OSHWA announced during the Open Hardware Summit on Friday that:

Certified open source hardware is now in 47 countries! And every continent except for Antarctica.

C’mon Antarctica!

Have open hardware to certify (it’s free)?

https://certification.oshwa.org/

Originally tweeted by oshwa (@oshwassociation) on April 9, 2021.

News from the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA):

Announcing the Open Source Hardware Certification API

Today we are excited to announce the launch of a read/write API for our Open Source Hardware Certification program. This API will make it easier to apply for certification directly from where you already document your hardware, as well as empower research, visualizations, and explorations of currently certified hardware.

OSHWA’s Open Source Hardware Certification program has long been an easy way for creators and users alike to identify hardware that complies with the community definition of open source hardware.  Since its creation in 2016, this free program has certified hardware from over 45 countries on every continent except Antarctica.  Whenever you see the certification logo on hardware:

You know that it complies with the definition and that the documentation can be found using its unique identifier (UID).

What’s New?

The new API supports both read and write access to the certification process.  

Write access means that you can submit certification applications directly instead of using the application form.  If you already have all of the application information in a system, there is no need to retype them into a webform.

We hope that this will make it easier for entities that certify large amounts of hardware to build the certification process directly into their standard workflow.  We are also working with popular platforms to integrate a ‘certify’ button directly into their systems.  

Read access gives you access to information about hardware that has already been certified.  This will make it easier to explore the data for research, create compelling visualizations of certified hardware, and build customized lenses to understand what is happening in open source hardware.  

What Happens Now?

The first thing you can do is get a key and start exploring the API itself.  The team at Objectively has created detailed documentation, code snippets, and sandboxes that make it easy to test out all of the features.  

In the longer term, we hope that the community will build better ways to both submit applications for certification and present information about certified hardware.  OSHWA expects to maintain our application form and certification list for the foreseeable future.  That being said, we are also happy to share (and possibly cede) the stage to better ways to get information into and out of the system as they come along.  

For now, let us know what you do with the API!  You can tweet to us @OHSummit or send us an email at [email protected]

News from the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA):

OSHW Community Survey 2020

In 2020 we conducted the third OSHW Community Survey (see 2012 and 2013), which collected 441 responses. All questions were optional, so you may notice response counts do not always add up to 441. In particular, a number of individuals didn’t feel comfortable with the demographic questions. We ask these questions as part of our efforts to promote diversity in the community, but these too were optional and anonymous.

A few highlights from this year’s survey compared to the 2013 survey:

• The portion of people coming to open source hardware from open source software increased from 14.6% to 23.9%
• In 2013, 42.8% of respondents indicated they have worked on or contributed to an open hardware project. This jumped to 85.6% in 2020.
• While 2013 showed a plurality of people using blogs to publish design files, this year’s survey shows public repositories as the most popular option. The increase in people with open source software experience and improvement in repository collaboration offerings may be contributing factors.
• This year’s survey shows a large increase in attendees for the 2020 Open Hardware Summit. This is likely due to 2020 being the first virtual summit. Although it was moved online due to unfortunate circumstances, the virtual platform offered the upside of greatly expanding the audience.
• A small gain in the community’s gender diversity was seen, with those identifying as either female or other making up 18% of respondents, compared to 7% in 2013.

Interested in more granular results for any of these questions? Reach out to us at [email protected]