"open" Pandora?

[WizardStan]

So, once again: the Pandora is not in any way "open hardware" in the sens of an open-source hardware design; it is a proprietary product which is accessible by hobbyist coders, and that's a good place for it to be, and we could use a lot more products that are as friendly to the users while providing profit to the designers.

But herein lies the problem: the only people claiming it is open hardware are those that come here to complain that it isn't open hardware. No one associated with the project has ever said it is truly open hardware. Open software, open design concepts, open a lot of things, but not open hardware in the copy left sense. It is open in a lot of ways, I think you can agree, and many believe it is these open parts that make it acceptable to use "Open" in the company name; others would disagree.
So when these others show up with no real background in the Pandora project and start making waves about the "improper" use of the word open, can you really blame the regulars for getting defensive? These new posters have their own definition of what it means for something to be open, and can't seem to accept (or in some cases even comprehend) that there may be different ways for something to be open without falling into their small definition. This has come up many times before, and the attitude of those that make the original statement typically tends towards arrogance, or superiority, and only gets worse when they're informed that "open" can (and does) refer to a lot of things, but giving away the schematics isn't necessarily one of them.
Imagine walking into Tesla Motors and shouting at everyone "this isn't a car! What's wrong with you? A car has an engine and runs on gasoline. This thing runs on electricity!"
Ok, that's not the greatest analogy. Just try and work with me on it.

 

[Aninhumer]

I can't help wondering...
If they released the hardware design specs, would the Chinese clones hit the market before the real one?

Nonetheless, I agree that at the very least, if OP stop manufacturing the Pandora at some point in the future, they should release the details, seeing as they would be losing nothing by doing so. Actually, Craig would probably end up selling any clones that appeared, so they'd be making more money.

 

[Exophase]

The confusion stemming from the word "open" is not really that surprising. Lots of projects have "open" in their name because they are open source themselves. Pandora (okay, the company, whatever) is the only one that uses the name for other reasons. Especially with projects like OpenMoko out there it's easy to see how there can be misunderstandings.

The FSF mentality people have been pretty possessive over semantics, having basically claimed ownership of meaning of both "free" AND "open." Sadly not much can be done about that now ;p

I don't think anyone has a problem with Pandora not being open source itself, but might feel that the Open Pandora naming is a misleading marketing hook. Not like it really matters though. A simple "Pandora is not actually meant to be open source but is referring to accessibility of development and information over other popular handheld platforms" sets the record pretty straight. In other threads people haven't had much problem accepting this, but that was contingent on initial responses not being full of arbitrary insults and whatever.

Look back, the actual original poster only said two things on the first page, and none were out of line really. He's not continuing an argument in this thread and so I don't think it's really necessary to repeatedly jab at him like he doesn't get it, especially craig telling him to "fuck off" after already responding to him..

By the way, I was the one who asked for this thead to be reopened, because I thought there were interesting things to talk about with regard to open hardware and how Pandora would hypothetically fare under these conditions. Many ensuing comments turned into exactly like what I was hoping this thread could be about, if you ignore the flames.

Personally, I don't think being open source would make that much of a difference for Pandora's userbase. It's not a design individual enthusiasts can easily spin their own one off Pandora, even if they have the layouts, much less just the schematics, and their availability wouldn't really lift any limitations in modding things by hand. On the other hand, if an entity with sufficient resources wanted to copy Pandora's design I don't think not having the schematics would really hurt them that much. The components can be seen on the board itself, they're all off the shelf parts as far as I'm aware, and I don't think OP is going to be scrubbing off their names or anything. A lot of the connections are laid out in software which is required to be open (and OP is going to be doing a good job following this from day one, not like GPH). So I'm guessing that roughly (functionally) equivalent BOMs and schematics could both be recreated more or less w/o an outrageous amount of time and money.

I guess the real distinction would be whether or not OP is outright giving legal permission to copy/extend their design, but I'm not altogether sure what exact protections they have to prevent this anyway (in the past clones of lots of things have been made)

 

[Tom`]

The FSF mentality people have been pretty possessive over semantics, having basically claimed ownership of meaning of both "free" AND "open." Sadly not much can be done about that now ;p

Well, people wonder why RMS is so anal about correct terminology...

This is why he encourages terms like "libre," and in fact discourages "open" (at least as "open-source").

But even RMS doesn't believe "closed" hardware, as opposed to software, significantly limits a user's freedom (at least, provided free drivers are available, and we're mostly there - certainly no less free than the PC example, with proprietary video drivers). So I think this is a bit of a red herring.

I agree with the rest of your post, though.

 

[rick0815]

Just for my understanding, how open is the Pandora? The hardware is more or less closed. So, how open is the software? Is the whole default installation open source (and free like in "free open source software") or are there parts like some drivers or what ever which is proprietary?

 

[GizmoTheGreen]

everything, you can make it do whatever you want, with code

 

[Aninhumer]

There are some binary blobs for some of the drivers, but I'm pretty sure OP would happily replace them with open source ones if they existed.

 

[rick0815]

There are some binary blobs for some of the drivers, but I'm pretty sure OP would happily replace them with open source ones if they existed.

That sounds like 'as open as possible'. Good enough reason for me to call it 'open pandora' (i know, i know, its only the name the company), especially if they _try_ to replace the binary blobs!

