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Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller hns at goldelico.com
Sat Apr 18 19:22:07 CEST 2009


Am 12.04.2009 um 00:14 schrieb Steve Mosher:

> Let me share with you my initial cut at this process. Dr. N and I have
> been exchanging ideas for a short bit, and I also participate in two
> invitation only lists that are discussing the GTA03. I'd like to try  
> to
> open up the whole process. With the exception of Dr. N ( and a couple
> others) everyone who posts on these lists has "implementitis" They  
> each
> have a vision of the "perfect phone" They are all jumping to a  
> solution
> when the problem  is ill posed. The question is not " what's the  
> perfect

Exactly.

What we need to solve first is *how* do we have a chance to get a  
GTA03 completed (independently of how it looks like).

This involves questions about:
* which community contributions to hardware design are possible
* how can this be funded (by community)
* which role has OM, Inc. in this game (the lead sponsor? lead project  
manager?)
* how is a small team of capable project members selected and brought  
togehter?
* how do they work together in practice?

>
> phone?" the question is not "what should an open smart phone be" Those
> are not the questions. The question is this. What is the next phone  
> that
> Openmoko should build. or more generally what is the next Open
> source/open hardware phone that the community can build?. When you  
> pose
> the question this way you impose realistic business constraints on the
> engineering and design process. You focus on defining the requirements
> up front, on setting cost targets, and price targets, and schedule
> targets. That is you get the product process right.
>
> I tend to think top down. I believe Dr. N and I share that approach.

Yes. It is business planning - not implementation.

>
> It's an approach I have used to build everything from jet aircraft
> to Mp3 players. Our thought is to have a more organized process that  
> the
> community can share in. As for OM involvement. I will donate as much
> time as I can and hopefully respond to all relevant mails on this  
> list.
> Keeping my inbox clean on a weekly if not daily basis.
> If the activity here starts to show promise, I'll devote more time.  
> I'll
> volunteer to all the business planning or show others how to do it. (
> its dead easy)
>
> If people just want to have debates about resistive versus capacitive
> or 3G versus no 3G, then I'll just reiterate that that approach is a
> broken process. As a marketing guy I'me used to having engineering  
> ideas
> and products thrown over the wall. "hey steve, sell this!" Once in a
> while you actually get something compelling. usually I toss it back

Agreed.

> As to your questions about funding. I'll spend some time coming up
> With budgetary guidelines for Phone development. So that everyone
> invloved can have an understanding of the scope of work involved.
>
> So things like: man months of labor, prototype costs, EVT costs,
> PVT costs, etc. ballpark figures. We may for example be able to
> make it through a prototype phase with dues and contributions.
> Don't know yet.

What about opening also production in a FOSS sense - whoever  
contributes to
the GTA03 project can use the results as sort of a reference design  
and go to any small or large EMS
to have it produced. Or the project can help to choose such an EMS.

So that OM, Inc. does not necessarily have to invest into final  
production? Well, this ruins your business
model of making some money by selling hardware...





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