Re: tangoGPS and good user experience
Marcus Bauer a écrit , Le 11/04/2010 22:07: On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:01:23 +0200 Gilles Filippini p...@debian.org wrote: BTW I've found gpsd upstream very responsive each time I've submitted a bug to them. Currently there are 5 different GPS API's * gpsd old (pre 2.92) * gpsd new * Maemo * moblin * fso As gpsd just dropped its own dbus interface and maemo plus moblin will be meego, it would be great if gpsd would implement the meego dbus interface, thus unifying the various APIs. Doing this, the addition of more fine grained GPS power management would be great: many gps chipsets support a low power mode. For example SIRFIII chips can switch to a 5mW mode with a fix every 10secs (good enough for walking) and the normal mode at 50mW with a continous fix. With a 1000mW battery this means either 20 hours or 200 hours... Last not least do all chips nowadays support AGPS - would be great to have that in gpsd too. You'd better discuss this directly with gpsd upstream. They have a public developer mailing list[1] and an IRC channel[2] where - as already said - I've found them very responsive. Thanks, _g. [1] http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/gpsd-dev [2] #gpsd at irc.freenode.net signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
Hi, as I recently struggled with the same issues I'd like to comment on some of the suggestions On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:19 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.comwrote: ... Most importantly: How should I keep up with work that you're doing upstream between releases? Maintaining the patches that I use is vital to me, and it's harder to do that if I have no idea where you're going upstream--if I have no idea what's going to change out from under me with the next release. I can only second that - I ported my geocaching enhancements from version to version, but am becoming more and more reluctant to do so with every new release. Any public repository would be helpful in distributing and maintaining these features, even if they wouldn't be included immediately in any official release. As I said, I *do* really *like* tangoGPS--I owe you a big thanks for giving me a good base application on which to build! I could not agree more - and yet I'd really appreciate it if the full potential of community driven enhancements would also be available. In the current state, my features collect virtual dust on my HD and will probably never ever see a release, with chances decreasing as I loose interest in developing them further with all the burdens of porting and adapting. I can fully understand Marcus' focus on quality, and TangoGPS is a great result of that approach - but still I hope that someday a reasonable public access is possible with his help instead of forking. Stefan ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: qualitiy is important for tangoGPS
On Sunday 11 April 2010 19:42:23 Marcus Bauer wrote: On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:29:15 +0200 Sander van Grieken san...@3v8.net wrote: No. Just email your patches to Marcus Bauer. Expect no reply nor use of patches. But, you don't have the right to complain. You have the right to fork, though. Well, looks like you are a bit upset that your patch was not accepted Not at all, I don't care, I build my own tangogps. I just warning people what to expect. It's quite different from other GPLed projects. but quality is important for the longterm success of tangoGPS. Yes that's why GPL projects usually attempt to also build a _developer_ community. Criteria for software quality are (amongst others): * correctness (i.e. bug free) * maintainability * robustness Your patch about speed-up is very invasive in core parts of tangoGPS, was not well documented, not minimalistic and introduced several bugs. Yes all true, there were some issues still that needed attention, and I didn't expect you to merge it in. I expected some feedback on the direction though. Never got it (until now :) In general it falls in the category of premature optimisation which will cause enhancements like other map datums as WGS84 or other projections as Merkatoor significantly more difficult and error prone. Nonsense. I mean, reloading and parsing all PNG tiles on every map drag? come on, you can do better than that. And other projections? BS, you're just stacking tiles. That's not premature optimisation, that's called caching. There is plenty of documentation about how to contribute to open source projects and my advice is to check that first. Very funny. Where is the mailing list, where's the bugtracker, where's the public tree, where's the *feedback*? If you're really interested in the long-term success of TangoGPS I suggest you start building on the developer community aspects. I know it's hard to let other developers make changes to your project, but you're still the owner of your own tree, and decide what has high enough quality standards for you. For not-quite-ready patches (like mine), there's a thing called branches, which you can use to give other devs a place for their work. Another option is to use a bugtracker, where patches can be attached to bug descriptions. At least then developers don't get the impression that their hours of work fall into a deep black void. If you don't set up this critical infrastructure, or even have the courtesy to give feedback on patches, eventually all interested developers lose interest. grtz, Sander ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customers
On 09 Apr 2010 12:37:00 +0200 openm...@pulster.de (Christoph Pulster) said: Perhaps I should clarify that I don't mean to make fun of your situation. We're all in the same boat here. No problem Werner, all your optinions and comments are very welcome. As you already said, companiess who built a solution based on the Openmoko need a reliable product AND a reliable company behind. The product, Freerunner, had a lot severe bugs (GPS not working, GSM buzzing, #1024 suspend problems). Also after fixing this with new revisions and third partys (Dr.Nikolaus), the product is not ready to compete in the market. Very poor battery life to mention just one serious no-go. The company Openmoko Inc. missed to give customers a reliable support and long-term concept. The open idea stopped behind the doors, no info about stock availability, spare parts supply etc. CEO Sean is an visionary, not a sales guy. Steve Mosher's part of the game was not evident. (BTW, what is the status of Steve according Qi ?) I had a project asking for 2500 units as a first order only. Openmoko Inc. failed to provide this customer a infrastructure. this is the problem with phones. the big boys are beginng to get it - but for them 2500 units is what they do for a verification run - and then throw out. they don't get up out of bed in the morning for a request for 2500 units. :) they will want at least 2 or 3 zeros added to that to even give you the time of day. openmoko never made it to be big enough to continue - and ye once you get big enough, the kind of thing you talk about no longer make business sense (as you are busy shopping around to telcos who will order millions of devices). catch 22 :-S I can confirm sold units worldwide is 20.000 maximum. which is a very poor result and can not give a living for anyone. The game openmoko was only possible with the financial injection of FIC. the funds are gone, the Wikireader is an anachronistic product and will not give any cashback. Not to misunderstand, the game opensource is just starting. if you need to, remember Openmoko as a early hero. Christoph ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- - Codito, ergo sum - I code, therefore I am -- The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)ras...@rasterman.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
