The open hardware organization has published the first issue with the purpose of sharing the design of physical or electronic objects with the public. The right to use, modify, redistribute, and manufacture, commercially or as a non-profit, is granted to everyone without any royalty or fee. Perhaps this could be the beginning of the end of the firmware issues plaguing the free software community at the moment.

The first PC which is build by the free software community and not by a big company. Everybody can contribute. The Open-PC is using only free software and drivers. The good news is that they are not starting with one or two but with three manufacturing partners and models. They are working together with ARLT and greeniX in Germany and ThinkPenguin in the US

Wired: "Open source hardware hobbyists now have a chipset to play with that's comparable to the powerful processors found in smartphones such as the Nexus One or HTC Incredible."

At the Gran Canaria Open Desktop Summit in July 2009, the Open-PC project was announced. The statement said the project aimed to "cooperatively design a Free Software based computer by and for the community". Further this PC would use only hardware for which there are free software drivers available. This would be a PC with the minimal compromise required for running a free desktop.

Open Graphics Project founder Timothy Miller recently noted on the project's mailing list that they are set to announce that their first hardware, the OGD1, is ready for pre-order.

Excitement in the Open Graphics community is quite high as it approaches its first production run of the FPGA-based “Open Graphics Development” board, known as “OGD1”. It will be available for pre-sale this month with the first units expected to ship soon thereafter. The board is targeted at hardware developers, with the specific goal of supporting development and testing of designs for a fully-documented consumer Open Hardware Graphics Card to be implemented using an ASIC (thus resolving one of the biggest obstacles to free software on the desktop).

What if we lived in a world where all hardware was open source, including CPU’s, memory, motherboards, and all peripherals? Would it be a better world, or would it be a rolling nightmare, plagued with problems, and rampant with show stopping bugs that would bring the world to a grinding halt? I honestly think the fore more than the latter.