Welcome to the Tinkerphones community

joerg Reisenweber joerg at openmoko.org
Fri Jul 1 07:12:29 UTC 2016


Congrats!

This was overdue and the new name is absolutely to the point and has quite 
some appeal. The definition of what is / is not a tinkerphone is very helpful 
and should go to the frontpage at http://www.tinkerphones.org

I like it very much.

What about icons etc, generally the complete "corporate identity"? Has it been 
discussed what will change (beyond the obviously pending overhaul of 
http://www.tinkerphones.org artwork/design), and are there already tasks 
assigned to experts? Maybe even new logos etc established and available?

Many thanks, Nikolaus - and whoever else been involved! :-)
cheers
jOERG

On Fri 01 July 2016 08:29:39 H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> Hi,
> after several years of running the OpenPhoenux community, we
> thought that it is time to refresh it a little and replace the awkward
> name "OpenPhoenux" (it was always difficult to spell and pronounce)
> with something new, self-explaining, that your mom understands.
> 
> "OpenPhoneux" was originally coined in ca. 2009 as the name of an
> initiative, when it became clear that the Openmoko company would stop
> to develop a successor of the Openmoko Freerunner. It finally brought
> the GTA04 device to life.
> 
> Back then, this was a motivating allusion to the situation of building
> something new on the remains of Openmoko, but nowadays probably
> only some core members of our community are able to understand
> this background.
> 
> Therefore we discussed in a small circle what the core of Openmoko
> and Openphoenux is.
> 
> It was easy to find what it is not:
> * it is not a 100% fair phone (we don't have the resources to track
>   components - it is enough challenge to have it working and being produced)
> * it is not a 100% open phone (we have not found a feasible solution for
> WLAN and GPU)
> * it is not a 100% secure phone (we can't do security audits of every
>   component)
> * it is not a cutting edge phone (we do not get the latest and greatest
>   chips as mainstream manufacturers do)
> * it is not a geeks (only) phone (we want everybody to be able to use
>   it)
> 
> But then we found what the common denominator of all Openmoko
> activities was and is:
> 
> It is a device that allows you to tinker with it, i.e. find out how it
> works, to replace software and even hardware components for smaller or
> bigger improvements and even repairs. It is designed in a way to enable
> such changes instead of stopping you (e.g. by protected boot loaders,
> undocumented code etc.).
> 
> All this is facilitated by being open (as far as NDAs and other limitations
> allow) and using open source technology (e.g. GNU/Linux, Debian).
> 
> Here is a definition of what "tinkering" is [1]:
> 
> 	"tinker or tinker around to make small changes to something in order to
> improve or repair it" "tinker with: He spends hours tinkering around with
> car engines."
> 
> So we are now happy to tell the world that we are members of
> "the Tinkerphone community" :)
> 
> There is a new web domain representing this change:
> 
> 	<http://www.tinkerphones.org>
> 
> I hope you will agree with us and stay here, contribute and share
> your ideas and achievements. And invite new tinkerers to participate.
> 
> Happy tinkering,
> Nikolaus
> 
> PS: it will need your help to update the documentation pages...
> 
> [1]: <http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/tinker_1>
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community

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