Questions and Answers

[Sean Moss-Pultz]

Dear Community


Here are my answers to your great questions:

> Q1. The end of the year is a time to look back on the year
> achievements. So where does Openmoko stands now from a business point
> of view ? Could you comment on sustainability, on sales numbers, on
> geographic markets and customer categories ?

Let me begin by addressing the market aspects of the question, because I
find this part more fundamental. Openmoko was built from the tools and
knowledge of the Internet. Our argument for the necessity of an open
phone stems from an observation that the Internet breaks down mass
markets by making it economically attractive for companies to address
niche market segments. We saw a real business opportunity caused by this
divergence. So we set out to build a product capable of allowing a
company to reach out to its customers and allowing its customers to talk
back and to talk to each other. This product was the Neo 1973.

We pioneered a new breed of Consumer Electronics companies. The products
we build expand our community. The expanded community makes for better
products and more sales. Ad infinitum. Perhaps one day people will look
back and call such corporate and community teamwork the first, of many,
Social Electronics companies.

FreeRunner, our major product milestone of 2008, started selling in
July. We were more conservative this time with our launch. There were no
pre-orders. We sold first through distributors. Our own order processing
was entirely automated. Last time it was (painfully) manual. I hope
everyone who reads this list will appreciate how much effort FreeRunner
took. Openmoko is a very small company. We succeeded in building a
smartphone only because we didn't have enough experienced people to tell
us that it couldn't be done.

While far better than the Neo 1973, FreeRunner had its share of
problems. The ancient TI Calypso had registration and SIM card
compatibility issues. Audio quality, while slowly improving, still is
not perfect. But I can accept these growing pains. We are improving. We
are much better than our last product. And community effects continue to
materialize in mind-blowing ways. (I will never forget the speed at
which we all fixed the GPS issue.)

"Back to the Basics" was our response to your public and private
comments. We continue to refocus internal efforts around these ideas.
Paroli represents a phone application with a feature set reduced to the
bare minimum that is still useful. FSO is our base that will let you
easily build what you want. The entire system is becoming more stable as
we increase our efforts to have our kernel downloadable from kernel.org.
Our technology plan is stabilized at this point. Development priorities
for the next six months are clear.

Openmoko's goal can be written in one sentence: We want to build
consumer products that package the best parts of the FOSS world into
products that are relevant and inspiring to ordinary people.
"Inspiring" is the key part of this goal in my mind. Here's a list, off
the top of my head, of the things we've inspired to date:

   * A small project inside of FIC to become an independent company
   * 24 distributors around the world to join us in getting our products
     to more people
   * The development of entire distributions (as opposed to just
     applications)
   * Industrial designers to remix our CAD files
   * A very interesting Framework initiative
   * A documentation list with the most amazing Community Update emails

Using inspiration as a metric, without a doubt, Openmoko was a massive
success in 2008. If you want to compare us to Apple and their iPhone I
would be flattered, but I also think it's a strange comparison. We are
very a small company. Sales are just enough (around 10,000 to date) to
survive. Apple has been around for 30 years - Openmoko just under two.
I'm extremely excited about our position going into 2009. At the same
time, I'm very realistic about the road we are traveling. Success will
take everything we've got.



> Q2. The god of January has two faces, one looking back and one looking
> forward, so... Juergen, Eric in Japan and practically everybody else
> want to know when will the GTA03 phone be released, if it will have
> 3G/3.5G, a camera and the kitchen sink. Can you tell us anything yet?
> Where do you want Openmoko to be in December 2009?

We sold the FreeRunner based on "Openness" alone in 2008. We had no real
competition in the marketplace. We were very lucky. But times are
changing. Go ask your non-developer friends what's the most open phone
in the world. They'll say the iPhone or G1. At least that's what I'm
hearing.

Nobody will doubt the value of openness for the mobile industry anymore.
This seems like good news at first glance. But what openness are they
talking about? Look around and you'll find it's pretty different than
what we've been talking about. Yes, the very definition of openness is
changing. This troubles me because we cannot influence markets with our
words — only our products. And the quality of our products is not world
class yet. The bar has been seriously raised. Time is running out. We
need to find a way to lead again. I don't believe playing catch up will
work. Something fundamental needs to change.

I've been thinking a lot about art this past year and how it relates to
what we do. Specifically, I've been extremely interested in categories
and perception. The difference between new art and copies is in the
ability to show contrast. The difference between new art and a mistake
is in perception. A change in perception can only happen when people no
longer think in terms of the same categories.

One of my favorite examples comes from the 20th century artist Vladimir
Malevich. Why would somebody, leading a comfortable career following the
latest trends, come up with something like Suprematism out of the blue?
What changed in mind of Malevich to go from painting vibrant fluid
landscapes to a white square on a white canvas? I think I understand now.

As an entrepreneur, I know that our best work is done when our resources
are limited because there is no other choice. Necessity is, after all,
the mother of all invention. Openmoko needs our best work to thrive in
2009. Our goal will be to generate more contrast, enough to change
people's perception, enough to stay visible.

This is all I want to say about GTA03 at this point.



> Q3. The mandatory dogfood question was submitted by Yorik Moko:
> "Do you use the FreeRunner as your daily phone, which distro
> and what is your favorite application ?"

I use two phones daily. My FreeRunner boots (now) Om 2008.12. The
last 3 months before that I've been using Om 2008 TESTING. My second
phone is a Blackberry Curve, used not out of love but out of a desperate
form of addiction to the digital world. Sometimes I wake up in the
middle of the night just to check email.

This past year, I've had too much email and too much technology. More
and more I find myself looking for natural, handmade things. At the same
time, though, I'm definitely not willing to give up my technology. I
want both a phone that is digital, but in a strange way also analog. I
hope to build one next year. Let's see if we can get there!



> Q4. Todd would like to know exactly what are your feelings about
> Android and its impact on the Openmoko OS.

I would like to clarify one thing first: We don't see Android as the
competition. This might surprise you. But it shouldn't. Would a painter
(I would ask) view new paint, a blank canvas, or paintbrushes as the
competition? Surely they would see them as tools, as raw materials,
waiting for their imagination to transform them into something real.

Android is a software stack that is both complex and high quality. But
software is just one small piece of what a person interacts with when
making a phone call. My fascination with the mobile phone, at least to a
large extent, stems from the fact that it runs complex software that
most people don't know or care about. Please make no mistake about the
importance of this last statement: ordinary people don't care what
software their phone uses. You might think this trivializes what Google
did. That is not my intention. I have nothing but the greatest respect
for what Andy Rubin's team pulled off - that was an engineering
masterpiece. But I see Openmoko as a product company. First and foremost
we must concern ourselves with impacting the lives of ordinary people.
Praising (for too long) a software stack would be placing technology in
a far more powerful position than (I believe) it belongs.



> Q5. Kosa and Marco wondered if you could say us something about the
> management that doesn't seem to be loved by great hackers like Harald
> and Carsten. For example, what is your analysis of the controversies
> that led Om2008 to ship with Qtopia's predictive keyboard.

I am puzzled each time I hear people complain about "management" in
Openmoko. Management (myself obviously included) goes out of our way to
provide the best environment we can. People, like Harald and Raster, are
given immense freedom to work on what they feel is most important.
Management is responsible for the results of their efforts. So if we
make changes that are unpopular, it's only because the realities of
shipping a working product under a limited amount of resources (time,
money, etc...) became too great. It's not because we don't believe in
them or their abilities.

Let me give everyone a bit more background into the keypad issue. We
first saw the Qtopia predictive keypad back in February of 2008, and
became extremely exited. This keypad, we believed, had the potential to
become better than anything on the market.

We asked Raster to integrate this keypad into Om 2008 and extend it to
make it more hacker friendly (i.e., usable from places like the
terminal). After two months of more or less silence he showed us his own
version, written from scratch. The design was a work in progress. And
the dictionary was far inferior to what Qtopia had already. An internal
battle started that lasted until one month before Om 2008 was set to be
released when our product manager, Will Lai, couldn't take it anymore.
He asked another engineer to just get the Qtopia keypad working.