2010/4/12 Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com: So, how *should* I collaborate? What mailing-list should I use? When I fix an upstream bug, in what BTS should I publish the patch? Where can we talk on IRC about current developments in tangoGPS, if anywhere? I agree. After my second translation patch (fixing a few typos and adding a few more translations) was not included, found out only by waiting a few months for the next TangoGPS code drop, I dropped contributing until there is a proper version control system where one can see if changes are committed or not, and a mailing list. It's now been a year or two since that. There is unofficial, non-endorsed IRC channel nowadays. I wouldn't mind if there was an unofficial, non-endorsed version control system and mailing list as well. -Timo ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
how to contribute to open source projects
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:19:26 -0400 Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote: [...] Let me summarize: * you are well aware that forks are potentially damaging * you wrote one patch that was not accepted * now you spread fud and threaten to damage the tangoGPS project Well okay, you certainly have the freedom to damage the tangoGPS project which is a major contribution to the free software world... But: tangoGPS is an excellent piece of software, actively maintained and developed and very focused on the user. Any good quality contribution is highly welcome and this means: User experience first. Developer ego last. And nope, I don't have the time to hang out on IRC - that's because I have plenty of life in the real world. And I guess that's why I develop GPS software - you can make best use of it if you leave your desk and go out. All major software projects have pretty high hurdles of participation. One of the most excellent software projects is certainly Debian - and they are well known for a veeery lengthy process to become a Debian Developer. If you go there, submit an invasive patch to apt and demand to become a Debian Developer or otherwise you fork Debian - well, people will only laugh at you. That's because Debian is so big that your fork wont do any damage. Probably one of the key aspects of tangoGPS is its simplicity, that's why so many people like it. Keeping it that way takes a tremendous amount of discipline and thought. The easier it looks, the more work and the more thought has been spent on it. It is always easy to add more buttons, more menus, more patches more everything. Everybody has different ideas about what is needed and for any feature you will find someone who wants to have it - finally you end up with plenty of buttons everywhere. The totally overloaded toolbars of Openoffice or Word are a good example for this. Under the hood it all this leads to code obesity. It is like eating a cookie here, a cake there, some fish and chips, and one day you wake up and you have to carry 140kg body weight with you around at every step. I found a nice picture about patches: http://www.globalnerdy.com/2009/02/26/always-keep-salt-in-the-server-room/ And patches are like patch-cables: they potentially do something, but the question is how much of an improvement they are and how they are done. There is a good quote of Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. The success of the iPods is a great example for this. Good contributions and long term commitement to tangoGPS are always welcome!! I will stay commited to the user community and the continued success of tangoGPS. My special thanks to all the people who have given me encouragement with their friendly feedback and support, and to all people who have actively contributed, especially packagers and blog-writers. Have fun, Marcus ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:47:55 +0300 Timo Jyrinki timo.jyri...@gmail.com wrote: I wouldn't mind if there was an unofficial, non-endorsed version control system and mailing list as well. Essentially it is the constant threads about forks that have been started and fuelled over and over again by Risto that keep me having always a few aces in my sleeve and restricting access to people who I have confidence that they keep the project over their ego. As long as nobody speaks up and tells them to shut up, I'll certainly keep having aces in my sleeve :-) Nevertheless, this totally doesn't prevent anybody to participate in the development. In any case up to today nobody here came to me and said: hey, how can I help out with the project? and was refused. It is important to show that these are a few -albeit very vocal- people who first want to serve their ego and then the users of the project. The fork shouters are known as poisonous people and they can befall any project. There is a Google talk about the subject from the SVN developers. Marcus ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
Hi Stefan before it gets lost in all the other discussions: I'd still be happy to integrate this. Remarks: * it must be usable for people that have not signed for the 30$ premium account * everything must work from the user interface, command line is not an option * no python dependency - you can use either libsoup or libcurl Send me your last working tarball and I'll have a look and make suggestions or give you a hand. Marcus On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:46:46 +0200 Stefan Fröbe frob...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi, as I recently struggled with the same issues I'd like to comment on some of the suggestions On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:19 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.comwrote: ... Most importantly: How should I keep up with work that you're doing upstream between releases? Maintaining the patches that I use is vital to me, and it's harder to do that if I have no idea where you're going upstream--if I have no idea what's going to change out from under me with the next release. I can only second that - I ported my geocaching enhancements from version to version, but am becoming more and more reluctant to do so with every new release. Any public repository would be helpful in distributing and maintaining these features, even if they wouldn't be included immediately in any official release. As I said, I *do* really *like* tangoGPS--I owe you a big thanks for giving me a good base application on which to build! I could not agree more - and yet I'd really appreciate it if the full potential of community driven enhancements would also be available. In the current state, my features collect virtual dust on my HD and will probably never ever see a release, with chances decreasing as I loose interest in developing them further with all the burdens of porting and adapting. I can fully understand Marcus' focus on quality, and TangoGPS is a great result of that approach - but still I hope that someday a reasonable public access is possible with his help instead of forking. Stefan ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
