Re: openmoko banner
We don't yet but we'll look into it. Sounds like a good idea. Michael Javi Roman wrote: Hi all, I wonder if OpenMoko has a banner advertisement (web banner, animated gif, ...) to promote in personal web sites. -Javi ___ 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: OpenMoko at Southern California Linux Expo: Come visit, or better, volunteer to help us at our booth for free admittance
:-) Someday there will be a conference in Ohio :-) I'll look forward to meeting you there or elswhere, Christopher. Michael Christopher Earl wrote: Michael,. I swaer to god I would be there if i didnt live in Ohio, you get me to LA and ill go LOL Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/06/08 5:19 PM I should point out that these are full access passes, entitling you to attend all events at the conference. Michael Michael Shiloh wrote: Hi, Sorry for the late notice: OpenMoko will have a booth at the Southern California Linux Expo, taking place this weekend in LA: http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/ Please come and introduce yourselves; I always like to meet our community and put faces to the email. I would especially appreciate your help at our booth. Since only one of us is coming (me), even watching the booth for 10 minutes to give me a chance to grab something to eat would be much appreciated. If you respond today you will receive a pass to the show. We won't have anything to give away at this event, but I hope to get T-shirts and/or stickers soon, and your help at the our booth will be appropriately recognized. If you can help out please reply to me today so that I can get you a free pass. Email me directly: [EMAIL PROTECTED] We will also have a Birds of a Feather session, which will be an especially good opportunity to meet other OpenMoko-ers, to ask questions, and to exchange ideas. I'll bring some of the prototypes of GTA02 with me. Our BoF session is scheduled for Sunday evening at 6 pm. I look forward to seeing you. Regards, Michael ___ 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 ___ 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: proprietary firmware
Med vennlig hilsen / Kind regards Tore Dalaker Rosenkrantzvegen 19 N-4353 Klepp Stasjon +4798024965 On Fri, 8 Feb 2008, Wolfgang Spraul wrote: Dear Community, Some of our chips or chipsets contain proprietary firmware in flash memory. For example, in GTA02 these include the Wi-Fi, GPS, and GSM chipsets. Ideally, we would have liked to use chipsets for which even the firmware code would be free, but they don't exist right now. So we accepted proprietary firmware, as long as it was in flash or ROM. Then we ran into problems when bugs were found in the firmware, and we wanted to update handsets out in the field. The vendors would give us firmware updates and reflashing tools, but they wouldn't let us redistribute those tools to our users. We asked for special licenses to allow us to distribute those flashing tools to our users, and got them in some cases, after months of licensing negotiations. Next we discovered that those reflashing tools had further issues: for example, they would only allow loading cryptographically signed firmware into the chipset flash memory. The tools do this because vendors are worried that people would disassemble, patch, and reassemble the firmware, triggering regulatory reclassification of their chipsets (software controlled radio). Furthermore, we see that for upcoming chipsets, vendors are switching from storing the firmware in flash memory to loading the firmware into RAM at run time. One reason for this is that RAM needs less power and is cheaper. In this case the firmware, whether original or updated, has to be loaded each time the device boots, requiring that the binary-only, restrictively licensed firmware updater be included in the OpenMoko distribution. This got quite frustrating, until we met Richard Stallman last weekend. And he cleared it up for us rather quickly :-) He suggested we treat any chipset with proprietary firmware as a black-box, a circuit. He suggested we ignore the firmware inside. If the firmware is buggy and the vendor needs the ability to update the firmware, we instead ask the vendor to reduce the firmware to the bare minimum, so that it can be very simple and bug free, and move the rest of the logic into the GPL'ed driver running on the main CPU. This way we completely avoid the issue of distributing proprietary firmware updates and binary firmware updaters with restrictive licensing that load only cryptographically signed firmware. We liked his advice. It speeds up our decision making and allows us to focus on what we do best: Developing Free Software that is available in full source code, running on the main CPU, that we and anyone else can modify and optimize. There are downsides: We will no longer offer reflashing tools to update proprietary firmware, under any license. For critical firmware bugs, we will accept returns, or in some cases fix the bug in-house. Maybe you could do something like a ssh in to the phone and update it remotely? This would be a lot easyer than returning devices both for users and openmoko.. We will push vendors to simplify the functionality of their proprietary firmware, so we can implement more of this on the main CPU as Free Software. Maybe some vendors will even open up firmware for Free Software development, that would be the ideal outcome we are working towards. We hope this helps clarify OpenMoko's current position on proprietary firmware: Ignore them while they stay inside of a chip or chipset, and refuse to touch them. Focus on what Free Software can do. Feedback and comments are always very welcome. Best Regards, Wolfgang ___ 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: now Koolu makes a phone too ;-)
Carlo E. Prelz wrote: Subject: Re: now Koolu makes a phone too ;-) Date: gio 07 feb 08 11:30:53 -0800 Quoting Michael Shiloh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): Yes, Koolu is a distributor. mmm. They offer pre-order and quote a price of US$399. Available to developers this March. And the phone becomes a Works Everywhere (TM) Phone. No mention of Openmoko, FIC, Freerunner... Will you eventually favour distributors to direct sale (in terms of early production batches)? Carlo Hi Carlo, Questions about distributors and resellers should be directed to Harry or Steve. I stay out of that area :-) Harry Tsai [EMAIL PROTECTED] Steve Mosher [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: now Koolu makes a phone too ;-)
