"open" Pandora?

[wardred]

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

You're all heretics. Hard tabs at 3 spaces. Two not nearly enough to easily line the columns up, and any more is a total waste of space. Argh! :b

That, and I really dislike the trend in Linux distro's default consoles of including large chunks of my pwd in the system prompt by default. By the time I'm in my home directory, opened up whatever the distribution's documents directory is, source, then project directory I've practically line wrapped before typing anything. I'd love to see a distro that set - BY DEFAULT - a prompt that only had the current directory, and MAYBE one prior as the prompt. :b

As far as openness, the only thing I'm mildly disappointed in is the 3D drivers...something that Linux seems to continually fight with. Do we still have to write TI to get the dev tools? Also, at some point, I really need to setup my Linux laptop so I can get the 3D OpenGL ES samples up and running... and then running on my Beagleboard...

 

[WizardStan]

You're all heretics. Hard tabs at 3 spaces. Two not nearly enough to easily line the columns up, and any more is a total waste of space. Argh! :b

Once we've established that hard tabs are vastly superior to spaces, the amount that that tab represents is trivial. You can have 3, I can have 4, my neighbour can choose 7 for all anyone cares.

 

[wardred]

Once we've established that hard tabs are vastly superior to spaces, the amount that that tab represents is trivial. You can have 3, I can have 4, my neighbour can choose 7 for all anyone cares.

Just a failed attempt at humor. With the proper tools your editor should be able to open the source file in your "preferred" format. Hard tabs, spaces, opening braces placed at the end or beginning of a new line, whatever.

 

[Exophase]

I tell you, I like having my lines broken at a specific spacing so they'll fit nicely on the screen in a way I can anticipate (don't tell me I have plenty of horizontal space, I like vertical splits of the same file) and there's nothing that ruins my mood more than having someone's hard tab spacing disagree with how I wanted my file formatted after all that work.

Formatting freedom should be freedom to format our files as WE, the editors of said files, please. Not transfer that freedom to subsequent viewers of the file. This makes no real sense to me.

Of course, a project collaborated on by multiple people should have standards. There are about a thousand other formatting choices that can vary, so why try to give agnostic flexibility with tab spacing and nothing else? As far as some casual viewer/non-contributor is concerned, fuck them, is source code supposed to be a work of literature? ;P

 

[Sphinxter]

It's the difference between one who walks looking at the beauty and wonder of the world surrounding them and one who walks along looking down kicking road apples. You either see the project as half open or half closed.

 

[Exophase]

Your mother's either half open or half closed.

 

[PoisonedV]

I don't mind using closed-source things; I just feel that the name "Open" Pandora is deceptive.

The only things that appear to be "open" here are:
- the firmware; and
- the development process is a bit more public than usual.

But the development process is not significantly "open", or I'd be able to download specs for the case, board, etc.

And I can run open source software on any number of closed designs. Like a ThinkPad.

So how is this thing "Open" Pandora?

u tell them mayne open srce 4 lyfe....

 

[Sphinxter]

Your mother's either half open or half closed.

 

[Vitel]

What we won't do is release enough information to allow the Pandora to be cloned. That would be silly.

I understand this now...
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/30/crunchpad-end/

 

[belthos]

If you do not understand what is supposedly "open" about the pandora I suggest you do the following simple experiment.

Go buy an ipod touch, for example like my 64gb ipod touch.

If I understand correctly it has the same arm cortex processor.

Now write a program for it and lets make it an open source emulator shall we?

Give it away! yay!

problems.....

1) you have to pay to be an apple developer..... gee rough if you wan to give away your program you have to pay for the opportunity.
2) Oops you just violated the apple store policy so they won't allow you to publish the program in their store.
3) Uh Oh.... all the ipods REQUIRE digital rights (drm) keys to allow ANY program to function. so you can't even post your program on your web page for free. Even if you do no one can run it.
4) well they can jailbreak the ipod... until the next firmware patch when they have to chose, new features, ability to run new applications or yours

Perhaps now you can see the difference between an 'open' platform and a 'closed' platform.

Belthos

ps. in the year 2525 you will be able to download pandoras off of the internet v7.75 with matter replicating torrents.
but only old machine geeks will want to since it doesn't have psychic input gaming controls and full 3d holographic sensory input into your prefontal lobes.

 

[Exophase]

Now repeat the same experiment for Palm Pre, Nokia N900, any Android platform, PocketPCs, PDAs, most smart phones, MIDs, netbooks, and various other things that don't promote being "open." True, Pandora is not locked down like PSP, DS, and iPhone are, but neither are lots of mobile platforms.

 

[wardred]

The Pandora is about as open as it makes sense to be. To my knowledge there aren't any vendors offering open 3D drivers for devices that are powerful for the targeted device. Intel's integrated drivers are open, but they aren't powerful. NVIDIA, at least, offers decent binary drivers. ATI's binary drivers are a little touchier. They haven't written a powerful open source driver, but they've paved the way for those who are working on those drivers by opening the specs for their cards, and I applaud them for that. I haven't heard of anybody in the embedded space that's taking this direction, limiting the Pandora in this regard.

I believe the rest of Pandora's software stack, even the wireless drivers, are open. The development of the Pandora has also been fairly open, with the developers taking what must seem at times an overwhelming amount of feedback from the community. They are, ultimately, dictators when it comes to the final Pandora product, but they've done a decent job of keeping us appraised of their decisions, even if they have been overly optimistic from time to time. The firmware is not locked in any fashion, and one can put any image they choose on it without having to worry about the manufacturers purposefully locking out the device.

They are not open the way the Aurdino(sp?) is open, and in this regard some believe the title is misleading. Fair enough, I suppose, especially since they're targeting the Linux audience. At this late date I don't see the name changing, or a need to change the name to be PC and ameliorate the feelings of those who ironically want open to be used in only one fashion.

Also, the Aurdino is not nearly as complex a device as the Pandora, or from what I can tell even the bare Beagle Board. While it was a huge risk opening the hardware to that device, I don't believe it's in the same league of investment as the Pandora. Maybe after years, when Craig and Co have made their money off of the Pandora and are looking at end of lifeing it in favor of the Pandora 2 or 3 if the community asks really nice and offers up a bounty he'll consider opening the full hardware specs of the Pandora - at least the things he has rights over. (Main board, case design, etc.)

Edit: put in line breaks rather than <p> tags.
Edit 2, 3, etc. for grammar and wording.

 

[senatus]

oooh! look! an idiot, can I keep him?, can I? can I?

Nah, you are doing just fine with what you have.

open does not mean OP give away the design so some Chinese firm can physically copy it for next to nothing with an inferior set of electronics and undermine the project, open means you can code for it with no restrictions, maybe you should learn to read or something.

schematics for the board will never be released, they said as much, as for the case, if you have a Pandora then copying the case is not rocket science, but don`t expect to be told how to pirate the design, people have spent a lot of their own time, money and resources making this thing, there's no rides for freeloaders, do you really think after all this effort they are going to give the design away?, what would stop some big firm making a couple of million of them then selling em at a fraction of the cost just to wipe out OP?, lot`s of big firms don't like open source, they would rather see a device like this crushed.

Golly, just like what is happening with the Openmoko. Oh wait, it isn't.

It wasn't a stupid question and it deserves a reasonable reply.

that's not a paranoid opinion imo,

Glad to see that disclaimer, at least.