Hi Marcus, I guess with those prerequisites I won't make any geocaching submission soon - while all the features are usable as long as you have obtained a GPX file with all the data, the conversion to an sqlite3 db is done on the CLI with (one call to) bash/python scripts. Looking at gpxview [1], for example, I do not want to re-implement all that again - and as that program now also compiles cleanly without any Maemo dependancies on my desktop and also has maps support, there might no longer be a point to patching TangoGPS. GPXView just is more specific and may therefore well be the better tool for geocaching. But thanks for the offer, I'll check my history for any other patches I got queued and come back to you, Stefan [1] https://vcs.maemo.org/viewvc/trunk/?root=gpxview before it gets lost in all the other discussions: I'd still be happy to integrate this. Remarks: * it must be usable for people that have not signed for the 30$ premium account * everything must work from the user interface, command line is not an option * no python dependency - you can use either libsoup or libcurl Send me your last working tarball and I'll have a look and make suggestions or give you a hand. Marcus On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:46:46 +0200 Stefan Fröbe frob...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi, as I recently struggled with the same issues I'd like to comment on some of the suggestions On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:19 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.comwrote: ... Most importantly: How should I keep up with work that you're doing upstream between releases? Maintaining the patches that I use is vital to me, and it's harder to do that if I have no idea where you're going upstream--if I have no idea what's going to change out from under me with the next release. I can only second that - I ported my geocaching enhancements from version to version, but am becoming more and more reluctant to do so with every new release. Any public repository would be helpful in distributing and maintaining these features, even if they wouldn't be included immediately in any official release. As I said, I *do* really *like* tangoGPS--I owe you a big thanks for giving me a good base application on which to build! I could not agree more - and yet I'd really appreciate it if the full potential of community driven enhancements would also be available. In the current state, my features collect virtual dust on my HD and will probably never ever see a release, with chances decreasing as I loose interest in developing them further with all the burdens of porting and adapting. I can fully understand Marcus' focus on quality, and TangoGPS is a great result of that approach - but still I hope that someday a reasonable public access is possible with his help instead of forking. Stefan ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
2010/4/12 Marcus Bauer marcus.ba...@gmail.com: Essentially it is the constant threads about forks that have been started and fuelled over and over again by Risto that keep me having always a few aces in my sleeve and restricting access to people who I have confidence that they keep the project over their ego. I don't know what egos you are discussing (I haven't followed previous TangoGPS discussions that closely). You can restrict any access even if you allow read-only following of the development version source control. It's essential for any open source development project with more than one person interested in developing it. The fear of forks is probably simply because currently there is no way to really have a development project where others than one person can eventually affect the future of the project. E-mail patches without return channel or follow-up possibility does not really work. Anyway, I personally wouldn't want a fork, if it can be avoided. The developer community, if there is more than one person, just completely needs developer tools like version control and mailing lists, which are currently not available for this project, and have been in absence even despite months of silence on the front (so no shutting up of anyone needed). I was thinking about a system where latest source code is imported and patches can be tracked, which are applied, which are pending review, which are rejected etc. -Timo ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customers
Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote: In business strategy planning it is quite common to separate e.g. consumer, project, service, solution business types and markets because they have quite different requirements and attitudes Yes, I was familiar with the concept but I didn't know the term project customer. I used terms like integrator and similar, which cover only part of the activities. Project customer is much more precise. I'm happy I finally found the word for them :) At least one visitor during our presence at the SYSTEMS 2008 fair expressed he is interested in 6 units [...] Hmm, if we assume a contribution towards RD and QA of about USD 50 per device, that would be 3 millions. A while ago, Maddog and I did a rough estimate of how much it would cost to make a new phone, similar in style to gta02-core, but with updated components, etc. We came up with a cost of about 2.5 millions before production (but including transfer, certification, etc.). This visitor may be one of those who would have enough resources to have their own design made (*), but may not realize it. (*) With the proviso that modules are used for most or all the RF parts. A design with RF components at the chip level would add difficulties and increase development cost. So for successful project business, one must either provide a product that is available for 5-7 years or at least a consistent roadmap/upgrade plan. I think either is very difficult to provide for an entire device using mobile phone technology. But I think that much of the push towards technological change can be buffered by having an Open design - one may not be able to avoid changing the bare metal, but interfaces and the software layers above the hardware can live as long as anyone cares to keep them alive. - Werner ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customers
Carsten Haitzler wrote: day. openmoko never made it to be big enough to continue - and ye once you get big enough, the kind of thing you talk about no longer make business sense (as you are busy shopping around to telcos who will order millions of devices). catch 22 :-S This is where an Open hardware design can help :-) No matter which role you play, you always have the purchase power of the whole group behind you. Openmoko Inc. found many doors open that would normally be closed for such a flyspeck of a company, because it promised manufacturers access to the Linux market. The Open hardware design also increases the scalability - the small garage company that makes 100 customized phones for the local shopping mall has access to the same design resources and can have access to much of the production resources as the largest member of the group. - Werner ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:32:59 +0200 Stefan Fröbe frob...@googlemail.com wrote: I guess with those prerequisites I won't make any geocaching submission soon - while all the features are usable as long as you have obtained a GPX file with all the data, the conversion to an sqlite3 db is done on the CLI with (one call to) bash/python scripts. Well, .LOC should be possible and for reading GPX files there is already code in tangoGPS. Running a loop over the GPX and inserting it in a db is probably in a few dozen lines of code possible. I could have a look into it. Up to you. Marcus ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customers