Am 08.02.2008 um 08:30 schrieb Michael Shiloh: Yes, Koolu is a distributor. Michael I thought that there are no distributors defined yet except the one in Germany mentioned recently? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: proprietary firmware
On Feb 7, 2008 8:32 PM, Wolfgang Spraul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: He suggested we treat any chipset with proprietary firmware as a black- box, a circuit. He suggested we ignore the firmware inside. If the firmware is buggy and the vendor needs the ability to update the firmware, we instead ask the vendor to reduce the firmware to the bare minimum, so that it can be very simple and bug free, and move the rest of the logic into the GPL'ed driver running on the main CPU. This way we completely avoid the issue of distributing proprietary firmware updates and binary firmware updaters with restrictive licensing that load only cryptographically signed firmware. While I see the benefits here, it seems that we're sacrificing CPU time, power usage, and lowered utilization of other devices on the phone to get over a license issue -- a technical resolution to a legal problem. Before jumping the gun on them, perhaps a more in-depth discussion (or at least a poll) into which ones we move into a cpu-run GPL driver vs running on a different chip we have to use as is? Maybe we can reach a consensus on which of these it really matters. I'm not sure how many of us would really care about sacrificing CPU for things we may not care about hacking. IMHO, if I could have it both ways, an option of loading a cryptographically signed black-box firmware onto the chip vs a minimal firmware+gpl driver would be nice. Give us both files and let us decide as we go. That'd be the dream situation. Second would be doing a vote to see which one of these we'd actually care about. e.g. I donno if many here would like to push a GPS correlator onto the CPU if we could get ephemeris from the regular firmware when we wanted. OTOH, GSM hacking would be fun, but I donno how much is legal :-( -- H. Lally Singh Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Virginia Tech ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA02 Battery Capacity (Was: Re: More about the GTA02)
Hello, I've researched this a little, and this is what I've learned: 1. We are still looking at a number of different batteries, so there is no final capacity or feature set determined yet. 2. The capacity will most likely be around 1200mA. If you find any place on the wiki that says something other than 1200mA, can you please make the correction? You may reference this email. Michael Michael Shiloh wrote: (Please help by changing the subject when the topic changes) I'll look into this. Michael Denis wrote: The wiki page http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_GTA02_Hardware says 1200mAh lithium battery charges when connected to powered host, but the page http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_GTA02_Battery says it's a 1700mAh one. So where is the typo? 2008/2/6, Christopher Earl [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: Maybe a typo in the GTA02 hardware wiki, here is the link http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_GTA02_Hardware Denis [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/05/08 8:04 PM The wiki history showes that Feb, 3rd it still was 1700mAh. Can anybody from OpenMoko confirm whether it is correct? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org mailto:community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org mailto: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 ___ 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: Patents and OpenMoko
So you want to patent any unique tech in the neo to prevent some scum from patenting your ideas then taking openmoko to court? Then just do it! Its in everyones interest not to see openmoko taken down so I'd imagine anyone here with an ounce of sense would not have a bad word to say about that. Its really that simple, is it not? JonS Sean Moss-Pultz wrote: Dear Community, Most of you know that OpenMoko is a fully independent company at this point. With this great opportunity comes many challenges. Today I would like to share one with you all and ask for some advice. We need to file patents for our hardware as well as software designs. While my personal views on software patents are inline with people like Eben Moglen, as a company, we are forced to play by the rules of the game. What I want is for a our company's patents to be freely available, for anyone, but for defensive purposes only. Are there any existing options available to us now? Does anyone know of existing companies or organizations with a similar strategy that we can seek guidance or partnership. Again, I want to emphasize that we only want our patents to be used in defense. And what constitutes defense is something that we want to be able to define (and potentially even redefine when new threats arise). Thanks in advance for the help. Sean ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Jonathan Spooner Nationwilcox Systems Ltd Tel: 0121 3544345 ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
FAQ Interactive, Funny Images and Videos Online