At that point Raster's keypad was getting stable. It had many new
features. But basic text entry was still not as good as Qtopia's. Major
parts of Om 2008, in the meantime, were still not finished (like the
Glamo or network manager).

Openmoko (the company) needs to focus on simplifying. We need to limit
ourselves to building what doesn't already exist. We cannot constantly
try to build better components from scratch. Our resources are just too
limited for that. Openmoko is trying to repackage the essentials (just
enough) to make people feel inspired. What's not there is often times
more inspiring than what is there.

I emailed Raster, the other day, asking if my current perspective
corresponds with his. The main motivation for writing a new keypad from
scratch, he said, had to do with his ability to (easily) extend Qtopia's
code. C++ and qt were not familiar to him. And he wanted something with
more configuration options. To get there with Qtopia, he thought, would
take more time then writing a new one from scratch.

All I ask is that we please don't continue this debate. We have both
now. FSO is using Illume's keypad, so future Om releases will most
likely do the same.

Raster's keyboard, without a doubt, inspired many people in our
community. We've arrived at a point we can look at the past and find out
what we have experienced and what meaning it has. I'll leave the
conclusions up to you.





> Q6. There are many Openmoko communities in languages other than
> English now. Swap38 asks how can they best contribute back to the
> project, and if there are plans to organize the diversity around a
> common model, as OpenOffice.org did for example. What is the status of
> the internationalization and localization effort ?

To the best of my knowledge, there have only been a few coordinated
localization efforts on our lists. I would love to see more.
Localization is very interesting to me since I believe FOSS provides a
unique opportunity to think locally, but act globally.

Probably the best way forward is for people to volunteer on the
community list. Key documentation, language strings, howtos, all could
use translations. If there is anything Openmoko can do to better
organize these efforts, please let us know. We really do need a lot of help.



> Q7. Let's be reflexive, kind of "we have to talk about our
> relationship, dear". Tilman, supported by Michelle, wonders to which
> extend the community has met your expectations. More precisely, could
> you name an area where it did not, perhaps like an application that
> you would have expected be written already ?

The first part of this question is very hard for me to answer. I don't
think it's possible to talk about a community meeting the expectations
of an individual. I only wanted to inspire people, not demand results
from them.

 From day one, I believed that Openmoko needed to deconstruct the
smartphone to its bare essentials, and then build up something new that
properly embraced diversity (the more human face of complexity). Along
this journey we were sidetracked into reinventing the smartphone many
times. I'm not sure why remaking what already exists emits such a strong
gravitational pull - but it does.

Around the end of 2007, I had an "out of body" moment when I realized
where the path we were going was leading us. In short, we realized that
if we ship with a reduced set of smartphone applications then we show
the past, and promise the future. Everyone will compare what is missing.
And we can only say, we are open; all that standard stuff you expect in
a phone will come. In short, we've turned the future into the past.

If we launch with just a single future phone application then we deliver
the future, and forget the past. When people ask where a past feature
is, "Hey where are contacts?" we'd say, "Contacts are in the past". The
phone of the future will manage this for you, even tell you before you
call if your contact is online, offline, around the corner, or only
taking voicemail. We must move beyond the phone. Support for legacy
stuff will come.

We tried to refocus the company around these ideas. This led to an
application called Diversity. The basic idea is the following:

    Neos talk to other Neos using a self-creating, self-healing, global
    free (WiFi) network. The software system, code named Diversity,
    consists of many clients (Neos) talking to servers and, at a later
    time, self-connecting, using mesh-like interactions.

    When powered on, Neos continuously expand the construction of the
    free network by automatically searching out free WiFi spots and
    adding their locations to a database for other Neos to use.  A simple
    reward system based on visual / auditory feedback will let people
    know that a new spot was discovered.

    Communication is done on the free (WiFi) network with only one
    exception: When a Neo cannot find a free network to connect to, it
    will dial into the non-free (GSM) network for only the time required
    to download the nearest free WiFi spot locations. Using GPS, the Neo
    is then able to navigate to that position and communicate for free.
    Communication is simply a layer on top of the free network. It can be
    auditory, visual, or textual.

"Free your Phone" was our marketing focus up to that point. But we
realized this was not enough. Even when the phone is completely opened,
it's still not free. There's another force keeping it's potential locked
up. This is the carrier's network. They limit what can be plugged in and
what the plugged in devices can do. So we thought we needed to "Free the
Network".

To make a long story short, execution got in the way of ideas (something
a bit too familiar in Openmoko). Parts of the project went into
Locations. But the full idea of constructing a parallel, free
communication network never materialized. Maybe people had similar ideas
(I was reading about kismet on our list a while back) but I think we
were in the best position to make it happen from a product standpoint.

One day we'll come back to these goals, but not until we ship a robust,
well-designed phone. Until then, we'll stay focused on getting "Back to
the basics".

If a serious community effort would be established around these goals,
there's a very good chance Openmoko would design a phone specifically
for this purpose. I still believe this device could become the icon of
openness.



> Q8. On the other hand, Tim and others would like to know the most
> interesting or fun thing you have seen the Freerunner used for ?

Guillermo Sureda-Burgos' work (and essay) on open industrial design
ranks high on my list. So do Numpty Physics and Duke Nukem. But I think
the most surprising thing (as in we didn't see it coming) was the
explosion of new distributions: FDOM, SHR, even Debian. Being able to
swap out entire software stacks with the change of an SD card gives a
whole new meaning to the word customization.



> Q9. And where do you think could any person do the most for the
> project right now? Think of if that person would be ideal and have all
> the skills needed. And then, which skills are in most need right now
> and in the future?

There are so many ways people can contribute that it's hard for me to
single out a specific task or accomplishment. Development, testing, bug
fixing, organizational, and documentation tasks are all important.
Perhaps the best way to figure something out in this regard is for
people to post their qualifications and interests to the community list
and we all can provide direction based on that.



> Q10. To conclude, can we have a video of you in Openmoko T-shirt and
> geek-cap, having a phone chat with star hackers, using Neo FreeRunners
> at both ends, telling each other your favorite FreerRunner joke?
> Please?

I'm in San Francisco now, without a video camera. So this one will have
to wait until I return to Taiwan. When we're done filming, I'll
post to the community list.

Hopefully you all got this far. I know this email is long. It was quite
an experience for me to write so much. (Minh you did an amazing job
compiling these questions!) We've come a long way together. I'm
really looking forward to 2009. We have great opportunities all over the
place. So what matters is that we continue to be hopeful for the future.
And, together, we take the bold steps needed to get there.



Happy New Year!




Sincerely,


Sean Moss-Pultz





_______________________________________________
Openmoko community mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community

[Lee Grime]

Sean,

I come from a hardware background, chip design mainly, but analogue
(note the spelling :-) ) and DSP(MSc) are still strong points.  Done
chip design for 15 years.  Now I do not have a great deal of time at the
moment, what with a 3 week old baby and stuff!, but if we can get a few
other like minded people together, I am sure we can produce our own open
source SoC.  And if the credit crunch kicks in properly, even more time.

I have heard all about the problems with the crappy Glamo chip.  Why not
have a small CPLD as a co-processor, into which we load a 'codec' for
whatever we are doing at the time, say mp3 decoding, or some video
codec.  We can get cheap and low power enough CPLD's or FPGA's these
days to perform this job.

Lets make this thing really open.  Could even do the GSM part open
source.  No more problems with NDA's etc.  If you can get to 100K units
our own ASIC should become viable.

What do you think?

Lee.

