On 18-Mar-08, at 1:07 AM, Alex Perez wrote: > Dennis, > > On Mar 18, 2008, at 12:58 AM, Dennis Clarke wrote: > >> I was as frustrated as all of you with the situation that we have and >> perhaps the only real solution here is to work together, as a >> community, to >> get some sort of hardware solution going that we can all actually >> work with. >> Something with all the specs and all the right people in the right >> place >> working with a common vision. Yes, we may need to go back to step >> zero and >> review a pile of code, again, but at least we will have an ample >> supply of >> workable hardware. > > ...which is what the Apple stuff gives you. Say what you will about > Apple as a company (I am not a terribly huge fan of them as a company) > >> Forget the Apple stuff. You can not get all the technical specs for >> it. If >> you are in love with the Apple hardware then I wish you well and I >> pat you >> on the back. Be sure to write a post card from time to time to let >> us know >> how you are doing with reverse engineering all those closed design >> specs. > > > Oh, I guess those "non-existant" macppc FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD > ports are something we should just pretend don't exist to support the > position you happen to favor, then? I'm sure the Efika is a great eval > environment but it's also missing the point when it comes to > affordable hardware availability.
+1. I don't like the prospect of using such a closed platform for devel either. But the reason we're in the situation we're in now ( no hardware ) is because a great but very, very niche platform by a company whose longevity can't be relied upon was chosen initially. Repeating that same mistake again is probably the worst course of action. I'd rather flaky support with bolted on code from NetBSD to get something that works on machines that can be procured from people's trash on a fairly regular basis than wonderful, 100% support on a platform whose total number of machines created numbers in the dozens. Apple or Sony kit may not be the best, but it's documented ( through actual documents or code ) "well enough" that we can get it working enough to excite people to jump in and polish the edges. If we fab our own boards or go with the EFIKA the best we can hope for is that all 6 of us could get something that sort-of works and is entirely unportable to anything we'd ever actually want to use, and when we get bored of hacking at it, the project dies with the platform. We /need/ to get this working on a cheap, plentiful platform. That means Apple, and that means PS3. They're not the final end goal, but they're around enough that if we can get it working to some extent, we can attract more developers. Logins on other people's machines are great, but getting it running on some junk you have lying around... that's magical.