FAQ Interactive, Funny Images and Videos Online http://www.faqinteractive.com/ 1-866-268-5588 Images have always been useful on internet content, the first logos were mainly the name of the company with a simple drawing, then we got MS Paint, where people could make their own images, that was a revolution on image creating. Times passed, and new technologies appeared, today we see images even on the most simple and old-fashioned websites, 3D pictures, softwares like photoshop have taken control of the image producing and editing. The videos we nowadays watch at You Tube, were not always like this, they were just simple presentions, with texts and sometimes a few images, now we can also watch 3D movies, hundreds of film editing softwares, we can now create moving images, starting from zero, and without a lot of acknowledge about softwares or image creating. Images and videos have always been connected, since most videos are formed by images, not only films. In the past, we would only watch some commercial and business videos and images, nowadays we find any video and any image about anything, the internet is filled with content for all ages and likes. But as everything, there is a bad side on that too, with funny images photos pics and videos being accessible by anyone who has a computer connected to the internet, a lot of bad content is being distributed around, criminality, porn, violence, even kids find content related to that, they may not wish so, but the internet has been such a mess, with advertising everywhere, that sometimes we can not choose what we want to see anymore, it just pops up and we are shown anything others are paying to show. Of course, someone can have a lot of fun watching videos and finding nice images, comic strips, and obviously, serious content, all those videos and images available do certainly help a lot of people with their jobs and school work, have you ever imagined what it would be like if the internet was like the past, only black and white text pages? I can bet it would not be that popular if it was like that. So, in general, the online images and videos have developed a lot in the past years, from simple logos to websites dedicated to images hosting, from text presentations to 3D videos and websites specialized on internet videos, it is hard to imagine what it will be like in a few years, with several ideas popping up every day, this industry still has a far market to take control! Francois Panassac is the owner of Creascripts Ltd. His Directory Software called Creadirectory is a very powerful and highly customizable directory script. He also owns a funny pictures website with hundreds of cool pics available. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: ***SPAM*** (was : Re: FAQ Interactive, Funny Images and VideosOnline)
On Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:32:35 -0800, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yup. I already brought it to the attention of our list superuser, who will remove this spammer. Michael good, note that I just replied it to inform others to not read it, to save time ;) -- Steven Le Roux [EMAIL PROTECTED] xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: ***SPAM*** (was : Re: FAQ Interactive, Funny Images and Videos Online)
Yup. I already brought it to the attention of our list superuser, who will remove this spammer. Michael Steven Le Roux wrote: Just for the record... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: OpenMoko at Southern California Linux Expo: Come visit, or better, volunteer to help us at our booth for free admittance
I was wondering if OM wanted to try and set up something for HOPE(Hackers On Planet Earth) in July, I am going and would be happy to help. Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/08/08 3:08 AM :-) Someday there will be a conference in Ohio :-) I'll look forward to meeting you there or elswhere, Christopher. Michael Christopher Earl wrote: Michael,. I swaer to god I would be there if i didnt live in Ohio, you get me to LA and ill go LOL Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/06/08 5:19 PM I should point out that these are full access passes, entitling you to attend all events at the conference. Michael Michael Shiloh wrote: Hi, Sorry for the late notice: OpenMoko will have a booth at the Southern California Linux Expo, taking place this weekend in LA: http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/ Please come and introduce yourselves; I always like to meet our community and put faces to the email. I would especially appreciate your help at our booth. Since only one of us is coming (me), even watching the booth for 10 minutes to give me a chance to grab something to eat would be much appreciated. If you respond today you will receive a pass to the show. We won't have anything to give away at this event, but I hope to get T-shirts and/or stickers soon, and your help at the our booth will be appropriately recognized. If you can help out please reply to me today so that I can get you a free pass. Email me directly: [EMAIL PROTECTED] We will also have a Birds of a Feather session, which will be an especially good opportunity to meet other OpenMoko-ers, to ask questions, and to exchange ideas. I'll bring some of the prototypes of GTA02 with me. Our BoF session is scheduled for Sunday evening at 6 pm. I look forward to seeing you. Regards, Michael ___ 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 ___ 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 ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
***SPAM*** (was : Re: FAQ Interactive, Funny Images and Videos Online)
Just for the record... -- Steven Le Roux [EMAIL PROTECTED] xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: openmoko banner
We don't yet but we'll look into it. Sounds like a good idea. Maybe it's also a good idea to update the neo1973 images on the various openmoko pages (especially the Products page) with the new (2007.2) user interface. IMHO that looks much better. Michael Javi Roman wrote: Hi all, I wonder if OpenMoko has a banner advertisement (web banner, animated gif, ...) to promote in personal web sites. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
