Reasons why people could be interested in this community

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 24.08.2013 um 13:36 schrieb joerg Reisenweber:

> On Sat 24 August 2013 13:00:45 Bob Ham wrote:
>> On Sat, 2013-08-24 at 09:56 +0200, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
>>>> Why are you still a member of this community
>> 
>> I want freedom.  I want a phone that runs 100% free software, including
>> any firmware for component devices and also including firmware running
>> on the baseband processor.  I want the same freedom for the hardware.
>> 
>> The openmoko-community and openphoenux-community mailing lists are
>> places where I expect like-minded people will congregate.
>> 
>>>> and participating in this discussion?
>> 
>> Even though I believe the GTA04 product from Golden Delicious is not
>> viable, I don't expect it will be the last effort to produce a free
>> phone.  Indeed, if Golden Delicious release the source files for the
>> board, the GTA04 design could form a base for the development of the
>> next effort.  I hope this will happen.
> 
> You say "gta04 is a fine basis to do further improvements but it's not worth 
> getting the device itself".
> That's insane. HNS and his small crew invested substantial time and *money* 
> into actually *producing* a working device and all you need to do is buy one. 
> This would allow golddelico to continue their awesome work.

Exactly.

> But what you are interested in seems not at all focused on joining efforts but 
> to "fork" and try on your own if you could do any better than Nikolaus.

If someone is not happy that Goldelico wants to continue and asks for payment,
please DIY. But start on the green field (yes, as prepared by Openmoko) as we
have done.

And please do it cheaper. Maybe I can learn from you how you do that.

> I consider this rogue and silly. 
> Plus you evidently have not the faintest idea of what's the real troubles in 
> hw design and production, otherwise you'd not think you could do substantially 
> better than goldelico. Every fool can draw up a nice (though most certainly 
> not bug-free) schematics, and even creating a PCB layout is not that 
> complicated, there are FOSS tools for that. The problems are somewhere else, 
> and a project that considers PCB gerbers of GTA04 as an indispensable 
> prerequisite for a new design, well such project is doomed to fail from 
> beginning and I'd consider it detrimental to the actually existing and working 
> GTA04 project since - even if not the manpower of those devels who focus on 
> the new project due to lack of expertise and insight into where the major 
> problems of any such project are - it however will deprive GTA04 project of 
> possible customers that might contribute to GTA04 (and successors) with their 
> money, if they weren't lured into waiting for another competing project 
> started by a few guys who obviously think they can do better since they don't 
> know sh*t about hw manufacturing.

++

> 
> my 2 ct about this weird arguing here.
> 
> A word to Nikolaus: I'm a bit sad that you ignore the fact that openmoko *did* 
> share gerbers, PADS project files, BOM, whatever, on request. We shared 
> everything, sometimes under a NDA when we had to do that way.

Sorry, but I didn't know that until now. I just knew about the PDF schematics
and the BOM and the 3D CAD data and the component placement plan.

This was enough to start the GTA04 project, so I did not research further into
what else would have been available on request.

> And maybe you 
> didn't know but Wolfgang pestered all EE pretty badly to allow community 
> contribution, just we never really could come up with a workflow how to make 
> such process work. The problem with that is the expertise of community 
> contributions which take ten times the manpower of company EE staff to explain 
> why it can't get done this way, than what company EE would need to come up 
> with an own better draft for the same thing. 

Oh yes, many cooks spoil the soup.

In my experience it needs a small team at one location (so that you can
really meet for discussions). And a team that can work in stealth mode for
some time to come up with a proposal.

> OM been a company with "lots of money" so we didn't worry too much about 
> community competing projects, and eventually I even convinced Sean and 
> Wolfgang and others that no commercial competitor will snatch away and copy-
> cat our product either.
> Bottom line: to claim OM never allowed community contribution and never shared 
> PCB or project files is pretty incorrect.

Ok, now I know. Thanks for clarification!

But anyways, it was not necesssary to "fork" the project to develop a GTA04.

Developing the GTA04 did need something else. The believe that it can be done, is
useful for the community and being crazy enough to do it.

Therefore, I see all requests to get the projects files as distracting from the real problems
we have. Which are component and production cost being higher than everybody
would like to see (me included). And nobody to find a solution. Which is either lowering
the cost or increasing what people interested in a GTA04 want to pay.

I.e. if I was able to start new schematics from a PDF, others can do the same.

BTW: the GTA04 has more resemblance to the BeagleBoard XM than to the GTA02.
So I doubt if the GTA04 files are of any use for a GTA05 which could be better based
on the evaluation board of some new SoC.

BR,
Nikolaus