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:19:43 -0300 Werner Almesberger wer...@openmoko.org said: Carsten Haitzler wrote: day. openmoko never made it to be big enough to continue - and ye once you get big enough, the kind of thing you talk about no longer make business sense (as you are busy shopping around to telcos who will order millions of devices). catch 22 :-S This is where an Open hardware design can help :-) No matter which role you play, you always have the purchase power of the whole group behind you. Openmoko Inc. found many doors open that would normally be closed for such a flyspeck of a company, because it promised manufacturers access to the Linux market. too late for that. the others are in on the game. and now being open enough is all that's needed. window of opportunity for om and the likes has closed - or at the best is very close to closed. The Open hardware design also increases the scalability - the small garage company that makes 100 customized phones for the local shopping mall has access to the same design resources and can have access to much of the production resources as the largest member of the group. depends on who is buying the units to make it scale - if it's a telco, chances are they want it far from being open - that includes the hw design. chaning that doesn't come from a small company like om screaming. it comes from someone big enough to change the rules and power balance so its you have to come to us and beg for a phone - then we set the rules. apple are in such a position right now for example. :) -- - Codito, ergo sum - I code, therefore I am -- The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)ras...@rasterman.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
Aces in your sleeve? You mean you're keeping the development process intentionally closed to discourage forkers? What? There's no reason you can't have a public SVN with read only access to everyone except your chosen few. Google code or sourceforge would work fine. Why does all this discussion go on in the openmoko mailing list anyway? Why don't you have your own project forums/bug tracking/mailing list/whatever? On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Marcus Bauer marcus.ba...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:47:55 +0300 Timo Jyrinki timo.jyri...@gmail.com wrote: I wouldn't mind if there was an unofficial, non-endorsed version control system and mailing list as well. Essentially it is the constant threads about forks that have been started and fuelled over and over again by Risto that keep me having always a few aces in my sleeve and restricting access to people who I have confidence that they keep the project over their ego. As long as nobody speaks up and tells them to shut up, I'll certainly keep having aces in my sleeve :-) Nevertheless, this totally doesn't prevent anybody to participate in the development. In any case up to today nobody here came to me and said: hey, how can I help out with the project? and was refused. It is important to show that these are a few -albeit very vocal- people who first want to serve their ego and then the users of the project. The fork shouters are known as poisonous people and they can befall any project. There is a Google talk about the subject from the SVN developers. Marcus ___ 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
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:02:05 -0400 Stephen Pape srp...@gmail.com wrote: Aces in your sleeve? You mean you're keeping the development process intentionally closed to discourage forkers? What? I happily explain it again to you: forks are potentially damaging to any project. Here and actually only here on openmoko there have been some people actually massively aggressing me and threatening me on any occasion with a fork. So yes, you got that right :) I do not always have time to work on tangoGPS and still can do a constant flow of new features. You are a funny man - big scandale that not all my brain activity is monitorable :) I know that RMS would like to enclose all software developers in a gulag with constant thought monitoring - yeah! Any software thought must be freed at once :) Just to mention it: the linux kernel had been developed for the first years purely based on tarballs and patches without any public distributed VCS and collaboration has worked without problems. Simply because in 1992 pretty much nobody had a 24/7 permanent online internet access. It is not as if 80% of the code changes in a week. And it is not as if there would be legions of willing developers. Actually any open source project that I know is short of good developers and much more software doesn't even get developed because people lack skill, focus, energy and long term commitment. Last not least I am replying here because the thread was opened here and because many people have bought Freerunners to run tangoGPS on them. A last word: the vast majority of the members of the Openmoko community are here for the opportunities that open hardware and open software offer. Hwoever a small fraction has a misunderstanding about free software. I have seriously received bizarre emails of people telling me what I have to do because I am a free software developer and as they don't know how to write software I have to do it for them. Best regards, Marcus - creator of successful free software :-) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS is a very successful user orienteted map and gps viewer
Reminds me of the following feature request: when downloading levels N...N+4 (or 5, 6, younameit), please also download all the levels above (it's a negligible fraction of the corresponding disk space and network bandwidth anyway). I.e. instead of downloads N to N+4, it should be download levels 1 to N+4. Stefan ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
[shr-u] key bindings
can someone running shr-u greater then 20100306 please print there key binding action params from illum2? my power key has been altered and i would like to get the default action parms back. thank you to anyone who can do this for me. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
I do not always have time to work on tangoGPS and still can do a constant flow of new features. You are a funny man - big scandale that not all my brain activity is monitorable :) I know that RMS would like to enclose all software developers in a gulag with constant thought monitoring - yeah! Any software thought must be freed at once :) No one is asking you to dump every thought you have for public viewing. I don't think a publicly viewable SVN server, so people have some sense of what's going on, takes it to your extreme scenario. They would, however, like to know if their patch was accepted, if there was a problem with it, or if someone's working on a similar feature at the same time. Just to mention it: the linux kernel had been developed for the first years purely based on tarballs and patches without any public distributed VCS and collaboration has worked without problems. Simply because in 1992 pretty much nobody had a 24/7 permanent online internet access. Sure, that was fine way back then. Times have changed, and people do have 24/7 permanent online internet access. You'll notice the kernel developers shifted away from that development approach. A last word: the vast majority of the members of the Openmoko community are here for the opportunities that open hardware and open software offer. Hwoever a small fraction has a misunderstanding about free software. I have seriously received bizarre emails of people telling me what I have to do because I am a free software developer and as they don't know how to write software I have to do it for them. This has nothing to do with people telling you what to do because they can't write software. I'm not saying you have to give up control and let people hijack the direction you want to go in. I'm saying when someone takes the time and energy required to write a patch, they should know if it's going to be accepted or rejected without having to wait for the next release. They should get a chance to clean it up if there's a problem. There should be discussion so someone can ask if they should even bother doing the work and get feedback. Your current approach discourages anyone from contributing back to you, and yet you discourage anyone from creating a fork. Have you seen the people trying to help? Someone mentioned feeling like they're trying to hit a moving target, while blindfolded, just to help out. Forking is not a bad thing. In fact, sometimes forks end up being more successful than the original project. Xorg from XFree86 ? How about gcc? Apache, maybe? I'd suggest you read this if you have a fear of forking http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/forking.html (WHY LINUX WON'T FORK: And why being able to fork is still A Good Thing) I tried to find something explaining how forking hurts open source software, but I couldn't find any useful results with Google. If someone feels they can do a better job, I'd encourage them to try forking. -Stephen ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customers
