New Open Hardware company

[Wolfgang Spraul]

Shaz,
(cross-posting to developer at lists.qi-hardware.com, if you have more Qi-specific
questions please ask me over there)

> This is good news. Congrats and good luck. By the way how are you guys
> planning to go along with OpenMoko efforts?

Both Openmoko and Qi believe in free technology, so for all of us it's great
if there are more players playing by the same rules.
The same is true for gta02-core, the University of Sao Paolo, etc.

I wish Openmoko success with Project B or any future projects that may be
coming. Sean has reorganized the company, but I'm sure he will come back
stronger and will have a few surprises for us! Also don't count out the
FreeRunner yet, the development activity in this forum shows it.
It remains the most interesting mobile Linux development device on the market
right now, by far!
Everybody - buy more of them and keep developing, the best pieces of what you
are developing will find their way into free alternatives to the corporate
consumer electronics giants we have around us right now.

At the same time I hope Openmoko the company and community wish Qi Hardware
well, because at the very least, even if we fail, we had some fun and
contributed more bits and pieces to the pool of free technology.
I think the breakthrough in this will happen for sure, only question is
when.

> Are the hardware efforts in parallel to openMoko community

Openmoko published the schematics in PDF form, plus some parts of the
electrical layout (netlist, footprints).
gta02-core goes one step further and uses a free tool, KiCAD, for all
electrical design.
There are not many free EDA tools out there, so it was natural for Qi to
follow Werner's leadership in selecting a tool. So Qi will use KiCAD as
well, and our original KiCAD files will be live on the web from day 1
(they are already, www.github.com/adamwang).

If Werner would change the tools he uses for gta02-core, Qi Hardware would
seriously consider doing the same. We would not compromise on the degree of
freedom, however (I doubt Werner would do that either :-))

I think the most important is that we stay close to each other in the tools
and file formats we are using, contribute to a common pool of libraries
(www.kicadlib.org), etc. There is _HUGE_ room for optimization in the hardware
industry, the dregree of standardization is depressingly low for me.

For mechanical design, it's even harder. Werner thinks HeeksCAD is the best
candidate, so Qi is looking into that now. Our mechanical engineer Tully
(ex-OM as well) has found some serious problems with HeeksCAD already, that
he says prohibit him from doing effective work to prepare for plastic
injection. Oh well...
So on the mechanical tool, same thing, we want something free, and we will
follow Werner's leadership or ask him for advice if we are ahead of gta02-core
in some area.

> OpenMoko community decided hardware will be taken care of by your company

Definitely possible. That's one reason we are staying close to the free tools
and file formats Werner has chosen for gta02-core.
Making a smartphone is a terribly hard job. I just come from 2 years of
round-the-clock work of doing it. So I really appreciate that for now Werner
keeps the momentum, the University of Sao Paolo (and actually 1 or 2 others)
have shown up to try to produce them. More power to them!
But later on, definitely, it is imaginable that Qi Hardware will produce free
gta02-core phones. Talk to Steve about the roadmap.

> The software stacks are the same as much as I can comprehend from the thread.

We try, but calling them 'the same' right now would not be correct.
We will probably use u-boot, Linux kernel of course.
For our own images, we will try to use OpenWrt initially, not OpenEmbedded.
We try to get Debian running well, so basically we want to have Debian if you
want full flexibility, and OpenWrt if you quickly want to cook up an image
targeted at a particular use case or user.
d-bus, Python.
Above that it becomes less clear. One reason is that the first generation
device has no RF. Once we have RF, I can tell you in general I prefer FSO over
Android any time. More flexible, more maintainable, more modular.

But that's just me and we have to find out over time what the people that are
interested in our devices want.

Wolfgang

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 04:41:34PM +0600, Shaz wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 9:47 PM, steven mosher <moshersteven at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
> > A while back Wolfgang mentioned that he and I were starting a new venture.Drop
> > by and say hello.
> >
> 
> This is good news. Congrats and good luck. By the way how are you guys
> planning to go along with OpenMoko efforts?Are the hardware efforts in
> parallel to openMoko community or OpenMoko community decided hardware will
> be taken care of by your company. The software stacks are the same as much
> as I can comprehend from the thread.
> 
> 
> >
> > http://www.qi-hardware.com/
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Openmoko community mailing list
> > community at lists.openmoko.org
> > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
> >
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> Shaz

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