Den måndagen den 30:e december 2013 kl. 23:08:42 UTC+1 skrev dave: > > Allow me to add my support (AKA 2 cents) to this thread. Noting elsewhere > that CircuitCo has shipped over 100,000 units to date, if the cost had > included a couple of dollars for software development, that money could > have been put to good use. Also adding to the comment on TI, if they don't > provide support leading to the demand for the chip, the product will die. > It is in the interest of both TI and CircuitCo to see that at least one > underlying OS gets supported and will be around for a while. (At this point > I don't really care if it's Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or even Slackware!) >
I think that a Semiconductor company should be responsible for the boot loader and the kernel, and provide a Yocto compliant layer which shows how to build the BSP. The smart Semiconductor company will ensure that all stuff is merged with the mainstream kernel, and should not like T.I. maintain its own SDK. When I worked at Atmel, there was a lot of discussions, but they eventually adopted this approach. The kernel + BSP is maintained on github, and frequently merged with mainlina. Freescale has been particularity bad on this, and they typically released a kernel, and then only patched this kernel, so eventually you end up with a 2-3 year old kernel with hundreds of patches. They claim that they have adopted a sane approach with the iMX6, but this is priced way above the AM335x, making it unattractive for cost reasons. It is not their expertise to provide something similar to Debian, so I think they should avoid this. Asking the semiconductor company to support each and every variant of a graphic LCD screen, probably also won't happen Touchscreen same thing. An internal touch screen controller, yes. Capacitive touch with an external chip: only if it is available on a development kit. Most serious customer has a single configuration, and do not need the flexibility of capes. It is specific to the Beaglebone, and thus it is not the responsibility of TI to support it. Cape functionality can be handled through writing a new device tree file. Some help in writing such files, would be nice, but it is not there at the moment. It is unlikely that large customers use Beagleboard at all, except for prototyping. For any decent volume, people are building their own board. For a company the size of TI, the Beaglebone project is interesting, but not critical. If you add lets say 2$ for each Beaglebone, this is $200,000, which will pay for 1-2 man years max, This is not enough to support a full blown operating system, so a board vendor can provide some support, but not something which is off the shelf fully tested. If you want to get a tested linux, with warranty, then you have to sign a contract with a large company like Wind River or Mentor, and then we are talking about orders of magnitude higher cost than the Beaglebone. Moving to Debian will help somewhat, but it will not fix problems with the kernel, nor will it handle beagleboard specific things like capes. > > On my part, I just want an embedded system with Linux that "Just Runs!" I > place myself at a level slightly higher than novice since I have used (PC > based) Linux in previous projects. Admittedly, this platform is new and > there will be some pain in getting there, but I don't like seeing comments > of the nature that XXX OS is/will no longer be supported. I want to see > support from both TI and CircuitCo to ensure the continuing support of > their product. I just want to know that my efforts are not headed for the > proverbial drain even before I get it running. > > On Monday, December 30, 2013 4:37:10 PM UTC-5, Mike Bremford wrote: >> >> Aha, well that certainly explains it. Yes, I'd chip in to get cape >> support added to one of Robert's more recent (3.12 or 3.13) kernels with >> stable USB. Myself, I'd also be willing to pay slightly more per board >> (reasonable, as the result would be a better product), but I realise that's >> more contentious. >> >> >> On 30 December 2013 20:52, Gerald Coley <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Circuitco, breaks even, barely. Beagleboard.org makes no money at all. >>> >>> TI, well they make a little of the chips, but provides no funding for >>> BeagleBoard.org. >>> >>> Anyone willing to donate some funds so we can fund some SW developers? >>> >>> Gerald >>> >>> >> -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