 

[WizardStan]

That sounds like 'as open as possible'. Good enough reason for me to call it 'open pandora' (i know, i know, its only the name the company), especially if they _try_ to replace the binary blobs!

As far as I know, both (and only) the GPU and the Wifi chip used binary blobs.
And then they replaced the wifi driver with an open source alternative.
Someone else was working on a GPU replacement, but it stalled for lack of hardware. Once the consoles actually ship, we might see a revival.

 

[Exophase]

As far as I know, both (and only) the GPU and the Wifi chip used binary blobs.
And then they replaced the wifi driver with an open source alternative.
Someone else was working on a GPU replacement, but it stalled for lack of hardware. Once the consoles actually ship, we might see a revival.

However, that someone wasn't intending on doing an OpenGL ES 2 replacement. So that would still be a binary blob.

 

[hobbyman II]

re drivers, I thought there was a possibility TI where going to release the GFX drivers as open source, wasn`t that a news thingy a while back?

re- original post:

I was being rude, yes, this is the fourth? time we have had a new poster start a "Pandora isn`t open enough for me and my pals in China who want to copy it" type thread, I also never said, that there is no such thing as open hardware (you forgot the rap-rep machine amongst others), I am just getting tired of selfish and lazy people getting so much and wanting more for no good reason, they haven`t even bothered to read the wiki or stickies, it`s like you put up some homeless guy for the night, feed and cloth him, give him some cash, find him a job and lodging, and next thing you know your getting sued for not letting him sleep with your girlfriend and giving him your car, I mean, COME ON!

the other thing is this seems to be semantically the same post as all the others, as though someone is repeatedly trying the same thing in order to get some desired response, either that or all the posters have the same thing in mind, I`m not sure what the intention is, but I have heard enough "preludes to a rip-off" in my life to have the BS-O-Meter ring on this, maybe Craigix feels the same way and hence expresses his desire for the troll (for such I see him to be) to depart in such a forceful way, yes?, the force is wrong in this one my master....I feel it!

no! I ain't no Jedi, but my mediclorion* count IS high

*assuming mediclorion's come in a bottle marked "40% by volume", they do mean mediclorion's? yes?

ps: hey! damnfino! spollchicker recognises "mediclorion" rofl....

 

[mali]

There were surely more than 4 threads, or more discussions about the same thing in different threads.

R.I.P.

 

[Exophase]

I can see how this thread might look like someone complaining about the Pandora not being more open, but that's really not the idea here. Original poster is okay with Pandora positioned as it's positioned and nothing more (he said so himself). Just thought that "Open Pandora" was misleading, that's all.

All of the threads like this were over the same thing. The name. People thinking that "Open Pandora" meant that they'd have the opportunity to look at the schematics and whatever. Why they wanted this, who knows - it could be a lot of things. A lot of people support open source software not so much because they personally want to develop or even look at the source code but because they think it's good for the project, good for the community, and good for mankind in general.. or something like that. Open source hardware can be seen along the same vein, by some manner of thinking.

Me, I tend to be more pragmatic and less ideological than that, but I can see where people are coming from.

I really, really don't think that anyone has been starting a thread like this because they're upset that they can't copy and sell their own Pandora clones. Be reasonable.

 

[mali]

You are right. The main problem is, that the thread starter didn't provide enough feedback to move the issue in the appropriate direction. Open Pandora forum members have great derailing skills

 

[Exophase]

You are right. The main problem is, that the thread starter didn't provide enough feedback to move the issue in the appropriate direction. Open Pandora forum members have great derailing skills

At least the discussion hasn't been about goto statements ;D

 

[laurencevde]

It's the most open device of its kind. That's good enough for me...
The featureset got determined in a pretty open way, we got quite some info during the development-process, we know pretty much exactly what parts are being used, the main developers are easy to reach, and the software is as open as possible.
The only things not available are the board-schematics and the case-design-stuff, and some parts of that are going to be available, for modding purposes. I don't think there are many people expecting any more of that to be available.

"Open" isn't trademarked or anything, and has a pretty wide meaning. It's mostly comparing against something else.

 

[Tom`]

re drivers, I thought there was a possibility TI where going to release the GFX drivers as open source, wasn`t that a news thingy a while back?

The drivers aren't controlled by TI, but by ImgTec. I don't think they have any intention of releasing the source, but if so, that would be very good news.

Also, it's "midi-chlorian," although acceptable variants include "midichlorian" and "midiclorian".

(And Chromium doesn't recognize any of them...)

 

[VRAndy]

You are right. The main problem is, that the thread starter didn't provide enough feedback to move the issue in the appropriate direction. Open Pandora forum members have great derailing skills

At least the discussion hasn't been about goto statements ;D

We could do a good argument about tab widths.

Personally I think anything other than tabs two characters wide is a form of heresy.

 

[Exophase]

We could do a good argument about tab widths.

Personally I think anything other than tabs two characters wide is a form of heresy.

Two characters, okay - hard tabs or spaces? I take two characters to mean spaces because a hard tab set to two wide would be one character.

 

[Sphinxter]

Hard tab, 4 wide, clarity for me and you can set it to whatever you like.