Hi Gennady, I'm proud of your answer. My idea for the future is based on the FR story. Building a device, that should be sold & used immediatly after opening the box (not 2 years after ;-) ). So the nobody person, with just an idea of FOSS (or not) will be taunted, and everyone like here too. That's why FR got those problems : OS lacks. The hardware is still good now, 3 or 4 years after which is ENORMOUS on this market. It has some 'marketing issues' : no camera, no Faceboob application, but it was the first. And we can compare it to a teenager, not knowing how to handle his body. So no credibility.
Now we have Android that can be ported & being used a the commercial argument. So the software won't be a problem for the customer. Then if we have enough power inside the beast to let developpers have fun with it, it would be a double win ! And as you said, the Community is there, and as clever as active, so, it won't be a problem to find answers & more ideas of what to do. This project can represent a 'step 2' of the Freerunner/Free phone adventure, there is one big chance to do something this way, and I will do whatever I can to make it happen. AstHrO. On 06/10/2010 21:59, Gennady Kupava wrote: > Hey, Paul, disagree with your idea about impossibility of commercial > success of opensource device. > > Declaimer: all things below is just my opinion, which is formed mostly > by reading community ml from time to time in past. It would be > interesting to read where and why i am wrong. :) > > В Срд, 06/10/2010 в 22:31 +0400, Paul Fertser пишет: > >> openm...@pulster.de (Christoph Pulster) writes: >> >>> an intelligent marketing idea. My idea on the later is, to point the >>> finger in the Apple direction and naming the evil by name. >>> > It already has at least 1 good idea, no other smartphones have - OS and > hardware separation. > > >> On a related note, i think there's no commercial future with such a >> device. >> > >> Openmoko proved that. >> > Sorry, but openmoko proved only that it is really possible to make open > phone. > > >> Too few interested people, really too few. >> > Now imagine, linus tovalds wrote linux initially... alone. yeah. it > wrote it while big DOSes, Solarises, BSDs, MacOSes, mimixes, already > existed and were fully functional. Yeah, OS he did lack of all features, > had no chances to compete with that big giants, it were complete crap. > Were this 'too much people'? > > >> Despite Freerunner still being the only one. >> > Bwware, big portion of critics below: > > Why freerunner commercially failed (is it truth at all btw?), my > version: > > 1. People got scarified with tons of grave software bugs (WSOD, > partition table corruption, sd card speed, graphical subsystem speed, > overall FR speed, events/0, debug kernel, that just _i_ know). All this > were fixable, What would happen if all this were fixed in a week after > FR release? > > 2. People scarified by core openmoko's own _developers_ who declare > various subsystems are 'outdated' (CPU) or 'wrong' (glamo), and did nice > PR. And all this were not really true. HW is good enought to do many > things. > > 3. Community managment may be much better. I am usure if openmoko had > dedicated guy to spend all time managing community. I saw some mails > from people who offer help, unanswered. Yes, may be some offers were > funny, may be 50% of that people will do nothing, but other 50% may > easily build excellent community and greatly help project. I guess this > is main cause of 'few people'. > > 4. Team were too small to handle such huge innovative project as > freerunner (completely new software stack, adapt linux from almost 0 to > be usable on such multifunctional device) from almost 0 to commercial > success in reasonable time. One man did qt/x11. Other man did whole > kernel and bootloader. One more man did testing. Yeahhh. One more whole > graphical subsystem. > > 5. Tons of hardware bugs on initial release. And knowing that all them > were fixed... just proves that it were possible to fix that faster, with > bigger team. > > 6. Openmoko's team fixed problems is complete weird way. They did one > interface, found it has some problems and instead of fixing problems > they used qt interface, then instead of fixing problems of qt they > switched to fso&e17, which i bet, still has problems on it's own. > Instead of careful calculation why their device is slow and how fast it > should be, then solved boot speed problem with disabling logs. Instead > of fixing grave issues they draw fancy boot pictures. Instead of fixing > u-boot Qi were implemented. (just things _i_ noticed) > > 7. Raster need special mentioning. Being smart and very professional > man, he thought only about his own project, refusing to optimize latest > interface for FR, injecting myths about hw slowness (320x200, 16 bit > graphics, glamo bus speed, etc) and injecting that myths in _smart way_. > This scarified poor community even more. > > All this bad PR were magnified greatly by openess of project > (_magnified_), open ML, open communications. > > So, as you can see, not much in this list is related to word 'open' or > open source at all. And problems with community size are not related to > word 'open', i can say all this sounds more as problem of small team > attempting to do huge thing in commercial way. > > And, as a conclusion - as it's possible to evade most of problems in > list, and do not create others: all depends on people who making > project, and bit of luck, and i think, it's perfectly possible to do > nice opensource device. > > One may disagree and say that direct communication between developers > and customers created varous problems like (2) (man say something in > public, then should stand to death on his position), but this is only > small part of question and depends on personalities. > > This mail look like hardcore rant to openmoko and FR, but in fact i > think that people did great job - now several opensource stacks exist > and very open phone exist, and community exist. This is great and very > hacky :) > > >> I'd tend to agree >> with Raster who says "Let's get an open enough consumer device that >> can be sold to the masses and hack on it". >> > Keyword is 'sold to masses'. All other words are not important, you may > rephrase Raster's idea "Let's do ... device that can be sold to the > masses ... ". I bet such device will make Raster happy :) > > Gennady. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Openmoko community mailing list > community@lists.openmoko.org > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community > _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