On Sat, 2009-01-03 at 07:11 +0800, Sean Moss-Pultz wrote:

> Dear Community
>
>
> Here are my answers to your great questions:
>
> > Q1. The end of the year is a time to look back on the year
> > achievements. So where does Openmoko stands now from a business point
> > of view ? Could you comment on sustainability, on sales numbers, on
> > geographic markets and customer categories ?
>
> Let me begin by addressing the market aspects of the question, because I
> find this part more fundamental. Openmoko was built from the tools and
> knowledge of the Internet. Our argument for the necessity of an open
> phone stems from an observation that the Internet breaks down mass
> markets by making it economically attractive for companies to address
> niche market segments. We saw a real business opportunity caused by this
> divergence. So we set out to build a product capable of allowing a
> company to reach out to its customers and allowing its customers to talk
> back and to talk to each other. This product was the Neo 1973.
>
> We pioneered a new breed of Consumer Electronics companies. The products
> we build expand our community. The expanded community makes for better
> products and more sales. Ad infinitum. Perhaps one day people will look
> back and call such corporate and community teamwork the first, of many,
> Social Electronics companies.
>
> FreeRunner, our major product milestone of 2008, started selling in
> July. We were more conservative this time with our launch. There were no
> pre-orders. We sold first through distributors. Our own order processing
> was entirely automated. Last time it was (painfully) manual. I hope
> everyone who reads this list will appreciate how much effort FreeRunner
> took. Openmoko is a very small company. We succeeded in building a
> smartphone only because we didn't have enough experienced people to tell
> us that it couldn't be done.
>
> While far better than the Neo 1973, FreeRunner had its share of
> problems. The ancient TI Calypso had registration and SIM card
> compatibility issues. Audio quality, while slowly improving, still is
> not perfect. But I can accept these growing pains. We are improving. We
> are much better than our last product. And community effects continue to
> materialize in mind-blowing ways. (I will never forget the speed at
> which we all fixed the GPS issue.)
>
> "Back to the Basics" was our response to your public and private
> comments. We continue to refocus internal efforts around these ideas.
> Paroli represents a phone application with a feature set reduced to the
> bare minimum that is still useful. FSO is our base that will let you
> easily build what you want. The entire system is becoming more stable as
> we increase our efforts to have our kernel downloadable from kernel.org.
> Our technology plan is stabilized at this point. Development priorities
> for the next six months are clear.
>
> Openmoko's goal can be written in one sentence: We want to build
> consumer products that package the best parts of the FOSS world into
> products that are relevant and inspiring to ordinary people.
> "Inspiring" is the key part of this goal in my mind. Here's a list, off
> the top of my head, of the things we've inspired to date:
>
>    * A small project inside of FIC to become an independent company
>    * 24 distributors around the world to join us in getting our products
>      to more people
>    * The development of entire distributions (as opposed to just
>      applications)
>    * Industrial designers to remix our CAD files
>    * A very interesting Framework initiative
>    * A documentation list with the most amazing Community Update emails
>
> Using inspiration as a metric, without a doubt, Openmoko was a massive
> success in 2008. If you want to compare us to Apple and their iPhone I
> would be flattered, but I also think it's a strange comparison. We are
> very a small company. Sales are just enough (around 10,000 to date) to
> survive. Apple has been around for 30 years - Openmoko just under two.
> I'm extremely excited about our position going into 2009. At the same
> time, I'm very realistic about the road we are traveling. Success will
> take everything we've got.
>
>
>
> > Q2. The god of January has two faces, one looking back and one looking
> > forward, so... Juergen, Eric in Japan and practically everybody else
> > want to know when will the GTA03 phone be released, if it will have
> > 3G/3.5G, a camera and the kitchen sink. Can you tell us anything yet?
> > Where do you want Openmoko to be in December 2009?
>
> We sold the FreeRunner based on "Openness" alone in 2008. We had no real
> competition in the marketplace. We were very lucky. But times are
> changing. Go ask your non-developer friends what's the most open phone
> in the world. They'll say the iPhone or G1. At least that's what I'm
> hearing.
>
> Nobody will doubt the value of openness for the mobile industry anymore.
> This seems like good news at first glance. But what openness are they
> talking about? Look around and you'll find it's pretty different than
> what we've been talking about. Yes, the very definition of openness is
> changing. This troubles me because we cannot influence markets with our
> words — only our products. And the quality of our products is not world
> class yet. The bar has been seriously raised. Time is running out. We
> need to find a way to lead again. I don't believe playing catch up will
> work. Something fundamental needs to change.
>
> I've been thinking a lot about art this past year and how it relates to
> what we do. Specifically, I've been extremely interested in categories
> and perception. The difference between new art and copies is in the
> ability to show contrast. The difference between new art and a mistake
> is in perception. A change in perception can only happen when people no
> longer think in terms of the same categories.
>
> One of my favorite examples comes from the 20th century artist Vladimir
> Malevich. Why would somebody, leading a comfortable career following the
> latest trends, come up with something like Suprematism out of the blue?
> What changed in mind of Malevich to go from painting vibrant fluid
> landscapes to a white square on a white canvas? I think I understand now.
>
> As an entrepreneur, I know that our best work is done when our resources
> are limited because there is no other choice. Necessity is, after all,
> the mother of all invention. Openmoko needs our best work to thrive in
> 2009. Our goal will be to generate more contrast, enough to change
> people's perception, enough to stay visible.
>
> This is all I want to say about GTA03 at this point.
>
>
>
> > Q3. The mandatory dogfood question was submitted by Yorik Moko:
> > "Do you use the FreeRunner as your daily phone, which distro
> > and what is your favorite application ?"
>
> I use two phones daily. My FreeRunner boots (now) Om 2008.12. The
> last 3 months before that I've been using Om 2008 TESTING. My second
> phone is a Blackberry Curve, used not out of love but out of a desperate
> form of addiction to the digital world. Sometimes I wake up in the
> middle of the night just to check email.
>
> This past year, I've had too much email and too much technology. More
> and more I find myself looking for natural, handmade things. At the same
> time, though, I'm definitely not willing to give up my technology. I
> want both a phone that is digital, but in a strange way also analog. I
> hope to build one next year. Let's see if we can get there!
>
>
>
> > Q4. Todd would like to know exactly what are your feelings about
> > Android and its impact on the Openmoko OS.
>
> I would like to clarify one thing first: We don't see Android as the
> competition. This might surprise you. But it shouldn't. Would a painter
> (I would ask) view new paint, a blank canvas, or paintbrushes as the
> competition? Surely they would see them as tools, as raw materials,
> waiting for their imagination to transform them into something real.
>
> Android is a software stack that is both complex and high quality. But
> software is just one small piece of what a person interacts with when
> making a phone call. My fascination with the mobile phone, at least to a
> large extent, stems from the fact that it runs complex software that
> most people don't know or care about. Please make no mistake about the
> importance of this last statement: ordinary people don't care what
> software their phone uses. You might think this trivializes what Google
> did. That is not my intention. I have nothing but the greatest respect
> for what Andy Rubin's team pulled off - that was an engineering
> masterpiece. But I see Openmoko as a product company. First and foremost
> we must concern ourselves with impacting the lives of ordinary people.
> Praising (for too long) a software stack would be placing technology in
> a far more powerful position than (I believe) it belongs.
>
>
>
> > Q5. Kosa and Marco wondered if you could say us something about the
> > management that doesn't seem to be loved by great hackers like Harald
> > and Carsten. For example, what is your analysis of the controversies
> > that led Om2008 to ship with Qtopia's predictive keyboard.
>
> I am puzzled each time I hear people complain about "management" in
> Openmoko. Management (myself obviously included) goes out of our way to
> provide the best environment we can. People, like Harald and Raster, are
> given immense freedom to work on what they feel is most important.
> Management is responsible for the results of their efforts. So if we
> make changes that are unpopular, it's only because the realities of
> shipping a working product under a limited amount of resources (time,
> money, etc...) became too great. It's not because we don't believe in
> them or their abilities.
>
> Let me give everyone a bit more background into the keypad issue. We
> first saw the Qtopia predictive keypad back in February of 2008, and
> became extremely exited. This keypad, we believed, had the potential to
> become better than anything on the market.
>
> We asked Raster to integrate this keypad into Om 2008 and extend it to
> make it more hacker friendly (i.e., usable from places like the
> terminal). After two months of more or less silence he showed us his own
> version, written from scratch. The design was a work in progress. And
> the dictionary was far inferior to what Qtopia had already. An internal
> battle started that lasted until one month before Om 2008 was set to be
> released when our product manager, Will Lai, couldn't take it anymore.
> He asked another engineer to just get the Qtopia keypad working.
>
> At that point Raster's keypad was getting stable. It had many new
> features. But basic text entry was still not as good as Qtopia's. Major
> parts of Om 2008, in the meantime, were still not finished (like the
> Glamo or network manager).
>
> Openmoko (the company) needs to focus on simplifying. We need to limit
> ourselves to building what doesn't already exist. We cannot constantly
> try to build better components from scratch. Our resources are just too
> limited for that. Openmoko is trying to repackage the essentials (just
> enough) to make people feel inspired. What's not there is often times
> more inspiring than what is there.
>
> I emailed Raster, the other day, asking if my current perspective
> corresponds with his. The main motivation for writing a new keypad from
> scratch, he said, had to do with his ability to (easily) extend Qtopia's
> code. C++ and qt were not familiar to him. And he wanted something with
> more configuration options. To get there with Qtopia, he thought, would
> take more time then writing a new one from scratch.
>
> All I ask is that we please don't continue this debate. We have both
> now. FSO is using Illume's keypad, so future Om releases will most
> likely do the same.
>
> Raster's keyboard, without a doubt, inspired many people in our
> community. We've arrived at a point we can look at the past and find out
> what we have experienced and what meaning it has. I'll leave the
> conclusions up to you.
>
>
>
>
>
> > Q6. There are many Openmoko communities in languages other than
> > English now. Swap38 asks how can they best contribute back to the
> > project, and if there are plans to organize the diversity around a
> > common model, as OpenOffice.org did for example. What is the status of
> > the internationalization and localization effort ?
>
> To the best of my knowledge, there have only been a few coordinated
> localization efforts on our lists. I would love to see more.
> Localization is very interesting to me since I believe FOSS provides a
> unique opportunity to think locally, but act globally.
>
> Probably the best way forward is for people to volunteer on the
> community list. Key documentation, language strings, howtos, all could
> use translations. If there is anything Openmoko can do to better
> organize these efforts, please let us know. We really do need a lot of help.
>
>
>
> > Q7. Let's be reflexive, kind of "we have to talk about our
> > relationship, dear". Tilman, supported by Michelle, wonders to which
> > extend the community has met your expectations. More precisely, could
> > you name an area where it did not, perhaps like an application that
> > you would have expected be written already ?
>
> The first part of this question is very hard for me to answer. I don't
> think it's possible to talk about a community meeting the expectations
> of an individual. I only wanted to inspire people, not demand results
> from them.
>
>  From day one, I believed that Openmoko needed to deconstruct the
> smartphone to its bare essentials, and then build up something new that
> properly embraced diversity (the more human face of complexity). Along
> this journey we were sidetracked into reinventing the smartphone many
> times. I'm not sure why remaking what already exists emits such a strong
> gravitational pull - but it does.
>
> Around the end of 2007, I had an "out of body" moment when I realized
> where the path we were going was leading us. In short, we realized that
> if we ship with a reduced set of smartphone applications then we show
> the past, and promise the future. Everyone will compare what is missing.
> And we can only say, we are open; all that standard stuff you expect in
> a phone will come. In short, we've turned the future into the past.
>
> If we launch with just a single future phone application then we deliver
> the future, and forget the past. When people ask where a past feature
> is, "Hey where are contacts?" we'd say, "Contacts are in the past". The
> phone of the future will manage this for you, even tell you before you
> call if your contact is online, offline, around the corner, or only
> taking voicemail. We must move beyond the phone. Support for legacy
> stuff will come.
>
> We tried to refocus the company around these ideas. This led to an
> application called Diversity. The basic idea is the following:
>
>     Neos talk to other Neos using a self-creating, self-healing, global
>     free (WiFi) network. The software system, code named Diversity,
>     consists of many clients (Neos) talking to servers and, at a later
>     time, self-connecting, using mesh-like interactions.
>
>     When powered on, Neos continuously expand the construction of the
>     free network by automatically searching out free WiFi spots and
>     adding their locations to a database for other Neos to use.  A simple
>     reward system based on visual / auditory feedback will let people
>     know that a new spot was discovered.
>
>     Communication is done on the free (WiFi) network with only one
>     exception: When a Neo cannot find a free network to connect to, it
>     will dial into the non-free (GSM) network for only the time required
>     to download the nearest free WiFi spot locations. Using GPS, the Neo
>     is then able to navigate to that position and communicate for free.
>     Communication is simply a layer on top of the free network. It can be
>     auditory, visual, or textual.
>
> "Free your Phone" was our marketing focus up to that point. But we
> realized this was not enough. Even when the phone is completely opened,
> it's still not free. There's another force keeping it's potential locked
> up. This is the carrier's network. They limit what can be plugged in and
> what the plugged in devices can do. So we thought we needed to "Free the
> Network".
>
> To make a long story short, execution got in the way of ideas (something
> a bit too familiar in Openmoko). Parts of the project went into
> Locations. But the full idea of constructing a parallel, free
> communication network never materialized. Maybe people had similar ideas
> (I was reading about kismet on our list a while back) but I think we
> were in the best position to make it happen from a product standpoint.
>
> One day we'll come back to these goals, but not until we ship a robust,
> well-designed phone. Until then, we'll stay focused on getting "Back to
> the basics".
>
> If a serious community effort would be established around these goals,
> there's a very good chance Openmoko would design a phone specifically
> for this purpose. I still believe this device could become the icon of
> openness.
>
>
>
> > Q8. On the other hand, Tim and others would like to know the most
> > interesting or fun thing you have seen the Freerunner used for ?
>
> Guillermo Sureda-Burgos' work (and essay) on open industrial design
> ranks high on my list. So do Numpty Physics and Duke Nukem. But I think
> the most surprising thing (as in we didn't see it coming) was the
> explosion of new distributions: FDOM, SHR, even Debian. Being able to
> swap out entire software stacks with the change of an SD card gives a
> whole new meaning to the word customization.
>
>
>
> > Q9. And where do you think could any person do the most for the
> > project right now? Think of if that person would be ideal and have all
> > the skills needed. And then, which skills are in most need right now
> > and in the future?
>
> There are so many ways people can contribute that it's hard for me to
> single out a specific task or accomplishment. Development, testing, bug
> fixing, organizational, and documentation tasks are all important.
> Perhaps the best way to figure something out in this regard is for
> people to post their qualifications and interests to the community list
> and we all can provide direction based on that.
>
>
>
> > Q10. To conclude, can we have a video of you in Openmoko T-shirt and
> > geek-cap, having a phone chat with star hackers, using Neo FreeRunners
> > at both ends, telling each other your favorite FreerRunner joke?
> > Please?
>
> I'm in San Francisco now, without a video camera. So this one will have
> to wait until I return to Taiwan. When we're done filming, I'll
> post to the community list.
>
> Hopefully you all got this far. I know this email is long. It was quite
> an experience for me to write so much. (Minh you did an amazing job
> compiling these questions!) We've come a long way together. I'm
> really looking forward to 2009. We have great opportunities all over the
> place. So what matters is that we continue to be hopeful for the future.
> And, together, we take the bold steps needed to get there.
>
>
>
> Happy New Year!
>
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
> Sean Moss-Pultz
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community

