Freerunner's Future

[Steve Mosher]

I would offer this. The vision that Werner has,  shared by a good number 
of us
( hat tip to Dr Schaller) is to create a process whereby the design 
effort can be
shared collaboratively. As I look at the EE design process it is currently
controlled at  several points by closed proprietary systems. These 
chains will
will not be broken all at once. Lets take the layout tool. Layout tools 
are expensive
software. You may be a EE with a great idea, but your stuck in schematic 
land
if you dont have a layout tool. Now the output of layout tools ( gerber 
file) is
rather open and standard.  There are many elements here where a 
community effort
can help. At some point I will put something together to describe this 
process,
the tools, the resources, and you can all see how close we are to an 
open process.

If folks dont want to wait for me, they  can pitch in and describe the 
process themselves
and put it in the wiki.

So, generally speaking I'd say the mission is opening the design process 
to allow for
collaborative open source hardware development.

On another thread people are speculating about Project B. some 
interesting speculations.
Imagine a world where those speculations could be turned into working 
prototypes
and then products.. all done the open source way. just a thought.


Werner Almesberger wrote:
> Jeremy McNaughton wrote:
>   
>> Scope:   What will our mission statement be?  Is the foundation just
>> to support the gta02-core project,
>>     
>
> Just a quick remark: please don't concentrate too much on
> gta02-core when planning organizational structures for the
> future.
>
> The focus of gta02-core is not on making the next big phone but
> on opening the process. The few pieces of hardware gta02-core
> is planned to produce would be a proof of concept that we've
> succeeded to meet that specific goal but they will likely be of
> little practical interest to anyone who is looking for a
> substantial improvement on the GTA02 as a day to day phone.
>
> Once gta02-core is complete, there are several paths that could
> lead to a mass-produced phone. Some could be very quick, others
> quite slow. Mass-producing a phone requires a lot of money, so
> at that stage, the direction would also depend on the goals of
> investors or sponsors and on an assessment of the target
> markets.
>
> An organisational structure should allow us to keep assets
> across projects. This will also encourage keeping technical
> projects small and focused.
>
> I use gta02-core as a reference when discussion specific needs,
> because of the project's narrow scope. If a plan doesn't work
> for gta02-core, it probably doesn't work at all. But a plan
> that only works for gta02-core wouldn't be much better either.
>
> - Werner
>
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