??