_______________________________________________
Openmoko community mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)-2]

On Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:50:14 +0100 Lee Grime <[hidden email]> babbled:

or... use something programmable like the omap3 series that comes with a dsp to
offload work to - arm has been working on doing cortex a9 which is multi-core.
forget glamo. it's legacy. if you are talking of "doing an SoC" you are in for
a hard time. i just did some benchmarks of tro650 vs gta02 vs beagleboard vs
desktop in software rendering:

http://www.rasterman.com/

as you can see - focusing on glamo and fixing it is not goign to net you
anything. just using a "modern SoC" netted an average gain of about 4-5x the
speed. and it's not even at its rated 600mhz and with slower ram. i'd expect a
good 15-30% up from that just for a production version (ie 600mhz and decent
speed ram). and thats not including any neon optimisations. i have that on my
todo list now i have silicon to play with.

you can go into details of the glamo if you want.. but  it'll just rehash
things. the future for graphics is not discrete chips doing it - but cores on
your SoC. the 3530 has a fast cpu core - fast memory bust with even an l2 cache
- AND it even has a (closed) 3d core (SGX). the cpu alone is fast enough to do
nice gfx on at the resolutions you'd expect on a phone - throw in the dsp and
you're sailing along. producing your own SoC is likely going to net you
something that maybe in 5 years approximates the SoC's of 5 years ago in power
consumption  and performance. if you want a solution and want it in a
reasonable time - simply a better SoC is the go. (what you want exists already
in production - just a matter of using it :))

