Hi, as something of a Free Software zealot (still am), I was rather interested in something similar to what your suggestion sounds like some years ago, before I got seriously into electronics. However, I think that what your terms for the idea sound like, and what your description seems to imply, are somewhat at odds with each other.
The GNU project is not so much "open", as "Free as in speech" as its proponents often like to say. They make software
so it exists, not so they can make money. They benefit because they get to use the sort of software they'd like to have, and everybody else gets to use it too. If other people get a bit of profit (within reason) for making the software
available to more people, so what?
That is the sort of thing I was interested in, and still am, re the hardware design idea. Guess what? There's quite a few groups like that, and actually I'm quite surprised nobody else mentioned them!
http://www.opencores.org design free HDL type "IP cores" for synthesizing in programmable logic, or even in ASICs if you have the means
They have loads of designs there and have a preferred standard bus for communicating between subcomponents ("Wishbone" apparently).
**broken link removed** is a site that basically links and announces various resources regarding open hardware, whether in terms of software tools or designs or whatever.
http://www.freeio.org/ is, um.. I forget. Somewhere in between either of those I guess
There's probably a few other sites like that I've forgotten or not seen yet. And certainly numerous other groups who had the goal of designing some specific piece of fancy hardware, eg the LART and "Balloon" embedded computer boards, the F-CPU, the LEON CPU(?), and recently spotted, the "Manticore" 3d graphics card! (that seems to be a bit abandoned tho
)
To my mind, this sort of thing makes much more sense. Collaborate openly to make something
because you want it to exist.