I am an electronics engineer. So basically everytime I hear the software industry making phenomenal progress, albiet the fact that I'm professionally an embedded software developer, I cringe !! Something inside me wants the Hardware side of IT to be as successful and as much in the news as the Software and Embedded aspects.

So, when the idea of open source software first started to sink in me, my first reaction was : If this can be applied to software , why not hardware ?
Evidently I was not alone.
I had googled then and today on reading an article from the FreeSoftwareMagazine, I googled again !!
Someone then had started wading through unchartered waters and started thinking about Open Source Hardware (This site was not as big then, as it is today).

Today, Wikipedia's entry has enough information for the blissgully ignorant ones.

However, projects like Open OEM , OpenCores and Fab@Home makes me believe that this revolution has risen again from the dust. It no longer is a fancy of the uber-geeks. It has the potential to become a full fledged Hardware Renaissance.

Of course, the high cost of actually manufacturing ICs and the deep technical know-how required may take this Renaissance a longer time to come of age, but nonetheless the ball is rolling.

I think taking up a very practical project (and stance) like this dude one can at the very least start fiddling around with this concept and let the whole concept sink in.