Community,
As many of you know may 25th was my last official day at Openmoko.
Since that time I have been focused on two
things: First, putting my Openmoko business in order. There were several
tasks that got cut off midstream by the layoff
and I felt I owed it to the community to see those jobs through to some
sort of conclusion. Having relied on volunteer work
from the community for so long, it only seemed right that I contribute.
I wanted to see the buzz fix program successfully
implemented both in the EU and in North America. With help from Dr.
Schaller, SDG, and Sean I was able to get that
done. Next on my list was the GTA02 core project. When we canceled the
GTA03 Werner and others started a community
effort to do a phone design that was completely community driven. That's
no small task, but it keeps the dream alive so
I will continue to support it. On that front, we have met with some
success. Building Open Source hardware requires money
at some stage, money to buy parts and money to build prototypes.
Openmoko has graciously agreed to donate some components
to the project and I've put Werner in contact with people who can help
with the prototype runs. It's still early and there is a
lot of work to do, so pitch in if you can. I also wanted to see the
foundation work kicked off. And lastly I tried to find some of my
Openmoko friends employment which brings me to the second major thing I
have been working on: Starting a new company.
Wolfgang has alluded to this in a previous post and now is a good
time to let you
all know what we have been up to since late May. In the coming days as
we get the web page together and lists set up
I'll make some announcements and blog about the company and its
mission. The key elements are 1. Using existing hardware rather than
designing new hardware. 2. Focusing the software effort below the user
levels, 3. targeting the linux developer community. The most important
thing from our perspective is that there is no conflict with OM.
Wolfgang and I met with Sean on Saturday and explained our plan. OM will
focus on Project B so there won't be any conflict. We also agreed that
in the future the two companies will be able to find ways to work
together with OM perhaps picking up some of our products and applying
their focus-- Industrial design and user interface.
I'll be back to announce the name of the company in the coming week
or so as we build out the web page. You can write me
here or at my personal gmail account. (moshersteven@)
Best Regards All,
Steve.
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