"I don't understand why there's no startups making open source modular electronics."
I would love to do exactly that, but so far I have not found any way how I could do that and still have a regular salary. Of course, I could do it for free as a generous gift to Chinese factories who will then produce things and flood Amazon with it ... but they won't reciprocate and donate back to the Open Source project. The OS project will quickly stagnate and future development stops.
The fix is that the Open Source project needs to sell hardware, or else there's no revenue to fund further development. And that means you now also need FCC and CE certification. And you need patents. Or else, Chinese factories will flood Amazon with your design. (but without paying for FCC/CE)
But now that you can successfully sell hardware to fund future development and you can fend off Chinese clones, your project is not really "open" anymore. It's kind of like an OEM module that is "source available". Like the Adafruit kits that you can order from Amazon/Arrow.
They are a Chinese hardware manufacturer. The firmware source code appears to be open and on GitHub, but the hardware is fully closed. Accordingly, they are not "Open Source Hardware". They are not even "Source Available" on the hardware side.
one way to put them would be on a list of PRC funded startups, for instance.
also I have no idea whether you worked with their hardware before and at which level; I have, and their concept of "open" source HW is very different from what OP is talking about
“As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously,”
I would love to do exactly that, but so far I have not found any way how I could do that and still have a regular salary. Of course, I could do it for free as a generous gift to Chinese factories who will then produce things and flood Amazon with it ... but they won't reciprocate and donate back to the Open Source project. The OS project will quickly stagnate and future development stops.
The fix is that the Open Source project needs to sell hardware, or else there's no revenue to fund further development. And that means you now also need FCC and CE certification. And you need patents. Or else, Chinese factories will flood Amazon with your design. (but without paying for FCC/CE)
But now that you can successfully sell hardware to fund future development and you can fend off Chinese clones, your project is not really "open" anymore. It's kind of like an OEM module that is "source available". Like the Adafruit kits that you can order from Amazon/Arrow.