I think that we all agree here that the patent system is completely broken. By filling patent, even for defense only, you are playing the rule. What I've seen so far is that small companies that cannot afford a lawyer department simply choose to ignore the rules and just ignore completely the patent system. In the essence of the law, as long as you don't obviously *stole* an idea, you 've nothing to fear. But the system has becomed crazy when you can infringe a patent without even knowing it. That's completly wrong with the moral behing patent itself ! Have you already tried to fill a patent ? Have you tried to make a study on prior art ? I did for a few weeks and I didn't succeed. All is patented ! All, completely ! Patents are as general as possible and cover everything you could believe. It's nearly patents for things that do stuffs. So whatever you do, you could be sued. I don't know the ressources of OpenMoko but patenting, writing and submitting is a full-time job ! It would be shame (IMHO) to waste ressources in this way. More : you have to fill the patents in different countries !!! As OpenMoko does Free software, doing this, even for defensive purpose, will have a terrible PR impact in the Free Softwware community. You have the opportunity to just move, to ignore those silly things and to build something new. On the other hand, if you are under a patent attack without any patents, I think that the Free Software Fundation gives legal help in that kind of case. I really hope that OpenMoko will not be covered by any patents. (but I'm sure that there's a patent for a device allowing wireless communication somewhere) I totally agree with Lionel here. It will be bad PR wise and it's very difficult to enforce. Openmoko hardware and software are already covered by copyright, and I think a patent doesn't add any protection. Even if parts will be covered by a patent, chances are that some smart company can circumvent it by making small changes/improvements. Besides, what's there to patent? If I understand correctly, anything that's published (or available publicly) before the patent cannot be patented anymore, so that would include all openmoko software up to today, the CAD design for the casing, ideas on the wiki etc. grtz, Sander ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
GTA01 sound
anyone know where I can cut the Microphone Gain? If its in the alsamixer whats the label?? Joe Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/08/08 10:11 AM Jonathan Spooner writes: So you want to patent any unique tech in the neo to prevent some scum from patenting your ideas then taking openmoko to court? Then just do it! Its in everyones interest not to see openmoko taken down so I'd imagine anyone here with an ounce of sense would not have a bad word to say about that. Its really that simple, is it not? No, it's not. Simply releasing information publicly establishes prior art that prevents patenting by others (well, valid patents). The idea here is to set up an ability to defend against other companies with valid patents that are inadvertently infringed: whoops, didn't realize, sorry. Say, if you want royalties from us, let's have a chat about our patent X which you're infringing while we're at it... Patenting ideas and joining the Patent Commons seems like a really good way of establishing that you're simply trying to protect yourself in today's reality, not trying to profit by the broken system. ___ 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: proprietary firmware
I think he had the right intentions about this idea, however it would require vast CPU resources or a coprocessor dedicated to firware/driver layer managment. This is unlikley to happen, However trying to unlock the virtual lips of companies would be a huge step forward. Not to play devils advocate but if the firmware was loaded into RAM at boot a simple RAM dump would allow reverse engineering of the data, and thus the device,So im OK with that. Andy Powell [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/08/08 10:08 AM On Friday 08 February 2008 08:46, Lally Singh wrote: On Feb 7, 2008 8:32 PM, Wolfgang Spraul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: He suggested we treat any chipset with proprietary firmware as a black- box, a circuit. He suggested we ignore the firmware inside. If the firmware is buggy and the vendor needs the ability to update the firmware, we instead ask the vendor to reduce the firmware to the bare minimum, so that it can be very simple and bug free, and move the rest of the logic into the GPL'ed driver running on the main CPU. This way we completely avoid the issue of distributing proprietary firmware updates and binary firmware updaters with restrictive licensing that load only cryptographically signed firmware. While I see the benefits here, it seems that we're sacrificing CPU time, power usage, and lowered utilization of other devices on the phone to get over a license issue -- a technical resolution to a legal problem. I have to agree here. This is a low powered (CPU) device that contains chips designed to perform specific tasks. Why on earth would anyone think that making the cpu handle those tasks be a good idea? Apple can manage to allow their users to update the baseband on the iPhone so why can't FIC on the neo? Seriously, I want a phone that works properly more than I want one that dies during a call because the cpu is maxed out doing stuff that the chips in the same device should be doing.. Rome wasn't built in a day and you're not going to change manufacturers overnight either. In the meantime we have to be flexible. Mr Stallman appears to live in a land where every device has infinite resources - some would say it's called 'LaLa' Andy ___ 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: GTA02 Battery Capacity (Was: Re: More about the GTA02)
On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 01:04 -0800, Michael Shiloh wrote: Hello, I've researched this a little, and this is what I've learned: 1. We are still looking at a number of different batteries, so there is no final capacity or feature set determined yet. 2. The capacity will most likely be around 1200mA. Hello Michael, I guess many people would like to have a second battery - is there any chance that you make them available? Openmoko on the Neo is now good enough for daily use, yet it is running out of battery quickly. Maybe one of the distributors would be happy to take a batch of them into stock? Can you check on this for us? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
