[AnthonyMouse]

> you're working on tight margins and designs become obsolete very quickly.

This seems like the exact place where open source is a competitive advantage.

Step 1, open source your existing firmware for the previous generation hardware. The people who have the hardware now fix problems you didn't have the resources to fix.

Step 2, fork the public firmware for the previous generation hardware when developing the next generation. It has those bug fixes in it and 90% of the code is going to be the same anyway. Publish the new source code on the day the hardware ships in volume but not before. By then it doesn't matter if competitors can see it because "designs become obsolete very quickly" and it's too late for them to use it for their hardware/firmware in this generation. They don't get to see your next generation code until that generation is already shipping. Firmware tricks that span generations and have significant value can't be kept secret anyway because any significant firmware-based advantage would be reverse engineered by competitors for the next generation regardless of whether they have the source code.

Now your development costs are lower than competitors' because you didn't have to pay to fix any bugs that one of your customers fixed first, and more people buy your hardware because your firmware is less broken than the competition.

[AlotOfReading]

What happens in that case is that competitors copy your hardware and throw the open source firmware on it to undercut you. Consumers don't know how to differentiate your products without marketing/segmentation and OEMs mostly care about the BOM cost. It doesn't matter much that your competitors are 2-6 months behind because they're still killing the long tail sales that sustain a company.

Note that I'm still pro-open source, but I've seen this cycle play out in the real world enough times to understand why manufacturers are paranoid about releasing anything that might help a competitor, even if it benefits their customers.

[AnthonyMouse]

> What happens in that case is that competitors copy your hardware and throw the open source firmware on it to undercut you.

The entire premise of firmware is that it's specific to the hardware. By the time they "copy your hardware" it's already obsolete. Also, that's the thing you're actually selling. Your firmware sucks. Nobody wants your firmware unless they have your hardware. People are paying you for the hardware, which is the thing cheap competitors can't make as well as you or you're already screwed.