You have probably heard of Open Source Software - software developed by hackers and released into the community under licenses that freely allow copying and modification. Linux is a good example.

David Rowe, an engineer from Adelaide, South Australia and a small team of hackers around the world are developing "open source hardware" - high quality, professionally designed hardware designs that are being released for others to copy and build on.

The hardware (when combined with open telephony software such as Asterisk) allows anyone to build advanced telephone systems at very low cost. The idea is to help close the digital divide by building telephone exchange (PBX) hardware for $200 with features matching existing PBX systems - that cost $10,000. This makes it possible for a small village to deploy and maintain a telephone system at very low cost.