Esra Kummer wrote: This sounds like a great idea. I think what you mean is that if a competitor sues OpenMoko for allegedly infringing its patent, then OpenMoko can counter-sue saying BTW you are infringing this one of ours too and then it gets settled out-of-court by cross-licensing, right? Well I am not too sure about that... I would guess and prefer that the patent is used to ensure that no one else patents this and sues fic/openmoko. Otherwise it would not be a really free thing.. Am I right? Yes this is exactly what we want. We want to make the patents we get freely available, but also only usable for defensive purposes, forever -- no matter what actually happens to OpenMoko, Inc. The latter part, while somewhat pessimistic, is very important. Even if we go out of business, we don't want our patents to be bought up and then used to hurt the very Free Software projects that once (now) help us. So what is this defence tactic now Sean? Or do you have to figure out that as well? We honestly don't have this totally worked out yet. Hope you find a solution which is good in the FOSS sense like you often do! Just to say it ones more: you do a great job at FIC/OM! Thanks for your support! Sean ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
Jonathan Spooner writes: So you want to patent any unique tech in the neo to prevent some scum from patenting your ideas then taking openmoko to court? Then just do it! Its in everyones interest not to see openmoko taken down so I'd imagine anyone here with an ounce of sense would not have a bad word to say about that. Its really that simple, is it not? No, it's not. Simply releasing information publicly establishes prior art that prevents patenting by others (well, valid patents). The idea here is to set up an ability to defend against other companies with valid patents that are inadvertently infringed: whoops, didn't realize, sorry. Say, if you want royalties from us, let's have a chat about our patent X which you're infringing while we're at it... Patenting ideas and joining the Patent Commons seems like a really good way of establishing that you're simply trying to protect yourself in today's reality, not trying to profit by the broken system. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
Sean Moss-Pultz wrote: Andres Paglayan wrote: what about posting this exact question at groklaw? Oh yes. That would work well...I'll make a post later today. Looks like they already picked this up... [PJ: Yes. Contact Open Invention Network and Software Freedom Law Center. Every patent expert I have ever had the opportunity to discuss this with says the community should patent everything in sight asap, for defensive purposes against the drooling ghouls. Publish the rest of what you invent with a verifiable date, if you are a purist.] - I'll have to contact my friends over at SFLC. It's been a while since I've said hi... Thanks a lot for all the great comments and direction! Sean On Feb 7, 2008, at 1:00 PM, Sean Moss-Pultz wrote: Dear Community, Most of you know that OpenMoko is a fully independent company at this point. With this great opportunity comes many challenges. Today I would like to share one with you all and ask for some advice. We need to file patents for our hardware as well as software designs. While my personal views on software patents are inline with people like Eben Moglen, as a company, we are forced to play by the rules of the game. What I want is for a our company's patents to be freely available, for anyone, but for defensive purposes only. Are there any existing options available to us now? Does anyone know of existing companies or organizations with a similar strategy that we can seek guidance or partnership. Again, I want to emphasize that we only want our patents to be used in defense. And what constitutes defense is something that we want to be able to define (and potentially even redefine when new threats arise). Thanks in advance for the help. Sean ___ 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 ___ 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
Any users in Hong Kong?
Hi, The reason I ask is that my Neo1973's GPS can't get a fix, at all, and I was wondering whether the problem was location-related -- or just plain bad karma... Thanks. -- Didier ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: proprietary firmware
On Friday 08 February 2008 08:46, Lally Singh wrote: On Feb 7, 2008 8:32 PM, Wolfgang Spraul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: He suggested we treat any chipset with proprietary firmware as a black- box, a circuit. He suggested we ignore the firmware inside. If the firmware is buggy and the vendor needs the ability to update the firmware, we instead ask the vendor to reduce the firmware to the bare minimum, so that it can be very simple and bug free, and move the rest of the logic into the GPL'ed driver running on the main CPU. This way we completely avoid the issue of distributing proprietary firmware updates and binary firmware updaters with restrictive licensing that load only cryptographically signed firmware. While I see the benefits here, it seems that we're sacrificing CPU time, power usage, and lowered utilization of other devices on the phone to get over a license issue -- a technical resolution to a legal problem. I have to agree here. This is a low powered (CPU) device that contains chips designed to perform specific tasks. Why on earth would anyone think that making the cpu handle those tasks be a good idea? Apple can manage to allow their users to update the baseband on the iPhone so why can't FIC on the neo? Seriously, I want a phone that works properly more than I want one that dies during a call because the cpu is maxed out doing stuff that the chips in the same device should be doing.. Rome wasn't built in a day and you're not going to change manufacturers overnight either. In the meantime we have to be flexible. Mr Stallman appears to live in a land where every device has infinite resources - some would say it's called 'LaLa' Andy ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: proprietary firmware
Due to regulatory requirements over wireless frequencies, power and modulation i can't see it being possible for the low level software that controls the RF transmitters being Open Source. Moving the software that modulates the transmitted RF and demodulates the received RF onto the user space CPU just increases the burden on that CPU, which might be acceptable for users who want to tinker with this data, but for the majority of users just results in poorer performance of the phone/computer as a whole. Would it be possible to try to get the manufacturers of the chipsets to install a standardised loader in flash or ROM on their devices that would make it easy to download and flash a new binary image with data encryption if need be. Would be great if this download was via a standard hardware link like JTAG or some other simple synchronous/asynchronous interface. This would make it easy to fix bugs in the firmware, and would make it easier to have different versions of the firmware that could allow more or less processing be done on the user space CPU depending on the users needs. Regards Simon ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA02 Battery Capacity (Was: Re: More about the GTA02)
