In 2014, the Novena laptop by bunnie and xobs was crowdfunded to over over $750K. In 2015, the Librem 13 and 15 laptops by Purism crowdfunded to over $800K. These laptops are a part of an emerging trend in open source hardware, albeit in radically different ways, and many more products are following suit.
This talk will give a behind-the-scenes look at these, and several other open hardware projects, that have come to market wth crowdfunding. We will examine how they approached hardware, software, community, team, funding, manufacturing, and delivery, as well as draw general conclusions about what combination of traits are most likely to lead to successful hardware products that respect users’ freedom and define what it means to be "open".