Carsten Haitzler wrote: too late for that. the others are in on the game. and now being open enough is all that's needed. window of opportunity for om and the likes has closed - or at the best is very close to closed. I think the advantage is still there, it's just harder to communicate. Also in this regard, Open Design Hardware helps: you still don't get anything like this from the now open players. And from what I've heard and keep on hearing, there are lots of project customers who want to modify the hardware. They often also have the engineering resources to perform their changes. But also doing the rest of the phone would be too much for them. The Open phones would be sort of a reference designs created by the Open hardware development process, but not the one and only results. depends on who is buying the units to make it scale - if it's a telco, chances are they want it far from being open - that includes the hw design. chaning that doesn't come from a small company like om screaming. A small telco may be happy enough to finally be able to brand their products, too. I wouldn't try to deal with large telcos for now. Don't sleep with a girl who eats more than your own weight for breakfast :-) - Werner ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
Hi Stephen, thanks for your feedback - especially as you are a programmer as you once stated on the openmoko mailing list [1]. On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:36:38 -0400 Stephen Pape srp...@gmail.com wrote: but I couldn't find any useful results with Google. Dang! I have exactly the same problem when trying to find 'useful results with Google' when searching for your contributions to Openmoko: stephen pape openmoko - 18 results (2 from this discussion) http://www.google.com/search?hl=enq=%22stephen+pape%22+openmokostart=10 Well, have a nice evening and dream well :-) Marcus [1] http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-April/014875.html ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customer
Hello Christoph, Good luck. Maddog made a lot words about the Brasilian universitary which should continue the Openmoko project. Nothing happend. As far as I know the University still stands ready and willing to help with the GTA02-core project as soon as that is ready to move forward. Professor Zuffo has not de-committed from that project as far as I can see. As to going further than that, the University is still interested in working on an Open Phone. But as I have seen here over the past several days, there does not seem to be much agreement as to how to move that forward. From my viewpoint a bit of this comes from a tacit disagreement in the project as to what is open, and even less of a plan as to how to finance a project that requires real money. Openmoko's financing always seemed to be on a shoestring, and never (for example) included the money to fix problems. Other companies might do a recall and fix the issue at the factory. I think it was by good luck that the different issues that happened with the phone were able to be fixed with a capacitor here and a resistor there..and people stepped up to the bug fix parties...but there are still a lot of people out there with unfixed phones. Also he cooperate with silly companys like Koolu, who bargain Openmoko down to blood and damaged all the project. Koolu had its faults, and I will not say it didn't, but after several days of you writing and lambasting everyone about everything (other than yourself, of course) I think blaming Koolu for damaging all the project is a bit harsh. I had a company in Brazil that was all set to license the designs from Openmoko and manufacture the phone in large quantities. They had a good SMT line, channels to distribute the phone in Brazil, and from Brazil throughout Latin America, and we had a good business plan to market to the VARs that were mentioned in another email. Even though the phone's components were a little dated, we felt we had a good market in people who had to change the OS to create the applications they wished to have for small and medium business. An example of that can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dVch2nSuBA The licensing of the design would have generated money to create the next design. Then we tried to find out where to buy the parts, and how many parts were still being manufactured, and for how long. That was when we began to realize that the marketplace for Openmoko parts was very limited. As several people on this list have mentioned, to create a market for cell phones that is profitable takes hundreds of thousands, or even millions, not tens of thousands. By the time that the company in Brazil ramped up to produce the phone, did the manufacturing and certifications and testing that were necessary, and did the certifications, built the channel, did the advertising, they would probably run out of parts. It would have been unprofitable for them. In the end I recommended that the company not try to produce the Openmoko V7, even though I had spent a lot of time and money helping them evaluate the possibilities. So from my viewpoint, if there was one thing that killed the Openmoko project, it was lack of a thorough, over-all, realistic business plan that showed how the project was going to be sustainable into the future. And the lack of agreement among all of the people involved as to what the marketplace was for the phone. md ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: how to contribute to open source projects
Hi Marcus, Reading your comments, I'd say you're quickly running several steps of How to destroy your community - http://lwn.net/Articles/370157/ I won't go into the details of listing which is which, and please note that my felling on that is *PURELY* based upon your emails and not on what others claim or feel or actually passed through. Rui ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
Okay. I'm not sure what you're getting at, or why you're completely changing the subject to make a personal attack on me over an argument involving software development practices. I haven't been very active with openmoko, so I guess that makes anything I say invalid? And you're the one complaining about developers with egos? You still haven't been able to produce any useful argument about why forking is bad for open source, and how keeping the development process under your own strict control helps open source. Best regards, Marcus - creator of successful free software :-) Maybe you should look inwards regarding your complains about developer ego. I suspect this is why you don't want anyone else forking your code. Good luck. -Stephen On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Marcus Bauer marcus.ba...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Stephen, thanks for your feedback - especially as you are a programmer as you once stated on the openmoko mailing list [1]. On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:36:38 -0400 Stephen Pape srp...@gmail.com wrote: but I couldn't find any useful results with Google. Dang! I have exactly the same problem when trying to find 'useful results with Google' when searching for your contributions to Openmoko: stephen pape openmoko - 18 results (2 from this discussion) http://www.google.com/search?hl=enq=%22stephen+pape%22+openmokostart=10 Well, have a nice evening and dream well :-) Marcus [1] http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-April/014875.html ___ 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