On Friday 08 February 2008 17:29:36 Steven ** wrote: Search the archives. There's some Nokia battery that is apparently a drop-in replacement for the Neo1973's battery. Almost. Unfortunately the Bl-5C has only 850mAh and for some reason the Neo doesn't charge it. A DT-14 help for the latter. :M: -- Dr. Michael 'Mickey' Lauer | IT-Freelancer | http://www.vanille-media.de ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: A bit of fun - freerunner and the wisdom of crowds
Peter Trapp [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [snip] Beside of some suggestions you made, a similar webpage already exist: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Buying_Interest_List Have fun improving it :) cheers - homyx hi peter yes i was already aware of this page - i am already in the list! but hard to put a script in a wiki page? beyond me anyway! anyone else offers to do this (see first post)? JW ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA02 Battery Capacity (Was: Re: More about the GTA02)
On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 10:29 -0600, Steven ** wrote: Search the archives. There's some Nokia battery that is apparently a drop-in replacement for the Neo1973's battery. They discovered this a long time ago. The Nokia batteries are AFAIK not a drop-in replacement. According to http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_Battery the Neo doesn't charge the Nokia Batteries. Has this changed? If not, it would be great to be able to buy a Neo battery. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
Andres Paglayan wrote: what about posting this exact question at groklaw? Oh yes. That would work well...I'll make a post later today. Sean On Feb 7, 2008, at 1:00 PM, Sean Moss-Pultz wrote: Dear Community, Most of you know that OpenMoko is a fully independent company at this point. With this great opportunity comes many challenges. Today I would like to share one with you all and ask for some advice. We need to file patents for our hardware as well as software designs. While my personal views on software patents are inline with people like Eben Moglen, as a company, we are forced to play by the rules of the game. What I want is for a our company's patents to be freely available, for anyone, but for defensive purposes only. Are there any existing options available to us now? Does anyone know of existing companies or organizations with a similar strategy that we can seek guidance or partnership. Again, I want to emphasize that we only want our patents to be used in defense. And what constitutes defense is something that we want to be able to define (and potentially even redefine when new threats arise). Thanks in advance for the help. Sean ___ 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 ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Input Method Development
this uim has an embedded scheme interpreter... I don't like that too much for an embedded device... hmm, I have no idea: is it big, slow? It's apparently used on Linux Zaurus. We could adapt the openmoko soft keyboard to interface with uim, and if the API is well designed, the IM module could be changed... I'm not sure adapting to a soft keyboard would be required. It may seize key presses emit appropriate utf-8 key values. Try installing it on your desktop trying it with a few soft keyboards. could someone update me on the differences between these kr input methods described in the doc? * Byeoru * Hangul (2-beol) * Hangul (3-beol) * Hangul (Romaja) I have no clue. Were you intending this for the mailing list? I'm assuming so, but only saw this addressed to myself. Yeah, I know the patents problem with T9. But what about this one? What one? uim is open-source, so there aren't patent issues (if that's your question). ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: proprietary firmware
Christopher Earl schrieb: I think he had the right intentions about this idea, however it would require vast CPU resources or a coprocessor dedicated to firware/driver layer managment. This is unlikley to happen, However trying to unlock the virtual lips of companies would be a huge step forward. Not to play devils advocate but if the firmware was loaded into RAM at boot a simple RAM dump would allow reverse engineering of the data, and thus the device,So im OK with that. Andy Powell [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/08/08 10:08 AM On Friday 08 February 2008 08:46, Lally Singh wrote: On Feb 7, 2008 8:32 PM, Wolfgang Spraul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: He suggested we treat any chipset with proprietary firmware as a black- box, a circuit. He suggested we ignore the firmware inside. If the firmware is buggy and the vendor needs the ability to update the firmware, we instead ask the vendor to reduce the firmware to the bare minimum, so that it can be very simple and bug free, and move the rest of the logic into the GPL'ed driver running on the main CPU. This way we completely avoid the issue of distributing proprietary firmware updates and binary firmware updaters with restrictive licensing that load only cryptographically signed firmware. While I see the benefits here, it seems that we're sacrificing CPU time, power usage, and lowered utilization of other devices on the phone to get over a license issue -- a technical resolution to a legal problem. I have to agree here. This is a low powered (CPU) device that contains chips designed to perform specific tasks. Why on earth would anyone think that making the cpu handle those tasks be a good idea? Apple can manage to allow their users to update the baseband on the iPhone so why can't FIC on the neo? Seriously, I want a phone that works