While low-cost SoC computers are great, as are tutorials about wiring up sensors and motors to your Arduino board, I think this article misses the point about the "hardware reovlution". At one point, he says:

> have the correct tools (most of which are not free)

One of the reasons the free software movement is so exciting is because it put professional quality software development tools into the hands of ... well, everyone, and let them unleash their creativity. This is why Stallman started with emacs, gcc, gdb, and the unix tools. A whole generation of programmers grew up using tools that a generation earlier would have been prohibitively expensive or inaccessible. The frameworks, tools and libraries the OP is so excited about are the continued product of that movement. They are free (as in beer) and, more importantly, free as in speech.

However, this hasn't happened to hardware development tools yet, except for a few exceptions. It might be starting. (I have my pessimistic days and my optimistic ones.) There are two classes of tools: software design tools (and firmware for hardware tools) and hardware tools themselves. Of course, we can't expect hardware tools to be free as in beer, but we can aspire to make them free as in speech. Kicad (a free PCB design tool) is light years behind the industry standard Altium. Free versions of tools for high-speed design, signal integrity analysis, etc. are basically unheard of. The on exception might be Spice, the circuit simulator. There are free designs for primitive hardware tools (e.g., power supplies, precision DMMs, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers), but they are nowhere near entry-level professional offerings, and many, even tho they call themselves "open", don't make design files available.

http://www.phenoptix.com/blogs/news/12550621-testing-the-ten...

Forget about RF-level stuff like RF signal generators and signal analyzers. I've never seen a high speed memory bus designed with open tools, for example, and I don't see how you'd ever debug it.

This is where I think the action is. A suit of open tools (software and hardware) that benefited from community improvement would truely be transformative. It would create an enormous amount of social value. I can see why it hasn't been done yet. Building open versions of these tools would require a huge amount of work, and they are incredibly valuable, so whoever does it would have to forgo a huge amount of value.

I'm finishing up something else in the short term, but I've been thinking about this a lot. I'd love to work on this problem, but it isn't at all clear to me how to fund it.