It also helps with shipping orders and logistics. Unlike competitors such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, Crowd Supply specializes in helping companies that want to manufacture physical products, and it plays an active role in helping those businesses figure out how to actually produce those items. But the project appears to have solid backing from Crowd Supply. This is certainly a small-time operation, aimed mostly at hobbyists. The new, commercial version of the Novena does include some parts that are closed source, such as the processor, but Huang and Cross have tried to minimize these as much as possible. If you share designs, others can make them better. The idea is not only to improve security, but to help spur innovation.

Open source software has become a mainstay across the web and inside many businesses, and now, open source hardware is beginning to find its own place in the world, not only among hobbyists but inside big companies such as Facebook. The project is part of larger movement towards open source hardware. Much like Kickstarter, Crowd Supply is place where you can put up money to help fund a company and then get a product in exchange. Starting today, you can order your own pre-built Novena laptop through the crowd-funding site Crowd Supply, and it will ship out in the coming months. But now the pair are taking the project a step further. The original idea was simply to encourage others to build their own open source laptops at home.

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