> Sean,
>
> I come from a hardware background, chip design mainly, but analogue
> (note the spelling :-) ) and DSP(MSc) are still strong points.  Done
> chip design for 15 years.  Now I do not have a great deal of time at the
> moment, what with a 3 week old baby and stuff!, but if we can get a few
> other like minded people together, I am sure we can produce our own open
> source SoC.  And if the credit crunch kicks in properly, even more time.
>
> I have heard all about the problems with the crappy Glamo chip.  Why not
> have a small CPLD as a co-processor, into which we load a 'codec' for
> whatever we are doing at the time, say mp3 decoding, or some video
> codec.  We can get cheap and low power enough CPLD's or FPGA's these
> days to perform this job.
>
> Lets make this thing really open.  Could even do the GSM part open
> source.  No more problems with NDA's etc.  If you can get to 100K units
> our own ASIC should become viable.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Lee.
>
> On Sat, 2009-01-03 at 07:11 +0800, Sean Moss-Pultz wrote:
> > Dear Community
> >
> >
> > Here are my answers to your great questions:
> >
> > > Q1. The end of the year is a time to look back on the year
> > > achievements. So where does Openmoko stands now from a business point
> > > of view ? Could you comment on sustainability, on sales numbers, on
> > > geographic markets and customer categories ?
> >
> > Let me begin by addressing the market aspects of the question, because I
> > find this part more fundamental. Openmoko was built from the tools and
> > knowledge of the Internet. Our argument for the necessity of an open
> > phone stems from an observation that the Internet breaks down mass
> > markets by making it economically attractive for companies to address
> > niche market segments. We saw a real business opportunity caused by this
> > divergence. So we set out to build a product capable of allowing a
> > company to reach out to its customers and allowing its customers to talk
> > back and to talk to each other. This product was the Neo 1973.
> >
> > We pioneered a new breed of Consumer Electronics companies. The products
> > we build expand our community. The expanded community makes for better
> > products and more sales. Ad infinitum. Perhaps one day people will look
> > back and call such corporate and community teamwork the first, of many,
> > Social Electronics companies.
> >
> > FreeRunner, our major product milestone of 2008, started selling in
> > July. We were more conservative this time with our launch. There were no
> > pre-orders. We sold first through distributors. Our own order processing
> > was entirely automated. Last time it was (painfully) manual. I hope
> > everyone who reads this list will appreciate how much effort FreeRunner
> > took. Openmoko is a very small company. We succeeded in building a
> > smartphone only because we didn't have enough experienced people to tell
> > us that it couldn't be done.
> >
> > While far better than the Neo 1973, FreeRunner had its share of
> > problems. The ancient TI Calypso had registration and SIM card
> > compatibility issues. Audio quality, while slowly improving, still is
> > not perfect. But I can accept these growing pains. We are improving. We
> > are much better than our last product. And community effects continue to
> > materialize in mind-blowing ways. (I will never forget the speed at
> > which we all fixed the GPS issue.)
> >
> > "Back to the Basics" was our response to your public and private
> > comments. We continue to refocus internal efforts around these ideas.
> > Paroli represents a phone application with a feature set reduced to the
> > bare minimum that is still useful. FSO is our base that will let you
> > easily build what you want. The entire system is becoming more stable as
> > we increase our efforts to have our kernel downloadable from kernel.org.
> > Our technology plan is stabilized at this point. Development priorities
> > for the next six months are clear.
> >
> > Openmoko's goal can be written in one sentence: We want to build
> > consumer products that package the best parts of the FOSS world into
> > products that are relevant and inspiring to ordinary people.
> > "Inspiring" is the key part of this goal in my mind. Here's a list, off
> > the top of my head, of the things we've inspired to date:
> >
> >    * A small project inside of FIC to become an independent company
> >    * 24 distributors around the world to join us in getting our products
> >      to more people
> >    * The development of entire distributions (as opposed to just
> >      applications)
> >    * Industrial designers to remix our CAD files
> >    * A very interesting Framework initiative
> >    * A documentation list with the most amazing Community Update emails
> >
> > Using inspiration as a metric, without a doubt, Openmoko was a massive
> > success in 2008. If you want to compare us to Apple and their iPhone I
> > would be flattered, but I also think it's a strange comparison. We are
> > very a small company. Sales are just enough (around 10,000 to date) to
> > survive. Apple has been around for 30 years - Openmoko just under two.
> > I'm extremely excited about our position going into 2009. At the same
> > time, I'm very realistic about the road we are traveling. Success will
> > take everything we've got.
> >
> >
> >
> > > Q2. The god of January has two faces, one looking back and one looking
> > > forward, so... Juergen, Eric in Japan and practically everybody else
> > > want to know when will the GTA03 phone be released, if it will have
> > > 3G/3.5G, a camera and the kitchen sink. Can you tell us anything yet?
> > > Where do you want Openmoko to be in December 2009?
> >
> > We sold the FreeRunner based on "Openness" alone in 2008. We had no real
> > competition in the marketplace. We were very lucky. But times are
> > changing. Go ask your non-developer friends what's the most open phone
> > in the world. They'll say the iPhone or G1. At least that's what I'm
> > hearing.
> >
> > Nobody will doubt the value of openness for the mobile industry anymore.
> > This seems like good news at first glance. But what openness are they
> > talking about? Look around and you'll find it's pretty different than
> > what we've been talking about. Yes, the very definition of openness is
> > changing. This troubles me because we cannot influence markets with our
> > words — only our products. And the quality of our products is not world
> > class yet. The bar has been seriously raised. Time is running out. We
> > need to find a way to lead again. I don't believe playing catch up will
> > work. Something fundamental needs to change.
> >
> > I've been thinking a lot about art this past year and how it relates to
> > what we do. Specifically, I've been extremely interested in categories
> > and perception. The difference between new art and copies is in the
> > ability to show contrast. The difference between new art and a mistake
> > is in perception. A change in perception can only happen when people no
> > longer think in terms of the same categories.
> >
> > One of my favorite examples comes from the 20th century artist Vladimir
> > Malevich. Why would somebody, leading a comfortable career following the
> > latest trends, come up with something like Suprematism out of the blue?
> > What changed in mind of Malevich to go from painting vibrant fluid
> > landscapes to a white square on a white canvas? I think I understand now.
> >
> > As an entrepreneur, I know that our best work is done when our resources
> > are limited because there is no other choice. Necessity is, after all,
> > the mother of all invention. Openmoko needs our best work to thrive in
> > 2009. Our goal will be to generate more contrast, enough to change
> > people's perception, enough to stay visible.
> >
> > This is all I want to say about GTA03 at this point.
> >
> >
> >
> > > Q3. The mandatory dogfood question was submitted by Yorik Moko:
> > > "Do you use the FreeRunner as your daily phone, which distro
> > > and what is your favorite application ?"
> >
> > I use two phones daily. My FreeRunner boots (now) Om 2008.12. The
> > last 3 months before that I've been using Om 2008 TESTING. My second
> > phone is a Blackberry Curve, used not out of love but out of a desperate
> > form of addiction to the digital world. Sometimes I wake up in the
> > middle of the night just to check email.
> >
> > This past year, I've had too much email and too much technology. More
> > and more I find myself looking for natural, handmade things. At the same
> > time, though, I'm definitely not willing to give up my technology. I
> > want both a phone that is digital, but in a strange way also analog. I
> > hope to build one next year. Let's see if we can get there!
> >
> >
> >
> > > Q4. Todd would like to know exactly what are your feelings about
> > > Android and its impact on the Openmoko OS.
> >
> > I would like to clarify one thing first: We don't see Android as the
> > competition. This might surprise you. But it shouldn't. Would a painter
> > (I would ask) view new paint, a blank canvas, or paintbrushes as the
> > competition? Surely they would see them as tools, as raw materials,
> > waiting for their imagination to transform them into something real.
> >
> > Android is a software stack that is both complex and high quality. But
> > software is just one small piece of what a person interacts with when
> > making a phone call. My fascination with the mobile phone, at least to a
> > large extent, stems from the fact that it runs complex software that
> > most people don't know or care about. Please make no mistake about the
> > importance of this last statement: ordinary people don't care what
> > software their phone uses. You might think this trivializes what Google
> > did. That is not my intention. I have nothing but the greatest respect
> > for what Andy Rubin's team pulled off - that was an engineering
> > masterpiece. But I see Openmoko as a product company. First and foremost
> > we must concern ourselves with impacting the lives of ordinary people.
> > Praising (for too long) a software stack would be placing technology in
> > a far more powerful position than (I believe) it belongs.
> >
> >
> >
> > > Q5. Kosa and Marco wondered if you could say us something about the
> > > management that doesn't seem to be loved by great hackers like Harald
> > > and Carsten. For example, what is your analysis of the controversies
> > > that led Om2008 to ship with Qtopia's predictive keyboard.
> >
> > I am puzzled each time I hear people complain about "management" in