Re: project customer
Christoph Pulster wrote: Good luck. Maddog made a lot words about the Brasilian universitary which should continue the Openmoko project. Nothing happend. I think it's Sao Paulo you're talking about. USP never promised to continue the project (even though the press may have mis-interpreted this) but to give gta02-core free use of their SMT line, which is more than generous by any standard. It's not USP's fault that nothing happened so far. We still need to obtain the components, make the layout, produce the PCB, and only then we can use the SMT facility at the university. - Werner ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: glamo backlight
The correct full sysfs location for JBT should be: /sys/bus/spi/devices/spi2.0/lcd/jbt6k74-lcd/ . Getting the not initialised message indicates that the correct code is compiled into the kernel at least (the message is generated by the JBT driver, and the Glamo driver won't compile without the JBT driver after my dirty hack). If the device really doesn't exist, it'd be good to test with the main 2.6.32 (non-KMS/DRM) branch (without trying to enable DRM in the config, of course). The 2.6.32-gdrm branch will not work with a non-KMS configuration (i.e. normal glamo-fb compiled in) unless by sheer luck. Main Openmoko 2.6.32 without DRM also still doesn't work, as far as I know, but I could be slightly out of date there. I've attached the config I currently use when compiling 2.6.32-gdrm. Are you sure that the backlight is not coming on, rather than it being on but the display being all black? Neither the Glamo nor JBT driver are actually responsible for the backlight coming on - the backlight itself is just an LED-powering output from the PCF chip. Is there anything under /sys/class/backlight? Thanks for your answer... Unfortunately I do not receive the emails. Found the answer on the mailinlist homepage... please cc my address directly, if any. your config file helped !!! CONFIG_BACKLIGHT_PWM=y was missing! furthermore you have: CONFIG_LEDS_TRIGGER_BACKLIGHT=y I had: CONFIG_LEDS_TRIGGER_BACKLIGHT=y so I think it would not be bad to add as many config files as many relevant changes/patchces happen... and maybe they should be named arch/arm/configs/gta02.patch.blahblah so drm works (your example gdrm-waitq etc. etc) I can have fun again with the drm .. :) rgrds, mobi phil being mobile, but including technology http://mobiphil.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: how to contribute to open source projects
Hello Rui, you certainly know that I value your opinion a lot. Just the other day there was a storm going on about a remark of Scott James Remnant from Ubuntu who is an outstanding developer, very much committed to advancing Ubuntu. People who have never done any contribution flooded the bugzilla and flamed him. Foul behaviour needs to be sanctioned, otherwise it ruins the whole basket of apples. User experience is key. Actually I have received several supportive emails today from people that have similar amounts (or more) of Google hits in connection with Openmoko than I do have. As wrong as it is to go for weeks to argue with these people it is to let it go through without response. There were at least three other projects in the last four years with a similar scope than tangoGPS. Where were the people complaining about not being able to participate in the development of tangoGPS when those projects were open for participation, where are their contributions? Foul play needs to be clearly identified and pointed out. I rather doubt that those people have got plenty of invitations today to join other projects but I'd be happy if that would be the case. I don't know what your current main project is, but feel free to invite them. Let me know in 4 years if they are still actively contributing and I'll cover myself in ashes :-) Have fun with them and please take them away from me and thousands of happy tangoGPS users and integrate them in your projets :p Marcus On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:17:30 +0100 Rui Miguel Silva Seabra r...@1407.org wrote: Hi Marcus, Reading your comments, I'd say you're quickly running several steps of How to destroy your community - http://lwn.net/Articles/370157/ I won't go into the details of listing which is which, and please note that my felling on that is *PURELY* based upon your emails and not on what others claim or feel or actually passed through. Rui ___ 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
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:19:25 -0400 Stephen Pape srp...@gmail.com wrote: Okay. I'm not sure what you're getting at, or why you're completely changing the subject to make a personal attack on me over an argument involving software development practices. So when you use Google it is okay and when I use Google it is a personal attack? Hey, you are such a cutie :-) You should try to sue Google for diffamation - you could get rich quick! :D And I will join you because Linus Torvalds and Openmoko has a lot more Google hits than me and that guy has never done any work on Openmoko at all. I'll right tomorrow write him an email about what's wrong with his completely fair scheduler. I think there are situations where it is not fair enough. And I'll be really upset if he disregards my email just because I have never contributed to the kernel (almost at least). Maybe you should look inwards regarding your complains about developer ego. I have scheduled 4 hours for this task next weekend. You think that's enough? Good luck. Thank you. And thank you for your example that the best way for avoiding questions about forking is not to make any open source software at all. ...gosh, what a cutie Stephen is... :D HAVE FUN. Last mail, day over. Thanks guys. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)
Now it's just getting silly. So when you use Google it is okay and when I use Google it is a personal attack? Hey, you are such a cutie :-) You're just twisting words and sidestepping arguments. You used Google to specifically try and prove that I don't know what I'm talking about. You're turning a discussion on development methodology into name calling. (Cutie? Really?) I used Google looking for an argument against forking, trying to figure out what you're talking about. You keep saying it hurts open software. As far as I can tell, the open software community seems to think the ability to fork at any time is a major benefit. You can get around projects that have limitations or refuse to move forward. If your fork fails, it's no big deal, but there's always a chance that it'll become the next great thing. Of course you don't want to discuss it, it's easier to be petty and make it personal. You should try to sue Google for diffamation - you could get rich quick! :D And I will join you because Linus Torvalds and Openmoko has a lot more Google hits than me and that guy has never done any work on Openmoko at all. Who said anything about suing anyone? When did I ever indicate that I care who has more Google hits? I couldn't care less. This isn't a competition for fame, stop making it out to be one. I'll right tomorrow write him an email about what's wrong with his completely fair scheduler. I think there are situations where it is not fair enough. And I'll be really upset if he disregards my email just because I have never contributed to the kernel (almost at least). I'm not challenging your code itself, or telling you that you don't know what you're doing. It's not comparable to your example. Thank you. And thank you for your example that the best way for avoiding questions about forking is not to make any open source software at all. When did I make an example that you should make closed source software to avoid questions about forking? Obviously you're going to continue being unreasonable, and now you're down to name calling and blatantly making things up, so I won't bother with this line of discussion anymore. I feel bad for all of the developers that want to help. I wouldn't want to have to work with you. -Stephen ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customer
