This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Linux kernel’s release. Serving as the basis of the open source software movement, the open source code spawned hundreds of projects using free, public Linux distributions. The result has been a lengthy list of robust, stable and flexible products.
Given its success, can the same approach be applied to enabling the adoption of open source hardware? Can an instruction set architecture (ISA) like RISC-V create the basis for the proliferation of open source hardware in the same way that the Linux kernel served as the foundation for open source software?