Although considered a relatively recent phenomenon of the past decade, open source hardware (OSH) is already influencing commercial hardware development. However, a common belief is that the greater economic cost and complexity of hybrid digital objects (i.e., digital objects with both hardware and software) precludes their development with open source methods traditionally used for software. We study a sophisticated OSH named White Rabbit initiated at CERN and developed through a vibrant and heterogenous open source community. Our findings show that the assumption that hardware and software require fundamentally distinctive development and production modes should be replaced with a more nuanced differentiation characterized by three main attributes describing an object’s composition: embodiment, modularity, and granularity. Taken together, these three attributes determine how a hybrid object is developed throughout its evolution in an open source community. Our research offers several contributions. First, we provide a more nuanced view of the consequences of the material embodiment of hardware. Once considered a simple deterrent to open source development, we describe how economic cost is subordinate to more influential aspects of an object’s physical layers: as the open source community modifies the object to accommodate the operating requirements of diverse physical instantiations, such modifications can be incorporated in the logical design covered by the open source license. Additionally, we show how embodiment, modularity, and granularity progress through the object’s evolution and how this maturation subsequently affects development modes. We trace the implications of our findings for hybrids and digital object conceptualizations in IS research, open source development and, more broadly, normative implications for OSH in scientific and commercial computing.

中文翻译：

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从位到原子：CERN 的开源硬件

尽管被认为是过去十年相对较新的现象，但开源硬件 (OSH) 已经在影响商业硬件的发展。然而，人们普遍认为，混合数字对象（即具有硬件和软件的数字对象）的更大经济成本和复杂性排除了使用传统上用于软件的开源方法进行开发的可能性。我们研究了一个名为 White Rabbit 的复杂 OSH，它由 CERN 发起并通过一个充满活力和异构的开源社区开发。我们的研究结果表明，硬件和软件需要根本不同的开发和生产模式的假设应该被更细微的差异所取代，其特征是描述对象组成的三个主要属性：具体化、模块化和粒度。综合起来，这三个属性决定了混合对象在开源社区中的整个演变过程中是如何开发的。我们的研究提供了几个贡献。首先，我们对硬件的物质体现的后果提供了更细微的看法。一旦被认为是对开源开发的简单威慑，我们描述了经济成本如何从属于对象物理层更具影响力的方面：随着开源社区修改对象以适应不同物理实例的操作要求，可以合并此类修改在开源许可证涵盖的逻辑设计中。此外，我们还展示了具体化、模块化和粒度如何通过对象的演化进展，以及这种成熟随后如何影响开发模式。