For your comments...
Submission form Have a great idea for helping a lot of people? Submit it here. The first three questions are required for submitting your Project 10100 idea, but we won't display any of this personal data on the website or disclose it to third parties without your explicit permission. Note: Please note that the information you have entered will be lost if you leave the page without submitting the idea. 1. Name 2. Mailing address: 3. Email address: 4. Language: All this information will appear on the public site as part of your submission. 5. Nickname: (How you want to be named as the author of this submission?) 6. City: 7. Country: 8. Your idea's name (maximum 50 characters): Open Hardware 9. Please select a category that best describes your idea. Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures? Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families? Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy? Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem? Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives? Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education? Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live? Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all. [Education? Community?] 6 small boxes, 1 great idea... 10. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters) Computer hardware based on Free Software principles 11. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words) Support a community of people and companies interested in producing computer hardware that truly supports the principles of Free and Open Source Software. Free Software has changed our lives, allowing us to remove ourselves from the control of companies like Microsoft and other proprietary vendors who dictate what we can do with our computers. They lock up their secrets, stifling innovation, while Free Software allows us to focus on improving our lives. Now, we should take control away from the hardware vendors like Intel, ATI, nVidia, Broadcom and so many others who exercise just as much control. Hardware is expensive to produce, so a sound business model is required to make it work, and indeed that sort of business can be highly profitable. But just because hardware isn't zero-cost doesn't mean it can't be Free. Our objective is to support companies that produce hardware documented at every level so that FOSS drivers are easy to develop and these devices can be made to "just work" with our favorite Free operating systems. With that level of openness, we also open up opportunities for education, where those who would otherwise never had the chance can learn to design their own circuit boards, chips, and complete working computers and peripherals. 12. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words) Anyone who has tried to use a graphics card or wireless Ethernet card with Linux or BSD understands the problem. Vendors don't document their hardware well enough for us to write FOSS drivers. Even with ATI and Intel recently releasing FOSS drivers, there is still critical code locked up in the BIOS that makes it difficult or impossible to support non-x86 platforms. Whether or not the hardware you own or want to buy can be used with Free Software is often a crapshoot. 13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words) Anyone who uses computers, particularly users of Linux and BSD variants. Those who value their freedom, and those who value their time, not wanting to waste it on struggling with unsupported hardware. 14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words) The initial steps have been set up. The Open Graphics Project, Open Hardware Foundations, and Traversal Technology are high-profile players, as well as web sites like OpenCores and Open Collector. All of them are underfunded. Google should connect with those organizations, take advantage of the existing talent, and aid in the development of new open hardware products. 15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words) The minimal measure of success would be at least one company being financially self-sustaining on selling a diverse array of open hardware products. Ideally, many more companies would start opening up the deeper internals of their designs. 16. I agree to Project 10100's terms of service The following fields are optional: 17. You may also submit 1 YouTube video (max 30 seconds long) explaining your project. View video guidelines Enter the URL of your YouTube video. 18. If you'd like to recommend a specific organization, or the ideal type of organization, to execute your plan, please do so here. (maximum 50 words) The Open Graphics Project (http://www.opengraphics.org) [It might be better to list the OHF instead, since the OHF web site is nicer] 19. Email me when the voting period begins. 20. If my idea isn't chosen in this program, please contact me about organizations that are interested in funding it. Finally, please note that you can't revise your submission once it's live, so make sure you've included all the relevant information before you click "Submit." [Yeah, what are we missing?] -- Timothy Normand Miller http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti Open Graphics Project _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