properly more than I want one that dies during a call because the cpu is maxed out doing stuff that the chips in the same device should be doing.. Rome wasn't built in a day and you're not going to change manufacturers overnight either. In the meantime we have to be flexible. Mr Stallman appears to live in a land where every device has infinite resources - some would say it's called 'LaLa' Andy I like the idea of having total control over my electronic devices - especially if they are able to collect everything about my life like a mobile phone. Thats why I'm currently living without any mobil. If I am able to look into what runs on my device, I can trust that stuff. so I'm one of those guys saying doing everything open source is way better than gaining a little cpu-speed. and by the way I don't think that the cpu-speed is too limited on that device. usually cpus don't have to do anything. and a driver doesnt need too much. This smal gap could be closed esysly by optimizing things for the hardware. regards enaut ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA02 Battery Capacity (Was: Re: More about the GTA02)
On Feb 8, 2008 4:04 AM, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I've researched this a little, and this is what I've learned: 1. We are still looking at a number of different batteries, so there is no final capacity or feature set determined yet. 2. The capacity will most likely be around 1200mA. If you find any place on the wiki that says something other than 1200mA, can you please make the correction? You may reference this email. Oh. That's... really disappointing. The battery life is already unusable, and the faster processor and wifi will just make this even worse. -Nick ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: proprietary firmware
I like the idea of having total control over my electronic devices - especially if they are able to collect everything about my life like a mobile phone. Thats why I'm currently living without any mobil. If I am able to look into what runs on my device, I can trust that stuff. so I'm one of those guys saying doing everything open source is way better than gaining a little cpu-speed. Yep, but who shall do this coding, if not the manufacturer of the gsm-modem, the gps-chip, the wlan-chip... etc.? and by the way I don't think that the cpu-speed is too limited on that device. usually cpus don't have to do anything. That's why they sleep and don't consume a lot of power. and a driver doesnt need too much. This smal gap could be closed esysly by optimizing things for the hardware. And by waking the powerful main cpu 200/sec for such a silly thing as decoding GSM-CCH packets to detect a call, your battery will drain like a... well, you wouldn't like it ;-) And it even can't be done, because on GSM-modem there is no external interrupt line to wake the main CPU every time a packet comes in. The modem is designed to use internal uC driven by firmware to do this job, better than the main CPU ever might. btw: you *never* know exactly what's going on on your device, because you never can trust in (LSI-)chip design, which usually isn't open source. If you want to know, you have to observe from outside the system. Do you know what your BIOS is doing? Sure not! Do you demand it to be coded userspace FOSS therefore? It can't be done. You always have a hardware API somewhere, and you may not see what's behind. So you have to do a tradeoff between total transparency and potential risk arising from an opaque subsystem. I don't want to know how 802.11b protocol is handled in the wlan-chip. I want to have a powerfull bugfree API for the subsystem. Complete control is an illusion. An anecdote to illustrate: The german FETAP711 (IIRC) telephone had a units counter built around a uA709 -opamp. By no means of analyzing the circuit and the specs of the used parts you could see: this device was oscillating at about 100KHz and made a fine eavesdrop-transmitter whenever the handset was offhook. In *all* of those phones the POST telco produced back in the '80s! And this was in pre-firmware times, with simple parts like transistors etc. j ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: proprietary firmware
Hi Wolfgang, Thanks for sharing this with the community. Le vendredi 08 février 2008 à 09:32 +0800, Wolfgang Spraul a écrit : Then we ran into problems when bugs were found in the firmware, and we wanted to update handsets out in the field. The vendors would give us firmware updates and reflashing tools, but they wouldn't let us redistribute those tools to our users. We asked for special licenses to allow us to distribute those flashing tools to our users, and got them in some cases, after months of licensing negotiations. Next we discovered that those reflashing tools had further issues: for example, they would only allow loading cryptographically signed firmware into the chipset flash memory. The tools do this because vendors are worried that people would disassemble, patch, and reassemble the firmware, triggering regulatory reclassification of their chipsets (software controlled radio). Madwifi [1] has the same issue with regulatory. Because countries doesn't not allow same frequencies ranges and power output, manufacturer are forced (by laws) to limit hardware possibilities in each countries to pass regulatory tests. In that way, they are very careful to whom they open the firmware updates. Usually, the company that what to use their hardware should sign a very strict contrat where they endorse most of the responsibility. Now, in OpenSource world, this is not possible to endorse that responsibility and let the user change almost all the locked parameters in such way that the device doesn't pass anymore regulatory tests. He suggested we treat any chipset with proprietary firmware as a black- box, a circuit. He suggested we ignore the firmware inside. If the firmware is buggy and the vendor needs the ability to update the firmware, we instead ask the vendor to reduce the firmware to the bare minimum, so that it can be very simple and bug free, and move the rest of the logic into the GPL'ed driver running on the main CPU. This way we completely avoid the issue of distributing proprietary firmware updates and binary firmware updaters