Specialty parts suppliers for open-hardware tools

<p>A possible <a class="wikilink" href="/open_hardware_business_model/">open hardware business model</a> is to provide specialty parts and tools that can't be found elsewhere[<a class="litnote tooltip" href="/literature/@pearce2017">@pearce2017<span class="tooltiptext">Emerging Business Models for Open Source Hardware</span></a>]. For example, even if a project is <a class="wikilink" href="/open_hardware/">open hardware</a> it may still require a crystal which is hard to grow, or parts in a material hard to source. </p> <p>In this discussion, however, there are some clear problems. First, if the custom parts are also open-hardware there is no way of protecting ourselves from the competition in a traditional business model. If they are not open-hardware, then we are building a traditional business and the <em>open</em> component is only anecdotal. </p> <p><a href="https://openpcr.org/">OpenPCR</a> is an interesting case, since they have an open machine and some of their reactives are openly licensed, to prevent vendor lock-in. </p> <p>In the software world this would be equivalent to what Wordpress does, for example. To tool is open-source but Wordpress.com offers the top-notch hosting, which would be too hard to configure for a lot of people. It's slightly borderline with <a class="wikilink" href="/selling_open-hardware_services/">Selling open-hardware services</a>.</p>