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Today, Alicia Gibb听is an ATLAS instructor, director of the ATLAS听听and a nationally recognized champion of the open source hardware movement, but her听journey started out with a very different trajectory.

In college, she studied art education and her first job was as a librarian. It was while she was completing one of her two master鈥檚 degrees鈥攍ibrary science and art history鈥攖hat she found her calling after听learning to write code and build websites.

鈥淚 just fell in love with open-source software,鈥� says听Gibb. 鈥淎s librarians, we were taught that freedom of access and freedom of information is paramount to libraries and protecting it is a librarian鈥檚 duty. These same freedoms drew me to open source.鈥�

Soon after, Gibb learned about open-source hardware (OSHW)鈥攄evices whose designs had been released to the public so that anyone could make, modify, distribute and use them鈥攁nd she was similarly attracted.

This week Red Hat, a publicly-traded,听multinational software company providing open-source software products, recognized听Gibb's听influence in the OSHW movement by releasing听a documentary-style听video about her.听听 She was a keynote speaker at the Red Hat Summit in May in Boston, where she spoke to 4,000 attendees about why OSHW is crucial to innovation.

In 2010, Gibb organized the emerging OSHW conference with Ayah Bdeir, founder of littleBits, and in 2012 she formed the nonprofit, 听(OSHWA), which aims to educate and promote the use and adoption of open-source hardware. A year ago she introduced the association鈥檚 new OSHW certification program, an OSHWA product logo that protects consumers by ensuring that certified products meet a uniform and well-defined standard for open-source compliance. This week OSHWA released a certification app.

鈥淚n Europe, people have no problem understanding the concept of open source,鈥� 听says听Gibb, who also听spoke about OSHW in Stockholm and Croatia. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very much a part of their culture. In the United States, most people don鈥檛 want to share the source of what鈥檚 making them money, but when you share, you make more money.鈥�

Gibb ticks off the reasons why OSHW is important.

Historically, engineers usually don鈥檛 receive royalties or recognition for product patents owned by their employers, she said. 听And companies spend millions of dollars defending their patents, such as when Apple and Samsung engaged in a $400 million patent infringement suit over the design of cell phones and tablets, with costs being passed onto consumers.

鈥淧atents themselves are expensive,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t costs $50,000 to get a patent, and if you have 50K to start a company, you probably don鈥檛 want to use it for that.鈥�

With OSHW, the engineering community returns the favor of free hardware design by offering free product feedback. And anyone can incorporate another person鈥檚 improvements into their products.

As the founder of Lunchbox Electronics, an education-related open-source hardware company, Gibb is practicing what she preaches. Her company makes electronic components that are compatible with Legos, and consumers are free to design new parts for the toys and sell them without听worrying about patent infringement.

鈥淭his is the beauty of OSHW,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he potential for innovation and creativity is limitless.

鈥淧atents make you lazy. You depend on lawyers, and meanwhile you stop innovating. 听As a consumer, you want the most innovative product on the market.鈥�

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