I was looking over Particle’s Particle Source page and I don’t see anything about the Photon in the Firmware section. The Photon uses the Broadcom BCM43362 Wi-Fi chip and that is not open source nor is it open hardware. I know you can download the wiced libraries from broadcom’s website but can you download the schematics for the Broadcom BCM43362? Since you have to download those files from broadcom’s website without a account. Does that make the Particle Photon only partially open source and partially open hardware?
Particle is waiting for licensing approval to release the modified WICED libraries used to build the Photon library.
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Yes it’s still open source - the materials we publish allow you to build your own Photon hardware and program it with firmware entirely without involvement from Particle. Open source refers to our code and designs.
Open Source doesn’t imply that all components are open source all the way down. If that were the case, there would be no such thing as open source software running on OS X or Windows. The open source nature of the Photon is at least on par with the Core, and will be considerably better once we have the go-ahead from WICED to publish their sources. Some components will probably never be released, such as the full working details of the BCM43362, and the firmware that runs on it. Even so, that has no bearing on the Photon - it is still open source.