I'd like to start with some more comments about the release of the RTL. One concern is being ripped off. But some have suggested that is unlikely. Whether it does or not, there's another factor that's even more important.
The issue at hand is OGA becoming functionally obsolete from a revenue perspective. If someone undercuts us, and they take away too much business, that obsoletes the design. We should be sure that when the RTL is released (under a Free Software license--it could be released sooner under a much more restrictive license), we should suffer very little from the revenue going suddenly to zero. But an even bigger concern is that of how customers and business partners will perceive us now "giving away for free" our design. To many, even if we're the only source for the hardware, it's still valueless when we have no trade secrets protecting it. Others will assume we don't care about it anymore and will therefore EOL it, so they'll be uninterested when it comes to anything the least bit long-term. Old-school business people will see nothing but disadvantages to having our design completely open and will therefore dismiss it outright. To many corporate users of Linux, they see it only as a way for THEM to save money on software licensing; nothing more, nothing less. Free Software doesn't really hold any intrinsic value to them other than to increase profit margins. Let's be realistic (or at least conservative) about our sales estimates for OGA-based boards and chips. Hundreds of individual people will buy an OGC board right off. Hundreds does not sustain a business. Linux hardware vendors will be the next to pick it up, but they'll be slow to adopt it (often due to general sluggishness of the way businesses work when acquiring new products). Even when OGC1 is listed as an option, ATI and nVidia cards will still be at the top of the list, and hardware vendors who sell servers don't give a damn about graphics--the unaccelerated nv driver is more than enough. Linux hardware vendors are businesses too, with a need to make profit and cranky customers to deal with. Precisely just how "free" the graphics card is is a minor point in the grand scheme of things. Mind you, OGC1 could sell 100 thousand in the first month. Who knows! But we can't count on that. This is why we're assuming we'll sell primarily to so-called high-end embedded. That is, small systems used in kiosks, single-board computers, high-end handhelds, etc. In the embedded space we're after, price is the most important thing, followed by ease of using the dev kit; performance, features, and power consumption come in last as a practical matter, but the buzzwords sell things. This market doesn't care about Free Software, but they DO care about sustainable supply, which is threatened by us ostensibly devaluing it by "giving it away for free." Traversal cannot be fighting an ideological battle with a vocal minority in the FOSS community that thinks software and hardware development are magic (to quote someone I was just talking to who can identify himself if he likes). They want a free ride, in part because they don't think software (or hardware) development takes any effort (or don't care that it does). [We talk about FOSS developers being demanding towards hardware vendors, but many FOSS users are much more demanding towards the FOSS developers.] The economics of this is over their heads, or they're just anti-capitalist; who knows. They're a minorty, but they're really good at specious arguments that too-easily lead others astray, blindly repeating arguments about things needing to be "libre" without understanding what that really means or that achieving freedom is a gradual process or that freedom is also a responsibility or that freedom is not the same as anarchy. We at Traversal just need to DO OUR JOB, which is to develop the hardware. The political battles need to be fought elsewhere. This is where the OHF comes in. While Traversal isolates the OHF from the hassles and risks of dealing with a corporate world that does not share our values, the OHF needs to isolate Traversal from the political battles. The OHF will be a representative body made up of appointed and elected representatives of the FOSS community at large. The OHF needs to be made up of smart people who have the community's needs in mind and understand the value of what we're trying to do here and work to protect that. To the OHF, Traversal is a vital tool, something they desperately need to achieve their goals of having open hardware, so the OHF is in a position of great responsibility, where they need to make sure that Traversal does not fail or become obsolete. Similarly, Traversal cannot design products without feedback from the community or sustain a community developer base without the OHF. I don't ever want to have to have Traversal say it's too soon to release the RTL. This will just make us look greedy and willing to go back on our promises. Rather, I want the RTL to be in the hands of the OHF, people who are not part of Traversal, and I want them to be the ones to recognize when it's safe or not to release it. This way, if sales of OGC1 are much lower than expected, and we have to wait longer before starting OGA2, Traversal can share that with the OHF, and the OHF can be the ones to take the blame, so to speak. The point is that it's the community's decision, and the community representatives still have the RTL in their possession. If Traversal has sensitive financial information that cannot be publically released, we can privately share it with OHF members so that they can objectively see our situation. Traversal will live or die based on the wisdom of the FOSS community. Please don't let us die. It's important that people understand my motives and view of myself here. I'm the founder of the OGP, because I want to have an open graphics card in every computer I own. I'm a Linux geek with an unwavering belief in the power of freedom. Closed-source software takes away certain freedoms from people that they should be allowed to retain. I do believe in someone's right to copyright and license their work however they choose, but I don't have to appreciate every possible choice. I believe in the GPL not for the free ride but for the power that it puts in the hands of so many people working together to advance computing technology and enhance everyone's lives with it. To me, having an open graphics card is a huge step in the right direction. Primarily, I don't see myself as president of Traversal. That's just a responsibility I've taken on as a necessary step in achieving our goals (and an expensive and inconvenient thing at that). Primarily, I see myself as a person who has both a strong technical background and an intense desire to accomplish something with it, just like so many other FOSS developers. Although I love talking with people, designing graphics chips is what I want to do most of all. I'm an engineer, not a businessman. I'm just wearing the businessman hat as a means to get to design more graphics cards. This is my personal itch, and I desperately want to scratch it. The OGP (a loose-knit group of interested individuals), the OHF (an organized elected body of FOSS developers interested in open hardware), and Traversal (a group of engineers and business people) are not separable. They're different organs in the same body. First, there was the OGP, and out of that will have grown Traversal and the OHF, integral, necessary steps to achieve the plan. Without one, all the rest suffer, stagnate, and die. [Perhaps it's best not to think of Traversal as referring to any particular people. There are just Andy, Howard, and Tim, members of the OGP, who have put together a corporate identity as a means to do their part of the bigger plan. Similarly, I will not think of OHF members as being in any way dissociated from the OGP.] Let's make this work, because we all need it. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