> > Openmoko. Management (myself obviously included) goes out of our way to
> > provide the best environment we can. People, like Harald and Raster, are
> > given immense freedom to work on what they feel is most important.
> > Management is responsible for the results of their efforts. So if we
> > make changes that are unpopular, it's only because the realities of
> > shipping a working product under a limited amount of resources (time,
> > money, etc...) became too great. It's not because we don't believe in
> > them or their abilities.
> >
> > Let me give everyone a bit more background into the keypad issue. We
> > first saw the Qtopia predictive keypad back in February of 2008, and
> > became extremely exited. This keypad, we believed, had the potential to
> > become better than anything on the market.
> >
> > We asked Raster to integrate this keypad into Om 2008 and extend it to
> > make it more hacker friendly (i.e., usable from places like the
> > terminal). After two months of more or less silence he showed us his own
> > version, written from scratch. The design was a work in progress. And
> > the dictionary was far inferior to what Qtopia had already. An internal
> > battle started that lasted until one month before Om 2008 was set to be
> > released when our product manager, Will Lai, couldn't take it anymore.
> > He asked another engineer to just get the Qtopia keypad working.
> >
> > At that point Raster's keypad was getting stable. It had many new
> > features. But basic text entry was still not as good as Qtopia's. Major
> > parts of Om 2008, in the meantime, were still not finished (like the
> > Glamo or network manager).
> >
> > Openmoko (the company) needs to focus on simplifying. We need to limit
> > ourselves to building what doesn't already exist. We cannot constantly
> > try to build better components from scratch. Our resources are just too
> > limited for that. Openmoko is trying to repackage the essentials (just
> > enough) to make people feel inspired. What's not there is often times
> > more inspiring than what is there.
> >
> > I emailed Raster, the other day, asking if my current perspective
> > corresponds with his. The main motivation for writing a new keypad from
> > scratch, he said, had to do with his ability to (easily) extend Qtopia's
> > code. C++ and qt were not familiar to him. And he wanted something with
> > more configuration options. To get there with Qtopia, he thought, would
> > take more time then writing a new one from scratch.
> >
> > All I ask is that we please don't continue this debate. We have both
> > now. FSO is using Illume's keypad, so future Om releases will most
> > likely do the same.
> >
> > Raster's keyboard, without a doubt, inspired many people in our
> > community. We've arrived at a point we can look at the past and find out
> > what we have experienced and what meaning it has. I'll leave the
> > conclusions up to you.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > Q6. There are many Openmoko communities in languages other than
> > > English now. Swap38 asks how can they best contribute back to the
> > > project, and if there are plans to organize the diversity around a
> > > common model, as OpenOffice.org did for example. What is the status of
> > > the internationalization and localization effort ?
> >
> > To the best of my knowledge, there have only been a few coordinated
> > localization efforts on our lists. I would love to see more.
> > Localization is very interesting to me since I believe FOSS provides a
> > unique opportunity to think locally, but act globally.
> >
> > Probably the best way forward is for people to volunteer on the
> > community list. Key documentation, language strings, howtos, all could
> > use translations. If there is anything Openmoko can do to better
> > organize these efforts, please let us know. We really do need a lot of help.
> >
> >
> >
> > > Q7. Let's be reflexive, kind of "we have to talk about our
> > > relationship, dear". Tilman, supported by Michelle, wonders to which
> > > extend the community has met your expectations. More precisely, could
> > > you name an area where it did not, perhaps like an application that
> > > you would have expected be written already ?
> >
> > The first part of this question is very hard for me to answer. I don't
> > think it's possible to talk about a community meeting the expectations
> > of an individual. I only wanted to inspire people, not demand results
> > from them.
> >
> >  From day one, I believed that Openmoko needed to deconstruct the
> > smartphone to its bare essentials, and then build up something new that
> > properly embraced diversity (the more human face of complexity). Along
> > this journey we were sidetracked into reinventing the smartphone many
> > times. I'm not sure why remaking what already exists emits such a strong
> > gravitational pull - but it does.
> >
> > Around the end of 2007, I had an "out of body" moment when I realized
> > where the path we were going was leading us. In short, we realized that
> > if we ship with a reduced set of smartphone applications then we show
> > the past, and promise the future. Everyone will compare what is missing.
> > And we can only say, we are open; all that standard stuff you expect in
> > a phone will come. In short, we've turned the future into the past.
> >
> > If we launch with just a single future phone application then we deliver
> > the future, and forget the past. When people ask where a past feature
> > is, "Hey where are contacts?" we'd say, "Contacts are in the past". The
> > phone of the future will manage this for you, even tell you before you
> > call if your contact is online, offline, around the corner, or only
> > taking voicemail. We must move beyond the phone. Support for legacy
> > stuff will come.
> >
> > We tried to refocus the company around these ideas. This led to an
> > application called Diversity. The basic idea is the following:
> >
> >     Neos talk to other Neos using a self-creating, self-healing, global
> >     free (WiFi) network. The software system, code named Diversity,
> >     consists of many clients (Neos) talking to servers and, at a later
> >     time, self-connecting, using mesh-like interactions.
> >
> >     When powered on, Neos continuously expand the construction of the
> >     free network by automatically searching out free WiFi spots and
> >     adding their locations to a database for other Neos to use.  A simple
> >     reward system based on visual / auditory feedback will let people
> >     know that a new spot was discovered.
> >
> >     Communication is done on the free (WiFi) network with only one
> >     exception: When a Neo cannot find a free network to connect to, it
> >     will dial into the non-free (GSM) network for only the time required
> >     to download the nearest free WiFi spot locations. Using GPS, the Neo
> >     is then able to navigate to that position and communicate for free.
> >     Communication is simply a layer on top of the free network. It can be
> >     auditory, visual, or textual.
> >
> > "Free your Phone" was our marketing focus up to that point. But we
> > realized this was not enough. Even when the phone is completely opened,
> > it's still not free. There's another force keeping it's potential locked
> > up. This is the carrier's network. They limit what can be plugged in and
> > what the plugged in devices can do. So we thought we needed to "Free the
> > Network".
> >
> > To make a long story short, execution got in the way of ideas (something
> > a bit too familiar in Openmoko). Parts of the project went into
> > Locations. But the full idea of constructing a parallel, free
> > communication network never materialized. Maybe people had similar ideas
> > (I was reading about kismet on our list a while back) but I think we
> > were in the best position to make it happen from a product standpoint.
> >
> > One day we'll come back to these goals, but not until we ship a robust,
> > well-designed phone. Until then, we'll stay focused on getting "Back to
> > the basics".
> >
> > If a serious community effort would be established around these goals,
> > there's a very good chance Openmoko would design a phone specifically
> > for this purpose. I still believe this device could become the icon of
> > openness.
> >
> >
> >
> > > Q8. On the other hand, Tim and others would like to know the most
> > > interesting or fun thing you have seen the Freerunner used for ?
> >
> > Guillermo Sureda-Burgos' work (and essay) on open industrial design
> > ranks high on my list. So do Numpty Physics and Duke Nukem. But I think
> > the most surprising thing (as in we didn't see it coming) was the
> > explosion of new distributions: FDOM, SHR, even Debian. Being able to
> > swap out entire software stacks with the change of an SD card gives a
> > whole new meaning to the word customization.
> >
> >
> >
> > > Q9. And where do you think could any person do the most for the
> > > project right now? Think of if that person would be ideal and have all
> > > the skills needed. And then, which skills are in most need right now
> > > and in the future?
> >
> > There are so many ways people can contribute that it's hard for me to
> > single out a specific task or accomplishment. Development, testing, bug
> > fixing, organizational, and documentation tasks are all important.
> > Perhaps the best way to figure something out in this regard is for
> > people to post their qualifications and interests to the community list
> > and we all can provide direction based on that.
> >
> >
> >
> > > Q10. To conclude, can we have a video of you in Openmoko T-shirt and
> > > geek-cap, having a phone chat with star hackers, using Neo FreeRunners
> > > at both ends, telling each other your favorite FreerRunner joke?
> > > Please?
> >
> > I'm in San Francisco now, without a video camera. So this one will have
> > to wait until I return to Taiwan. When we're done filming, I'll
> > post to the community list.
> >
> > Hopefully you all got this far. I know this email is long. It was quite
> > an experience for me to write so much. (Minh you did an amazing job
> > compiling these questions!) We've come a long way together. I'm
> > really looking forward to 2009. We have great opportunities all over the
> > place. So what matters is that we continue to be hopeful for the future.
> > And, together, we take the bold steps needed to get there.
> >
> >
> >
> > Happy New Year!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> >
> > Sean Moss-Pultz
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Openmoko community mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community

