First, there was software for fun at MIT and places of study, and then Microsoft and other companies came along and centralized the development with centralized operations.
Once some customers who used these closed solutions could not get the features they wanted, yet knew how to write their own software, the Free Software movement from the early MIT ethos took hold and developed into the Open Source Software movement.
And the software was so glorious that it provided the context for the main piece of software in a computer’s operating system, the Kernel which manages the software to hardware boundary, emerged with the Linux kernel.
After this innovation became the dominant software to build servers and hardware on, the mobile phone revolution took off with Linux and Open Source Software embedded on devices.
And, at this point, we learned about hardware centralization.
Once hardware manufacturers did not listen to software and hardware engineers, and the cost of making hardware was low enough for common developers to build new hardware, the Qi Hardware project was born, which led to the Open Hardware movement.
This Open Hardware movement has allowed massive hardware innovations all the way up to Bitcoin Miners and other Proof-of-Work miners.
Now, the large publicly listed companies are attempting to centralize Proof-of-Work mining and Qi Hardware decided to donate the project to Fabricatorz Foundation 501(c)3 to accelerate the counterbalance to the centralization being pushed in hardware.
If successful, then Proof-of-Work mining in Ethereum and other projects, will remain decentralized.