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:39:28 -0300 Werner Almesberger wer...@openmoko.org said: Christoph Pulster wrote: Good luck. Maddog made a lot words about the Brasilian universitary which should continue the Openmoko project. Nothing happend. I think it's Sao Paulo you're talking about. USP never promised to continue the project (even though the press may have mis-interpreted this) but to give gta02-core free use of their SMT line, which is more than generous by any standard. It's not USP's fault that nothing happened so far. We still need to obtain the components, make the layout, produce the PCB, and only then we can use the SMT facility at the university. ah. components - where so much fun happens :) -- - Codito, ergo sum - I code, therefore I am -- The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)ras...@rasterman.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customers
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:52:03 -0300 Werner Almesberger wer...@openmoko.org said: Carsten Haitzler wrote: too late for that. the others are in on the game. and now being open enough is all that's needed. window of opportunity for om and the likes has closed - or at the best is very close to closed. I think the advantage is still there, it's just harder to communicate. Also in this regard, Open Design Hardware helps: you still don't get anything like this from the now open players. if it's hard to communicate - you don't have a sales point. if someone is to spend money on something they need to be able to be told a simple thing and get it and go aha! that's just what we want!. until the market is actively seeking the kind of freedom you want to provide (schematics, cad design, 100% open source os in all ways), you are the guy in the street with a sign i have anchovie flavored chocolate. you really want some. the problem here is the market is happy with good enough. at least the market that buys millions of units. :) (that's why i mean by market btw - ie the mass market. of course niches will exist!) :) And from what I've heard and keep on hearing, there are lots of project customers who want to modify the hardware. They often also have the engineering resources to perform their changes. But also doing the rest of the phone would be too much for them. The Open phones would be sort of a reference designs created by the Open hardware development process, but not the one and only results. sure - but it seems those project customers want to feed off a stable supply line - and for that you need a mass market to consume it to have that production and thus supply line run to keep costs down, ensure basic quality of build, design, components etc. (thus why i focus on mass market). depends on who is buying the units to make it scale - if it's a telco, chances are they want it far from being open - that includes the hw design. chaning that doesn't come from a small company like om screaming. A small telco may be happy enough to finally be able to brand their products, too. I wouldn't try to deal with large telcos for now. Don't sleep with a girl who eats more than your own weight for breakfast :-) hahahahahahahahahhaha! :) maybe - the the small telcos are competing with bigger ones. the big ones get to attract customers with oooh we have an iphone! or check out this droid. branding is a nice to have... *IF* you can match the competition. you need to get there first before small telco might consider it. remember telco is trying to sell these phones to average joes - and those average joes see shiny sexy iphone, then see a freerunner... guess which one (and which telco) they choose? :) i know that to you, or to many freedom advocates all this fancy eyecandy, sexy design, high end components etc. seems all irrelevant to the goal of freedom - and if anything makes it harder, and you have a point - but that point imho vanishes with the market realities - to produce enough units to keep cost down, keep production flowing etc. you need mass market appeal. and that means matching, or beating, the competition in h i like that for the average joe. that means sexy swishy animations, beautiful graphics, good screen, responsive touch surface (capacitive), nice case/design, powerful cpu/gpu to power all the sexiness, 3g, and then apps and lots of them and so on... you need to at least provide what people now EXPECT from a phone. yes... even make and receive calls from reliably from day 1 the phone ships. :) it's a tough spot. what i see as more viable is making those that already produce phones, more open, and gradually prying things open. getting schematics is likely to simply never happen - you are talking different cultures even within such companies. the hardware sides just don't even want to hear the arguments. the software sides either get it already (and fight internally politically, or have tough tradeoffs to make - like making it more open will make your big customers go away as they can't close it down as easily), or are beginning to get it. life would be easy if they all already got it and did it. but... that's not the case. the closest to an open production-level phone today is the n900 - and it has been a pretty rocky start there. -- - Codito, ergo sum - I code, therefore I am -- The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)ras...@rasterman.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customer
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:08:08 -0400 Jon 'maddog' Hall mad...@li.org said: yo maddog!! btw - before i launch in... i'm biased towards maddog - he's always been a well intentioned chap at a minimum, if not and experienced and seasoned veteran who really cares about open - in my experience that has been open source. i'd trust maddog with a LOT (ok - not my code... sorry maddog - i'm not letting you near my pixel processing stuff! :)), but... when it comes to contacts, strategy, industry, ideas, cheering openness on - and more, i'd have maddog in the mix. so... Hello Christoph, Good luck. Maddog made a lot words about the Brasilian universitary which should continue the Openmoko project. Nothing happend. As far as I know the University still stands ready and willing to help with the GTA02-core project as soon as that is ready to move forward. Professor Zuffo has not de-committed from that project as far as I can see. As to going further than that, the University is still interested in working on an Open Phone. But as I have seen here over the past several days, there does not seem to be much agreement as to how to move that forward. From my viewpoint a bit of this comes from a tacit disagreement in the project as to what is open, and even less of a plan as to how to indeed. thats why i bring up open enough. to me - schematics are irrelevant. datasheets of course are very useful. to others they dont consider a phone open without schematics and cad designs and so on. everyone is different. i'm even willing to concede that u likely will never have open 3d unless you design your own 3d unit. not at the embedded level. all the players are closed with no signs of going open - unless you (maddog) can convince them? :) your only other choices are to create your own software 3d via dsp's and other auxiliary