Amiga scene is super toxic in this regard, with people rage quitting over someone making any money manufacturing open sourced projects. Amiga was always Apple like when it came to addons, everyone charged money and expected money to be paid.
More here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25683894
Except for games and software, those you obviously copied off your friends for free, duh.
Or worse, you manage to manufacture a few units and someone buys them all, and tries to flip them on eBay for double the price. You can only make N at a time, so you feel bad for your customers because this middleman has inserted themself into the process.
That said, the stance of some hardware designers is too extreme in my opinion:
> Even selling blank PCBs at eBay or so without my approval might makes me pretty mad and probably leads to the forthcomming related projects to be closed source. You have been warned :)
This kind of attitude is understandable, but a downside is it serves to gatekeep who has access to an open hardware design. Those who can solder? You're good. Can't build a PCB? You can't have this.
>you manage to manufacture a few units and someone buys them all
Great success, you manufacture more, whats the problem? The problem is usually unwillingness to do the physical work and superiority complex. Soldering is for children in Asia. Im a big time Engineer, you arent allowed to have my great designs, you can only read about them like in the "good old days" of gawking at ads in Amiga Format!!1 Thats the attitude here :/
>This kind of attitude is understandable
only for Amiga scene insiders, to anyone else its elitist toxic bullshit
>, but a downside is it serves to gatekeep who has access to an open hardware design.
up to maybe 10 years ago there were no Amiga open hardware designs at all, everything was kept secret, and everyone counted on the day coming when they would finally hit big and make a bank on 30 year old nostalgia.
> Those who can solder? You're good. Can't build a PCB? You can't have this.
did I mention elitist toxic bullshit? :(
Pretty understandable why people quit when all they get is abuse and stress from a toxic community