On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 05:43:45PM -0800, KH Goh wrote: > Hi Luc Verhaegen, > Thanks for your advise, we get what you are saying. From our side, we are > trying out best to work closely with the open source community and trying > to do our part as much as possibly can. We are committed to make our > hardware and software as open as possible, but subject to the license > agreement that place upon us by our supplier. But by having a good > relationship between us and the supplier, I think we should be able to iron > out most of the problem. > > In terms of the hardware, at the moment we are having 2 unit of Pine64 > Engineering board (Please refer here for the spec http://pine64.com/product > ), and would like to donate it to the community for further evaluation and > testing. Since we are a newcomer in this community, we would like you to > advise us on who and where should we send the 2 board to. > > Thanks for your advise and appreciate your kind assistance. > Regards, > KH Goh > > > On Saturday, November 28, 2015 at 9:01:31 PM UTC+8, Luc Verhaegen wrote: > > > > On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 12:38:16AM -0800, khg...@gmail.com <javascript:> > > wrote: > > > > Thanks for contacting the canonical source of most things > > sunxi/allwinner before actually launching your kickstarter campaign. > > > > This is the first time since the original cubieboard that such a thing > > has happened. Many companies with similar products only afterwards find > > out to what extent they do depend on the linux-sunxi community, and then > > change their story in either direction. Often the work done by the > > people of the linux-sunxi community gets used directly, cloned/forked, > > and nothing is ever given back. > > > > As you can see, we (and while i do not speak for all of us, i know that > > i am not alone here) are sceptical about whoever approaches us like > > this, especially when one of the first statements is "budget > > constraints". You cannot expect the linux-sunxi community to do your > > work for you for free. > > > > You should however donate boards to many known and active linux-sunxi > > developers, but for that you must not expect anything in return. > > Whatever then happens, happens, or it doesn't. The results are usually > > quite positive, especially given the limited cost of said boards, but it > > will hardly ever consist of full support for your product (especially > > when based on a new SoC variant). > > > > If you wish to have more complete support, you can always try to hire > > known linux-sunxi developers directly, or work with those members of our > > community who do contracting. The choice is up to you. > > > > Thanks for reaching out to us before launching your marketing campaign, > > i hope that your collaboration with linux-sunxi ends up being just as > > fruitful as your kickstarter. > > Thanks for your advise, we get what you are saying. From our side, we are > trying out best to work closely with the open source community and trying > to do our part as much as possibly can. We are committed to make our > hardware and software as open as possible, but subject to the license > agreement that place upon us by our supplier. But by having a good > relationship between us and the supplier, I think we should be able to iron > out most of the problem.
That last sentence reads, to me, as; "we will work out all product support issues with our supplier" (being allwinner). That then makes me wonder how far along you are with developing software support for your product. You will be amazed to what extent you do depend on linux-sunxi, for a very broad range of what you would call product support. I do wish to warn you though, about the use of the term "open source platform". Be very careful with your marketing there: 1) I see no indication that your product will be "open source hardware" (OSHW), like with Olimex devices. 2) Allwinner is known to ship binary, GPL violating, blobs and to need hard convincing to change this. The status of their ffmpeg LGPL violation is still very questionable, but has entered a dark grey zone now, where legal action is a toss-up. Allwinner, and its customers, had to be forced, hard, and even then did only as much as they could get away with. 3) Due to the hardware you are using, you are going to have non open source software (CedarX, Mali). All three of the above make your statement that "The PINE64 platform is fully open source" very questionable. So given both of the above points, i implore you to do more than your competition, otherwise you will risk becoming yet another $shit_pi creating vendor, joining the ranks of bananapi and orangepi, and a whole bunch of companies/boards just like them. > In terms of the hardware, at the moment we are having 2 unit of Pine64 > Engineering board (Please refer here for the spec http://pine64.com/product > ), and would like to donate it to the community for further evaluation and > testing. Since we are a newcomer in this community, we would like you to > advise us on who and where should we send the 2 board to. Then i would suggest that you send these two early sample boards to: * Hans de Goede <hdego...@redhat.com> * Siarhei Siamashka <siarhei.siamas...@gmail.com> * Ian Campbell <i...@hellion.org.uk> * Chen-Yu Tsai <w...@csie.org> (in that order), so that they can work on mainline u-boot support for A64. Mail them, and ask them if they are interested in the hardware. As said, do not expect anything for this in return. Whatever happens, happens. As for when you start production, please come back to us, so ~20 devices can be distributed amongst known, active sunxi contributors. Thanks, Luc Verhaegen. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "linux-sunxi" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to linux-sunxi+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
