Proposal for an Open Source Hardware Bank!
Proposal for an Open Source Hardware Bank!
2009-03-08T18:12:51
One of the problems faced by people who design and sell open hardware is the fact that PCB companies and component suppliers offer discounts only on large volumes - so if you are building say 25 numbers of an exciting new microcontroller board, the price at which you would be able to sell it may not be very attractive to the buyers. The hackers at Liquidware have an interesting solution ... set up a bank for financing open hardware! Look at what they have to say: The bank is funding Open Source Hardware, but it is also trying to be a step in the direction of Open Source Finance. As a result, the bank is also going to be "Open Source." It will run on a wiki, everything will be transparent, and it is open to anyone who'd like to join in any of the following roles: So Andrew, Justin, and I will see to it that the Open Source Hardware Bank does not default, and each of us will guarantee every investment. Maybe you could call it AJMIC (instead of FDIC insured)! No one is trying to become a millionaire (without lots of hard work), a high paid investment banker (ugh), or Alan Greenspan (was he ever right about anything?). We're just trying to build a sustainable little financial institution to help Open Source Hardware DIY'ers. We may be reasonably assured that banks like AJMIC won't cause any recession; because they are being managed by people who may not dislike becoming millionaires but have many other more compelling passions/goals in life. The tragedy of our time is that we allowed money to be "managed" by charlatans whose only goal in life was to discover more and more ways to multiply money ....