[gta02-core] The University of São Paulo's intent to join Openmoko development

cyrusdreams cyrusdreams at freenet.de
Sun Jul 19 09:51:47 CEST 2009


Hi there,

Am Samstag 18 Juli 2009 schrieb Dave Ball:

> > be completely open and published as before.
> >
> > But (for example) the "gerbers" be licensed with a small royalty (1-2
> > dollars per phone, with a cap of 500,000 to 1,000,000 USD) only if the
> > party will make *over* 5,000-10,000 phones
>
> There are obviously some significant costs associated with developing
> hardware that while HW development took place inside openmoko, were met
> by Sean etal.  You rightly point out that if we're to be successful
> we'll need to find ways to meet those costs.
>

What immediately pops to my mind at this point is the "Cofundos" idea of 
setting a price tag on changes that someone wants to have made.

I don't think that manufacturers with a volume of more than 5000 phones are 
willing to just take the whole design without any "features" that make the 
phone unique to that manufacturer or service provider (!). Maybe the service 
provider wants to have his logo embossed in the housing? By setting a price 
tag on this change, the project can generate some income.

There are some uncertainties involved:
- the cofundos idea is so new that it couldn't prove it works
- the general question of how high the price tag should be
- the pressure from the timeline of the change, there would have to be enough 
developers to make the change
- the general legal implications of engineering services for money

But in the end, we would have gerbers that still are open/free to use (except 
the Trademark issue of my logo example) and there would be some income for 
the project.


Regarde,
CyrusDreams




More information about the gta02-core mailing list