with restrictive licensing that load only cryptographically signed firmware. This is probably the only way to get out of the current issues. We liked his advice. It speeds up our decision making and allows us to focus on what we do best: Developing Free Software that is available in full source code, running on the main CPU, that we and anyone else can modify and optimize. There are downsides: We will no longer offer reflashing tools to update proprietary firmware, under any license. For critical firmware bugs, we will accept returns, or in some cases fix the bug in-house. We will push vendors to simplify the functionality of their proprietary firmware, so we can implement more of this on the main CPU as Free Software. Maybe some vendors will even open up firmware for Free Software development, that would be the ideal outcome we are working towards. I can understand the community and OpenMoko point of view here, but what about functionality, speed and power consumption issue ? If you take a look on the recent video acceleration issue with HTC devices [2], there is a clear relation between performances and the firmware (hardware ?) driver. The same issue apply to the current GSM firmware. OpenMoko devices will probably loose a lot of their functionality because of moving everything in CPU area. What are the possibilities ? I dont know, but forcing vendors to let OpenMoko updates their phones are not a viable option, unless you can let some trusted resellers around the world to make it for free. Making a dual licensed phone ? One closed with everything in firmware (so, easy to use, fast and low consumption, maybe re branded ?) and a true OpenSource phone that will probably not compete (in term of speed and power consumption) with the 1st one ? [1] http://madwifi.org/ [2] http://htcclassaction.org/whattodo.php -- Alexandre ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: A bit of fun - freerunner and the wisdom of crowds
On Freitag, 8. Februar 2008, JW wrote: [snip] So now I think we should apply this to helping team OpenMoko to decide how many FreeRunner's they should manufacture in their first run *based on how many people they think will buy a Freerunner in the first two months from launch*. Rather than have a ridiculous number of answers in this thread we need someone in the OpenMoko community to whip up a little webpage script which allows you to * enter your nick * click yes/no if you will buy yourself * enter your guess for no. sold in first two months * press button to see results (min/max/ave/no.of votes/no.of intended purchasers) Anyone offering to make the webpage? Beside of some suggestions you made, a similar webpage already exist: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Buying_Interest_List Have fun improving it :) cheers - homyx ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
OpenMoko at SCALE
Sadly I can't attend. Maybe next year. We had the SCALE guys on TLLTS 2 weeks ago. Everyone I talk to who's attended it in the past love it. Have fun guys! I was wondering if OM wanted to try and set up something for HOPE(Hackers on Planet Earth) in July I second that request. I'll definitely go if others from the project show up. Someday there will be a conference in Ohio :-) There is a Linux Conference in Ohio. It's called the Ohio Linux Fest! I've been to the last two and it's an absolutely great community driven event. I recommend all to go next year: http://www.ohiolinux.org/ Pat -- http://tllts.org/ - The Linux Link Tech Show http://pdavila.homelinux.org:8080/blog/ - My blog ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Any users in Hong Kong?
Hong Kong appears to have decent DOP, as reported on the US Air Force GPS map http://gps.afspc.af.mil/gpsoc/performance_reports.aspx Are you trying indoors or while surrounded by many tall buildings? That would seriously degrade the GPS signal. dda wrote: Hi, The reason I ask is that my Neo1973's GPS can't get a fix, at all, and I was wondering whether the problem was location-related -- or just plain bad karma... Thanks. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
Am Fr 8. Februar 2008 schrieb Sean Moss-Pultz: of the case CAD files is not software (per say). In the future you will see a lot more. We don't believe software is only place people need openness. So does this mean we will eventually see the circuit diagrams (and even PCB layouts??), so we don't have to reverse engineer from PCB, like every rogue competitor would do (or surely has done already in China, for GTA01)? j ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Mono audio output on GTA02?
On Friday 08 February 2008, Ben Burdette wrote: I was looking at the GTA02 hardware spec on the wiki, and its looking (to me) like mono only output. According to this: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_Audio_Subsystem The neo1973 has a stereo LM4857 amplifier, which drives the stereo speakers, mono earpiece, and (presumably stereo) headphones. However, on the freerunner it appears that it has been changed to the LM4853 instead, a mono amplifier. That implies that the headphone output is now mono and not stereo. Unless I'm missing something? Look again at the LM4853 specs and you'll see that it takes stereo in and drives stereo headphone out or mono speaker out. http://www.national.com/pf/LM/LM4853.html ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Mono audio output on GTA02?
Am Fr 8. Februar 2008 schrieb Ben Burdette: I was looking at the GTA02 hardware spec on the wiki, and its looking (to me) like mono only output. According to this: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_Audio_Subsystem The neo1973 has a stereo LM4857 amplifier, which drives the stereo speakers, mono earpiece, and (presumably stereo) headphones. However, on the freerunner it appears that it has been changed to the LM4853 instead, a mono amplifier. That implies that the headphone output is now mono and not stereo. Unless I'm missing something? AFAIK, the stereo headphones are driven by the Wolfson codec chip, so no change here. The amp is for the speaker(s) only, and GTA02 has only one of them (mono). That's fine, for one good speaker will yield a better sound than 2 small ones. j ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
