Blogs

William Hertling, an HP strategist and science fiction writer, has a good opinion piece at IEEE Spectrum that argues that open innovation models, like those practiced here, are going to win. I'm quoted, and DIY Drones/ArduPilot is cited as an example. 

Here's the concluding passage:

Between the exponential growth of computing power and the work of groups like DIY Drones, the cost barrier to participation in robotics and AI is falling away. When that happens, open source robotics will take off.

And contrary to what some observers have argued, openness can be profitable. Every tech startup in the last 10 years has used open source in some way. Facebook and Apple’s iPhone owe much of their success to their open app platforms. Red Hat, one of the leading Linux providers, is an $11 billion company, with revenues of more than $1 billion. The trick for robotics and AI companies will be to figure out the right mix of what’s proprietary and what’s open.