RMS is almost spot on in the clip. We will need to design stuff from the
ground up, but it's going to go beyond just a case and a motherboard. Right
now we don't even have components which we can use and the direction is such
that those who are in a position to design and manufacture said components
are going in a direction where we can't dictate whats on the motherboards of
tomorrow. As a result I think what he is saying actually utterly
underestimates the significance of it all. This isn't going to be just a
little money that needs to be raised. It's going to exceed the capability of
anything we can foreseeably raise as a community.
We need funding like that which has never been raised in the history of
fund-raisers. We need to design CPUs, wireless chips, and more. And even that
won't make use free. We have governments which are forcing proprietary
software on us via regulations now. This is going to get much much worse.
Entire governments seem to be unable to produce there own chips at a cost
effective price point. To suggest we can succeed here [in free'ing
everything] is likely unrealistic even if we can produce successful
businesses models to fund engineers, build plants / or outsource it, and
manufacture in quantities needed to make it cost effective.
To give me an idea it might take 100,000+ wifi cards a year to keep
manufacturing going of a discontinued chipset. At this number your likely
then going to pay $30 a card, which might be 3-6 times what it cost prior,
and then selling something at a $60 price point that is a generation or more
old? It doesn't work economically and you won't have demand within the free
software world to do it. Even if you take into account all GNU/Linux users
(not just free software advocates) it's going to extraordinary unlikely. Your
talking about needing to get 1/5 of all sales of particular category of wifi
card (say USB) using GNU/Linux to buy from a single source.
* The numbers I pulled off the top of my head, but they're not unrealistic
for quotes I've reprieved on what it would take to make it happen.
Now there might be a cheaper way to go. You could possibly get discontinued
chipsets and build wifi cards in smaller quantities for a lot less. Maybe.
But your not actually manufacturing the wifi chip part then so it's still a
dead end.
