On Apr 11, 2005 4:08 PM, Daniel Phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Monday 11 April 2005 07:20, Rene Herman wrote: > > Daniel Phillips wrote: > > > On Monday 11 April 2005 03:12, Rene Herman wrote: > > >>You are blindly assuming here that the "enthusiast market" and the > > >>"ASIC market" are something very different. > > > > > > They are. > > > > No they are not. You are projecting yourself much too widely -- they > > are only different after you've defined "enthusiast" as "hardware > > tinkerer". I am not the latter but am the former, proving that's not > > a sensible thing to do. > > Stop right there. It is entirely because of tinkerers like me that we > have open source projects at all, so that enthusiasts like you can have > the benefits.
It is entirely because of tinkerers. Some of them are like you. The key point to remember is that there are far more (open source) software tinkerers than hardware tinkerers. Some software tinkerers care about hardware, while some prefer to write software that is as independent of the hardware (portable) as possible. > > > There's many sorts of enthusiasts: we seem to be of different types > > for example. > > That is true. Since you are the sort of enthusiast who just wants to > wait until a cheap asic version arrives, why are you arguing with me, > who is the sort of enthusiast who will help make your cheap ASIC a > reality? This seems completely counterproductive, even from your point > of view. It is _certainly_ counterproductive to be telling me how my > sort of enthusiast should view the world. I think perhaps he's worried that if too much attention is paid to productizing the prototype board, it will negatively impact the final ASIC product in some way. That is my concern also. It is, however, merely a worry or conjecture, not a certainty. A pertinent note: We have two major variants of the business plan. One requires funding from beginning to end, with a volume production ASIC as the result. The other only requires enough funding to get to an FPGA board (with OGP IP), after which we seek more funding and/or partners. While shooting for the former, there is a probability that we will get the latter, which would make this argument moot, because the only guarantee is precisely the hobbyist board that you want (although it may be more expensive than you like). <rant>The Open Source and Free Software community is filled with idealists. Business is a place where there is no idealism, only conflicting opinions, and basic things like ethics and good-faith are hard to find. Doing business is a tall order. Applying ideals to it is an order of magnitude taller. The things that we have going for us are that open source is in vogue, we're the only ones willing to produce this kind of product, we have a really really good product idea, and we have a huge brand identity. I don't mean to be discouraging; this is going to work. I'm just warning you that if you see something horribly stupid and insane happen, you're just going to have to like it, as long as it doesn't cross into the realm of the unethical. A lot of business doesn't make sense to me; I just have to accept it on faith. I hate that.</rant> > Let's agree to differ, ok? As the sort of enthusiast who only wants to > wait for a cheap ASIC, you need to have some patience while the other > sort of enthusiasts who are actually going to make it happen, go to > work in the manner to which we are accustomed. Really, you both have good points to make. However, which of you is more correct has nothing to do with your reasoning or intelligence but will rather be the results of the whims of investors. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
