Ask HN: Why hasn't there been open source hardware?

There are quite a few synthesizer projects that are totally open. http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/open-source-hardware-synths/ lists 5, I think this one is OS too (or is that just the firmware? I forget) http://www.sonic-potions.com/lxr

Also look around on Hackaday and related sites. There's a lot of them in the synth community because audio nerds are sort of obsessive and like tinkering, plus synthesizers are relatively easy to build. I think the first of these projects was the X0Xbox 303 clone, though I don't know if that was 'officially' under oshwa.

As for why they're rarer? Hardware is expensive, has a smaller margin of error and has had good vendors for a long time. Few companies build their own hardware, and many that do consider it a competitive advantage (Google certainly does)

Because hardware isn't like software, its got longer cycle times, higher capital investments to work with it, etc., which means:

(1) You can't get lots of contributors, (2) Even once the design's done, you've got to get someone to build it -- which takes a substantial capital investment, and the people making those investments are more able to recoup them when there is a barrier keeping other people out from identical replacements, which doesn't exist with open source.

If automated manufacturing ever gets to the point where a fabricating device that takes in cheap raw materials and prints out computers is something that is no further out of reach that a decent development PC is now -- or even, was in the 1990s -- then open source hardware will be a lot more common.