Re: [Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards
Am 30.04.2013 um 01:14 schrieb Christ van Willegen: Hi, What we could do is have a special offer at the next Fosdem. If _everyone_ (thousands of people...) (or 90% of the people there) pledges an $x amount of money, they will get a Free (as-in-speech) phone. That way, you can probably cut down the production cost to a 'reasonable' amount (300-250 EUR apiece?). If there's not enough interest, nobody loses money, but if there is, the cost per phone is a lot lower than in a batch of 200-300 phones. Yes, sure. I think there are 5000 participants every year and 90% would likely allow to reduce the price to 300 EUR most likely including an injection moulded case. What is very difficult to estimate is if really 90% would pledge or i it is 9% or 0.9%. 300 EUR is still a lot of money. When looking into the subscription rate of this mailing list during FOSDEM 2013 there was no significant effect :( Maybe because we did only have visitors who already did know about OpenPhoenux. Another thing to think about is what kind of device (i.e. feature set) we need to offer next year so that 90% of the FOSDEM users are willing to pledge for 300 EUR. Maybe the same features as a Galaxy S4... Well, it could be possible to get permission by the FOSDEM organizers to use their visitor's mailing list to ask for user opinions or running an online opinion poll. Recently it became clear to me how community developed software and hardware are inherently different compared to their non-community development counterpart. Software can be developed easily by a community through being open source. And since distribution of open software is cheaper than for closed, it has even an immediate financial benefit over closed software. This is the main argument that running a GNU/Linux installation is cheaper than running Windows. For community developed hardware, development by volunteers is also cheaper. But production and distribution is always more expensive, because of lower quantities. In the outcome freeopen software is cheaper than closed and open hardware is inherently more expensive. And therefore no $BRAND is interested in opening the hardware - because it costs additional money (starting with writing good documentation). This fundamentally limits the success of community developed hardware. So unless this mechanics is better understood by society and freeopen enthusiasts are accepting that open hardware is necessarily more expensive than closed, there will be no big chance for open hardware. So we can't draw the argument that freeopen hardware is cheaper. Now you may ask why Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoneBlack etc. are so successful. There is one difference: they are already cheap enough to scrap them if they don't fulfill the requirements or if the student has learned something. Then they are stripped down to some minimal function while nobody would be interested in an open hardware version of a Nokia 103... And some of these projects are part of the marketing strategy of the chip vendor. They are interested to push their CPU to as many potential *developers* as possible. So it is their CPU Evaluation board. While our kind of devices can not get into high quantities by aiming at developers, learners and DIY enthusiasts only. -- hns ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards
Hi, What we could do is have a special offer at the next Fosdem. If _everyone_ (thousands of people...) (or 90% of the people there) pledges an $x amount of money, they will get a Free (as-in-speech) phone. That way, you can probably cut down the production cost to a 'reasonable' amount (300-250 EUR apiece?). If there's not enough interest, nobody loses money, but if there is, the cost per phone is a lot lower than in a batch of 200-300 phones. Christ van Willegen ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards
Am 02.04.2013 um 22:35 schrieb Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli: On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:22:39 +0100 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller h...@goldelico.com wrote: So we unfortunately have to postpone the production of GTA04A5 boards, until someone manages to create more demand. This is a little sad, since we now have solved all technological problems and could start production anytime (well the longer we wait the more components will become EOL and have to be substituted). Anyways we will continue to support the existing GTA04A3/A4 by improving the kernel, boot loader etc. If you have ideas how to stimulate demand, please do Yes I've an idea and I'll continue to work on it really soon: Port Replicant to that phone. The current status is that I've a 3.8 kernel booting on it with display, input, wakelocks etc(the android stuff)... So far adb makes the kernel null pointers at shutdown. Also It's highly untested... Is there some project page? Download link or something? Before we couldn't even get it booting correctly under replicant 4.0: or there were some interrupt issue, or there were some touchscreen isue(that I solved in that 3.8 kernel). ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards
