Open Source Firearm Development: Community-driven Hardware Innovation & Design as Data

The ability to programmatically create objects from blocks of raw material using computer-controlled machines is becoming accessible to larger groups of people. This has begun to have two effects on the way people approach objects. With more people having the means of producing objects, people are increasingly creating objects themselves rather than purchasing them commercially. However, design files are often distributed in lossy formats which aren't amenable to editing or re-mixing. This has lead some groups to form loose communities to collaboratively publish their editable design files under open source licenses.

This presentation will cover the brief history of collaborative, open source hardware design as applied to firearms and explore the idea of constructible objects as data in a world where the translation from digital representation of an object to physical form is trivial. Actual 3D printed firearms (with bolt locked and no ammunition present!) will be available for inspection after the talk.