[Jarwain]

Heh thus far I've been an excited spectator of HomeAssistant, and wasn't aware of Nuba Casa until doing research for a different comment on the thread. I do love and appreciate their model here

I guess the benefits that came to mind are - alternative crowdsourced route for sourcing hardware, to avoid things like that raspberry pi shortage (although if it's due to broader supply chain issues then this doesn't necessarily help) - hardware forks! If someone wanted a version with a more powerful ESP32, or a GPS, or another mic, or an enclosure for a battery and charging and all that, took the time to fork the design to add these features, and found X other users interested in the fork to get it produced... (of course I might be betraying my ignorance on how easy it is to set up this sort of alternative manufacturing chain or what unit amounts are necessary to make this kind of forking economical)