On Wed, 3 Apr 2013 08:59:03 +0200 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller h...@goldelico.com wrote: Am 02.04.2013 um 22:35 schrieb Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli: On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:22:39 +0100 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller h...@goldelico.com wrote: So we unfortunately have to postpone the production of GTA04A5 boards, until someone manages to create more demand. This is a little sad, since we now have solved all technological problems and could start production anytime (well the longer we wait the more components will become EOL and have to be substituted). Anyways we will continue to support the existing GTA04A3/A4 by improving the kernel, boot loader etc. If you have ideas how to stimulate demand, please do Yes I've an idea and I'll continue to work on it really soon: Port Replicant to that phone. The current status is that I've a 3.8 kernel booting on it with display, input, wakelocks etc(the android stuff)... So far adb makes the kernel null pointers at shutdown. Also It's highly untested... Is there some project page? Download link or something. Since it's not ready yet, there is no official images yet, and the documentation on the replicant wiki is a bit outdated with reguard to the GTA04, I prefer to make it usable first. The repositories for the GTA04 are not even integrated yet in the build system(people building replicant for the gta04 are expected to git clone them by hand...). Note that I will need help from someone having an A4(like paulk for instance) for doing the Alsa userspace part once the kernel is complete... Right now the issue is to permit proper shutdown after using adb...That is harder than expected because I cannot use kgdb(I've some toolchain issues with DWARF/debug symbols) Denis. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards
On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:22:39 +0100 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller h...@goldelico.com wrote: So we unfortunately have to postpone the production of GTA04A5 boards, until someone manages to create more demand. This is a little sad, since we now have solved all technological problems and could start production anytime (well the longer we wait the more components will become EOL and have to be substituted). Anyways we will continue to support the existing GTA04A3/A4 by improving the kernel, boot loader etc. If you have ideas how to stimulate demand, please do Yes I've an idea and I'll continue to work on it really soon: Port Replicant to that phone. The current status is that I've a 3.8 kernel booting on it with display, input, wakelocks etc(the android stuff)... So far adb makes the kernel null pointers at shutdown. Also It's highly untested... Before we couldn't even get it booting correctly under replicant 4.0: or there were some interrupt issue, or there were some touchscreen isue(that I solved in that 3.8 kernel). Denis. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards
On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:58:10 +0100 Radek Polak pson...@seznam.cz wrote: I think there might be interest in encrypted GSM calls - those customers would be not worried by big price. It's just matter of implementing SW for it. There are several solutions for that but using plain GSM won't work because of the TRAU(Transcoder and Rate Adaptation Unit) in the GSM network. Using data calls directly would be too expensive... So the best solution is to use encrypted SIP over the internet(like trough a 3G connection) possibly over a VPN(because some providers prevent SIP to go trough their networks). Denis. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards
On Tue 02 April 2013 22:42:36 Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli wrote: On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:58:10 +0100 Radek Polak pson...@seznam.cz wrote: I think there might be interest in encrypted GSM calls - those customers would be not worried by big price. It's just matter of implementing SW for it. There are several solutions for that but using plain GSM won't work because of the TRAU(Transcoder and Rate Adaptation Unit) in the GSM network. Using data calls directly would be too expensive... So the best solution is to use encrypted SIP over the internet(like trough a 3G connection) possibly over a VPN(because some providers prevent SIP to go trough their networks). Denis. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community GPRS CSD data calls are not necessarily expensive, just incredibly hard to find nowadays. No carrier offers them anymore, and even most modems don't support it. /j -- () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards
Am 26.03.2013 um 17:00 schrieb Ed Kapitein: SNIP the kernel, boot loader etc. If you have ideas how to stimulate demand, please do! Nikolaus Schaller Hi Nikolaus, Thanks for your great and continued work on the GTA0x. Wouldn't it be nice if the GTA04 could be a showcase for the upcoming Ubuntu phone? Yes, we are open for that. Just waiting for their phone call :) I think the Ubuntu phone will get a lot of attention, once it come out and being able to show it on the GTA04 would sure get some attention, and thus demand. I think it will work only if we (i.e. someone from our community) is porting Ubuntu touch to the GTA04. Currently they work on these devices: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Install#Supported_devices_and_codenames Just my 0.02 btc. Kind regards, Ed ___ Gta04-owner mailing list gta04-ow...@goldelico.com http://lists.goldelico.com/mailman/listinfo/gta04-owner ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
