Economic Savings for Scientific Free and Open Source Technology: A Review

Citation: Joshua M. Pearce Economic Savings for Scientific Free and Open Source Technology: A Review.
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Economic Savings for Scientific Free and Open Source Technology: A Review
Wikidata (metadata): Q99408284
Download: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468067220300481
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Summary

If Free and Open Source Hardware (FOSH) is lagging Open Source Software (OSS) by about 20 years, we should start to see tremendous economic savings from FOSH. Do those hold currently?

Evaluates FOSH in HardwareX (86 articles) and PLOS Open Source Toolkit (33) repositories and savings evident from open source electronics (39% of devices) or 3D printing (46%), or their combination, which early reports indicated can result in >90% savings over proprietary equipment. Material costs of the devices were recorded along with the costs of proprietary equivalents if they were available. 92.4% of FOSH projects documented costs, with 37.8% documenting proprietary equivalent costs. For those documenting both, study shows similar findings as early reports, with the average open hardware scientific tool saving 87% compared to the proprietary tool, 89% for projects using Arduino microcontrollers, 92% for 3D printing projects, 94% for projects using both technologies. These savings do not account for labor costs, which vary greatly depending on situation, but are often effectively low.

Enumerates non-savings value add for FOSH, particularly around access to and control of equipment which speeds innovation, suggests policies to foster FOSH.