"Knives are quite open-source but we still buy €200 knives from time to time."
The exact metallurgical details (chemical composition, manufacturing process) of high-end knives are closely guarded trade secrets. Making greats knives requires a lot of research, knowledge and experience, it's not something every joe schmoe with 100k can start a business in.
'Open source' is just not a competitive advantage. I have a drawer full of junk whose main selling point was 'it's open source!' to prove it. Starting from an open source project gets you 90% of the functionality; the other 90%, you have to do yourself. In the mean time, the 'community' (read: the 5 guys on your mailing list/forum who shout the loudest) demand that the 'company' 'gives back' (by sponsoring, blog posts on every minute detail, hand-holding everybody with a 5-line patch, ...) because now you're making money off 'other peoples' work'. But the moment you commit any code you wrote, there are a dozen Chinese (and non-Chinese) vendors who will take what you made and put it into their own product; which is usually just one of dozens; they are smart and diversify. In the mean time, you are left fighting the marketing game where you essentially have to convince every single customer to pay a 20, 30, 100% markup for - what really? Being the one who 'wrote it first'? Good luck. The Kickstarter graveyard is full of dreams like this.
The exact metallurgical details (chemical composition, manufacturing process) of high-end knives are closely guarded trade secrets. Making greats knives requires a lot of research, knowledge and experience, it's not something every joe schmoe with 100k can start a business in.
'Open source' is just not a competitive advantage. I have a drawer full of junk whose main selling point was 'it's open source!' to prove it. Starting from an open source project gets you 90% of the functionality; the other 90%, you have to do yourself. In the mean time, the 'community' (read: the 5 guys on your mailing list/forum who shout the loudest) demand that the 'company' 'gives back' (by sponsoring, blog posts on every minute detail, hand-holding everybody with a 5-line patch, ...) because now you're making money off 'other peoples' work'. But the moment you commit any code you wrote, there are a dozen Chinese (and non-Chinese) vendors who will take what you made and put it into their own product; which is usually just one of dozens; they are smart and diversify. In the mean time, you are left fighting the marketing game where you essentially have to convince every single customer to pay a 20, 30, 100% markup for - what really? Being the one who 'wrote it first'? Good luck. The Kickstarter graveyard is full of dreams like this.