All Golioth Hardware Is Now Open Source

blog.golioth.io

62 points·hasheddan··6 comments

The Amp Hour podcast episode #526 [1] circa Jan 18, 2021 seems contextually relevant.

[1] https://theamphour.com/526-why-iot-is-difficult-with-jonatha...

If, like me, you've never heard of them:

> Golioth is an IoT platform that provides cloud services for embedded devices.

I might be cynical, but I have seen many cases of companies open-sourcing a few products for PR and promotional purposes, where the open-source community takes care of the promotion work for free. Fast forward a few years, and a license change occurs after many companies are already relying on such products.

This looks like a textbook case of "commoditize your complement". So I wouldn't expect a rug pull. It's in their interest for this to be free.

Think of these more like a reference implementation to help somebody bootstrap their own compatible hardware design.

Hardware isn't the business they're in and these designs aren't the only way to use their platform. They just make for an officially sanctioned starting point, supported by the legal clarity of an open source license. That making it officially "open source" earns them a news cycle and some buzz is just a little side benefit for what's otherwise pretty common in the industry.

Unrelated to this project/the article, but I'm still waiting for hbm3 and gddr7 to show up in digikey so I can easily import the part into kicad

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