processors. even those are in short supply of being open. finance a project that requires real money. Openmoko's financing always that's the biggest issue. financing. seemed to be on a shoestring, and never (for example) included the money to fix problems. Other companies might do a recall and fix the issue at the factory. I think it was by good luck that the different issues that happened with the phone were able to be fixed with a capacitor here and a resistor there..and people stepped up to the bug fix parties...but there are still a lot of people out there with unfixed phones. indeed. Also he cooperate with silly companys like Koolu, who bargain Openmoko down to blood and damaged all the project. Koolu had its faults, and I will not say it didn't, but after several days of you writing and lambasting everyone about everything (other than yourself, of course) I think blaming Koolu for damaging all the project is a bit harsh. i'd call koolu misguided. to me they were just uninteresting. why a freerunner when i can get a android g1 dev phone that was signficantly better hardware (though by todays standards its totally shot and useless). I had a company in Brazil that was all set to license the designs from Openmoko and manufacture the phone in large quantities. They had a good SMT line, channels to distribute the phone in Brazil, and from Brazil throughout Latin America, and we had a good business plan to market to the VARs that were mentioned in another email. Even though the phone's components were a little dated, we felt we had a good market in people who had to change the OS to create the applications they wished to have for small and medium business. An example of that can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dVch2nSuBA The licensing of the design would have generated money to create the next design. Then we tried to find out where to buy the parts, and how many parts were still being manufactured, and for how long. That was when we began to realize that the marketplace for Openmoko parts was very limited. As several people on this list have mentioned, to create a market for cell phones that is profitable takes hundreds of thousands, or even millions, not tens of thousands. this is the problem. components are not a problem - if you go and buy 10 million of each, the suppliers will be happy to talk to you and provide you with those. for this you need to design very high-end to make those components have longevity. and then you need the money to buy them all well in advance (ie commit to at least large initial stock and regular shipments with payments on time or in advance - if they don't know who you are - they won't trust you and want money up front). so this means serious dough. and serious volume to make the suppliers sit up and take notice .. and this all comes back to having mass market appeal. :) By the time that the company in Brazil ramped up to produce the phone, did the manufacturing and certifications and testing that were necessary, and did the certifications, built the channel, did the advertising, they
drm/glamo Re: glamo backlight
fyi: after successful booting and running the gdrm-waitq example I got on the log: glamo-drm: Fence seq#157 was not signalled (with increasing #ref numbers) and usb network seems to be frozen after second reboot and running intensive directfb test applications problem cannot be reproduced... directfb and other frambuffer applications run on /dev/fb0, however the old bug with display shift to the right is again present. (everything is shifted ~150 pixels to the left) the same with qtmooko... if you could provide the patch straightforward, would be nice, if not, will try to see your old patch... rgrds, mobi phil being mobile, but including technology http://mobiphil.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: project customer
Rasterman! We do go back a long way, don't we? And don't worry...even though I know a bit about the X Window System, I bow to you for the real bit-jamming. all the players are closed with no signs of going open - unless you (maddog) can convince them? It won't be me who convinces themit will have to be their customers who buy in large quantitiesand customers who say I won't buy your stinking 3D unless you tell me how to program it so I can maintain it into the future. that's the biggest issue. financing. And here is where I saw a lot of disagreement, and could never see the path forward to a sustainable design business plan. Everyone wanted everything in Openmoko to be completely gratis (other than being willing to buy the phone itself). From my viewpoint the circuit diagrams should be open and free so people can comment, improve, etc. I also liked the fact that the case's cad design was open so you could change the case. However, printed circuit board layouts, gerbers, etc. are grunt work and could be licensed out with a decent license that would allow universities to make phones for free, hobbyists could make a phone or two (or even ten) for free, but companies that wanted to manufacture or sell it would have to pay 1-2 dollars a unit license fee. Then by the time a mega-unit of phones were made (and it could be small factories each making 100K phones) you would have the money to design and test the next phone. i'd call koolu misguided. to me they were just uninteresting. why a freerunner when i can get a android g1 dev phone that was signficantly better hardware (though by todays standards its totally shot and useless). A hobbyist/developer might have been interested in getting an Android G1 Dev phone. Unlocked and Unsigned. But each person could only buy one. Imagine developing a kick-ass SMB application that could not just be delivered as an app on top of Android. You have to change the OS. Do you tell each of your SMB customers that they have to sign up to be an Android developer just so they can get one of those phones? Now the Nexus One...different story. It sells unlocked and unsigned. The factory in Brazil was all set to completely buy out Openmoko's inventory (if Openmoko could have told them how much inventory they had), but then they started looking beyond that andno one could tell them how many GSM modules were out there, and how much they would cost as the quantities available dropped close to zero. the suppliers will be happy to talk to you and provide you with those. Sometimes. Other times they have simply gone End Of Life with that part and they don't want to tie up their engineers and lines with old, obsolete partsbecause they are selling too much of the new stuff and they are short on capacity to make both. But if you are making your phone out of beginning of life components that other people are also using and that have a bit of life to them, you can sometimes get some components without having to buy 10 million of themparticularly if you are a university...and particularly if you have a business plan to license out the design to lots of small companies for manufacture. For example, it can cost one-half million dollars just to get TI to talk to you as part of their partner program. That half-million buys you some TI's engineering consulting time, etc. but what it really does is get rid of the kids and lets the big boys play. From what I saw, the FreeRunner was EOL, with EOL components.and its software was still a bit undercooked in places more than a year after its design was done. Everything else you said I agree with, and we both agree that it takes lots of up-front moneyor a smaller amount of money and a track record of success. By the way, I think that both the hardware team and the software teams did a great job given the circumstances, and I have the greatest respect for most of the community members. So Rastermannext time we meet we can have a beer. md ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community