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------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    [hidden email]


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[Marco Trevisan (Treviño)]

Sean Moss-Pultz wrote:

>> Q5. Kosa and Marco wondered if you could say us something about the
>> management that doesn't seem to be loved by great hackers like Harald
>> and Carsten. For example, what is your analysis of the controversies
>> that led Om2008 to ship with Qtopia's predictive keyboard.
>
>
> Let me give everyone a bit more background into the keypad issue. We
> first saw the Qtopia predictive keypad back in February of 2008, and
> became extremely exited. This keypad, we believed, had the potential to
> become better than anything on the market.

Yes, it was...

> We asked Raster to integrate this keypad into Om 2008 and extend it to
> make it more hacker friendly (i.e., usable from places like the
> terminal). After two months of more or less silence he showed us his own
> version, written from scratch. The design was a work in progress. And
> the dictionary was far inferior to what Qtopia had already. An internal
> battle started that lasted until one month before Om 2008 was set to be
> released when our product manager, Will Lai, couldn't take it anymore.
> He asked another engineer to just get the Qtopia keypad working.

Ok, I understand this. But, why have you asked Raster to improve a thing
(like qtopia-x11) that should have been only a kind of placeholder?
Wasn't it considered in a such way at that time? I always thought that
the future of Openmoko was going to reach the Framework, and also if
qtopia could be adapted to use it, we all know that its performances
under X aren't the ones that we can bear.

> At that point Raster's keypad was getting stable. It had many new
> features. But basic text entry was still not as good as Qtopia's. Major
> parts of Om 2008, in the meantime, were still not finished (like the
> Glamo or network manager).
>
> Openmoko (the company) needs to focus on simplifying. We need to limit
> ourselves to building what doesn't already exist. We cannot constantly
> try to build better components from scratch. Our resources are just too
> limited for that. Openmoko is trying to repackage the essentials (just
> enough) to make people feel inspired. What's not there is often times
> more inspiring than what is there.
>
> I emailed Raster, the other day, asking if my current perspective
> corresponds with his. The main motivation for writing a new keypad from
> scratch, he said, had to do with his ability to (easily) extend Qtopia's
> code. C++ and qt were not familiar to him. And he wanted something with
> more configuration options. To get there with Qtopia, he thought, would
> take more time then writing a new one from scratch.

So reading this I only think that what Raster said was not only true
about the implementation difficulties, but also about the fact that at
that time we needed something that should have survived to Om2008. The
keyboard he wrote is actually what the future seems to reserve to us and
also if it has some issues with accented words (maybe fixed in svn
r38274?!?) and it performs worse with big dictionaries than the Qtopia
predictive, I figure that he did the right move.

So maybe what happened wasn't in the spirit of the "backs to the
basics", but he lead us the best input method available today.

> All I ask is that we please don't continue this debate. We have both
> now. FSO is using Illume's keypad, so future Om releases will most
> likely do the same.

Sorry for writing again about this... I know that this (the keyboard
itself) is not the most important thing here, but I was worried by the
fact that we could have lost the farsighted Raster while he was doing
something of great and precious for our future.

--
Treviño's World - Life and Linux
http://www.3v1n0.net/


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[JW-2]

Sean Moss-Pultz <sean <at> openmoko.com> writes:

<snip....lots of stuff>

Sean

Kudos to you for your openness about the status of Openmoko Inc and the future
roadmap, the numbers so far and future ambitions.    Also for your hints about
some of the hard decisions and pain along the way.

Its no small achievement to take this start up to the stage where it can look
forward to improving existing software stacks based on solid FSO middleware and
future product releases given these tough economic times and all in the
community will be pleased to hear that this can be the case.

Having been part of product dev previously I am very forgiving of the hw and sw
bumps in the road that are inevitable - keep up the good work!

I will buy another Openmoko phone as soon as the next one is released.

Happy new year

JW  


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[JW-2]

oh and seeing you are in SF with your BB have you seen this :-)

http://www.citysense.com/moreInfo.php



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[Sean Moss-Pultz]

On 1/3/09 Lee Grime wrote:

> I come from a hardware background, chip design mainly, but analogue
> (note the spelling  :-)  ) and DSP(MSc) are still strong points.  Done
> chip design for 15 years.  Now I do not have a great deal of time at
> the
> moment, what with a 3 week old baby and stuff!, but if we can get a
> few
> other like minded people together, I am sure we can produce our own
> open
> source SoC.  And if the credit crunch kicks in properly, even more
> time.
>
> I have heard all about the problems with the crappy Glamo chip.  Why
> not
> have a small CPLD as a co-processor, into which we load a 'codec' for
> whatever we are doing at the time, say mp3 decoding, or some video
> codec.  We can get cheap and low power enough CPLD's or FPGA's these
> days to perform this job.
>
> Lets make this thing really open.  Could even do the GSM part open
> source.  No more problems with NDA's etc.  If you can get to 100K
> units
> our own ASIC should become viable.

Lee

Congratulations on your new kid!

About a year ago we were in contact with a Taiwanese University /
Government project to build a DSP for mobile devices. We got the point
where they would make everything open, but in the end we decided not to
move forward since the resources required to turn it into a product were
just too great.

Now we're again struggling with closed firmwares (both the Calypso and
the Atheros module). I would love to just make our own WiFi chip, but
Openmoko doesn't have the volume to return our investment in such a
technology endeavor.

Hopefully this doesn't persuade you not to try. Maybe you could pull it
off and we could use your chip in a later product :-)

Happy New Year.

