It?s often said that watchmaking is a cottage industry. This, in the past, has been literally true. The know-how and technical ability to build watch movements has historically been information that has been pretty well guarded, whether we?re talking about 19th century watch and clock makers working out of their home workshops, producing every component themselves, or the mass production of movements and their individual component parts by large corporations, effectively blocking smaller companies from getting a foot in the door except at a great expense. A new project called openmovement is now taking a different approach to movement making by designing simple, open source watch movements that anyone can conceivably use. 

The somewhat lofty goals of openmovement describe what they?re trying to accomplish as ?Watchmaking 2.0,? which represents a system built on collaboration rather than hoarding resources and knowledge. They?ve recently launched the OM10, what they describe as the first open source watch movement, and instructions on how to build it are available to anyone (as long as you?re an openmovement.org user, which doesn?t cost anything, although tiered membership options exist for individuals and organizations that wish to support their mission). 
A big part of the idea behind openmovement is that once watchmakers begin using the movement, improvements can be made as the community grows. This is at the heart of open source software development, a...