   -Sean

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[Sean Moss-Pultz]

Hi Marco

On 1/3/09 Marco Trevisan (Treviño) wrote:

> > We asked Raster to integrate this keypad into Om 2008 and extend it
> to
> > > make it more hacker friendly (i.e., usable from places like the
> > > terminal). After two months of more or less silence he showed us
> his own
> > > version, written from scratch. The design was a work in progress.
> And
> > > the dictionary was far inferior to what Qtopia had already. An
> internal
> > > battle started that lasted until one month before Om 2008 was set
> to be
> > > released when our product manager, Will Lai, couldn't take it
> anymore.
> > > He asked another engineer to just get the Qtopia keypad working.
>
> Ok, I understand this. But, why have you asked Raster to improve a
> thing
> (like qtopia-x11) that should have been only a kind of placeholder?
> Wasn't it considered in a such way at that time?

For the same reason we used Qtopia in the first place: We needed to
balance the long term goals of the project with the short term necessity
of making enough money to stay in business. This is always a difficult
tradeoff to make.

Happy New Year.

   -Sean

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[Sean Moss-Pultz]

JW wrote:
> Sean
>
> Kudos to you for your openness about the status of Openmoko Inc and the future
> roadmap, the numbers so far and future ambitions.    Also for your hints about
> some of the hard decisions and pain along the way.

:-)

> Its no small achievement to take this start up to the stage where it can look
> forward to improving existing software stacks based on solid FSO middleware and
> future product releases given these tough economic times and all in the
> community will be pleased to hear that this can be the case.

Yes. We're all very excited about FSO. I think it will allow us to
really differentiate.

> Having been part of product dev previously I am very forgiving of the hw and sw
> bumps in the road that are inevitable - keep up the good work!
>
> I will buy another Openmoko phone as soon as the next one is released.

Thanks for all your support!

   -Sean

PS: Citysense is very cool!

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[Minh Ha Duong]

Le dimanche 04 janvier 2009, Sean Moss-Pultz a écrit :
> Now we're again struggling with closed firmwares (both the Calypso and
> the Atheros module). I would love to just make our own WiFi chip, but
> Openmoko doesn't have the volume to return our investment in such a
> technology endeavor.

Hello Sean,

  I always wondered why you were not reusing XO's wifi chip subsystem (Marvell
88W8388) ? OLPC has already mesh networking and I guess good integration in
the kernel. Too expensive, proprietary, complicated ?

Minh
--
Minh HA DUONG, Chargé de Recherche, CNRS
CIRED, Centre International de Recherches sur l'Environnement et le
Développement
http://minh.haduong.com

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[Sean Moss-Pultz]

On 1/4/09 Minh Ha Duong wrote:

> Le dimanche 04 janvier 2009, Sean Moss-Pultz a écrit :
> > > Now we're again struggling with closed firmwares (both the
> Calypso and
> > > the Atheros module). I would love to just make our own WiFi chip,
> but
> > > Openmoko doesn't have the volume to return our investment in such
> a
> > > technology endeavor.
>
> Hello Sean,
>
>   I always wondered why you were not reusing XO's wifi chip subsystem
> (Marvell
> 88W8388) ? OLPC has already mesh networking and I guess good
> integration in
> the kernel. Too expensive, proprietary, complicated ?

Too big :/
OLPC uses the 8388 chipset. We needed to use the 8686 or the newer
(bluetooth+wifi) 8688 variant. Those are built for mobile phones.

   -Sean

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[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)-2]

On Sat, 03 Jan 2009 02:13:45 +0100 "Marco Trevisan (Treviño)" <[hidden email]>
babbled:

> > Let me give everyone a bit more background into the keypad issue. We
> > first saw the Qtopia predictive keypad back in February of 2008, and
> > became extremely exited. This keypad, we believed, had the potential to
> > become better than anything on the market.
>
> Yes, it was...
>
> > We asked Raster to integrate this keypad into Om 2008 and extend it to
> > make it more hacker friendly (i.e., usable from places like the
> > terminal). After two months of more or less silence he showed us his own
> > version, written from scratch. The design was a work in progress. And
> > the dictionary was far inferior to what Qtopia had already. An internal
> > battle started that lasted until one month before Om 2008 was set to be
> > released when our product manager, Will Lai, couldn't take it anymore.
> > He asked another engineer to just get the Qtopia keypad working.
>
> Ok, I understand this. But, why have you asked Raster to improve a thing
> (like qtopia-x11) that should have been only a kind of placeholder?
> Wasn't it considered in a such way at that time? I always thought that
> the future of Openmoko was going to reach the Framework, and also if
> qtopia could be adapted to use it, we all know that its performances
> under X aren't the ones that we can bear.
>
> > At that point Raster's keypad was getting stable. It had many new
> > features. But basic text entry was still not as good as Qtopia's. Major
> > parts of Om 2008, in the meantime, were still not finished (like the
> > Glamo or network manager).
> >
> > Openmoko (the company) needs to focus on simplifying. We need to limit
> > ourselves to building what doesn't already exist. We cannot constantly
> > try to build better components from scratch. Our resources are just too
> > limited for that. Openmoko is trying to repackage the essentials (just
> > enough) to make people feel inspired. What's not there is often times
> > more inspiring than what is there.
> >
> > I emailed Raster, the other day, asking if my current perspective
> > corresponds with his. The main motivation for writing a new keypad from
> > scratch, he said, had to do with his ability to (easily) extend Qtopia's
> > code. C++ and qt were not familiar to him. And he wanted something with
> > more configuration options. To get there with Qtopia, he thought, would
> > take more time then writing a new one from scratch.
>
> So reading this I only think that what Raster said was not only true
> about the implementation difficulties, but also about the fact that at
> that time we needed something that should have survived to Om2008. The
> keyboard he wrote is actually what the future seems to reserve to us and
> also if it has some issues with accented words (maybe fixed in svn
> r38274?!?) and it performs worse with big dictionaries than the Qtopia
> predictive, I figure that he did the right move.
>
> So maybe what happened wasn't in the spirit of the "backs to the
> basics", but he lead us the best input method available today.

since what i wrote really got distilled down and lost a lot of details and info
- i'll quote myself here on the keyboard issue:

----
"ok - here's my take:

looked at qtopia keyboard code. it's c++ and qt - not too familiar with qt but
readable. looked at code (very much qt/qws centric) and its all integrated into
the 1 big qpe process. it has no ability to change layout from config nor
anything to support using a terminal. we also will depend on a external app
that does phone handling for the most rudimentary of things. while it worked
well for english text input ONCe you learnt how to use it (someone told you the
tricks) it lacked: ease of discoverability (how do i enter space? how do i
type the return key? where are numbers? what happened to ctrl and alt? how do i
do backspace? etc.) there were a list of ui issues that i knew would be top of
the complaints list - they were already on the top of mine. now figuring the
work needed to add all of this and fix it vs. re-implementing - i chose to
re-implement given all the above concerns (it only took about 3 weeks for the
first cut - i was busy doing all sorts of other things at the same time, not
just keyboard).

so the work to fix it vs. the code to re-implement with all the other bits
"done better". i chose the latter as i saw it as a faster way to get to thew
right solution. in the end qtopia was meant to be a TEMPORARY solution until
FSO was done - and thus there would need to be a new keyboard implemented
anyway later so work would be duplicated probably by the same person - me. so
instead of doing it twice - did it once. there were enough other unsolved
problems at the time - like "how do i request a keyboard as an app properly?
(the matchbox protocol had holes you can drive a truck through to cause
problems so i ended up implementing that for compatibility, but also a newer
protocol involving properties). also how to select from one of N installed
keyboards and manage the running, killing of the old one etc. etc. were all
unaddressed problems - which would be (and were) significantly easier to
address using illume's keyboard. the problem space is a much more intricate and
complicated one than just "use the qtopia keyboard". that would be the view
when not accounting for all the other issues intertwined with the problem space.

to this date "how do i get rid of the qtopia keyboard and get the illume one"
is one of the most asked questions regarding the keyboard. along with "how do i
get the qwerty manual control" button. along with "hoe on earth does this thing
work? i can't put in a space or delete a word?" :)

so that's why i did a mimick that also put in all the other features i saw
were barriers to usage and learnability. indeed for a while qtopia's dictionary
was much better. illume's has caught up."
----

yes. you asked sean. and he answered and that's good. but there's details
missed.

n.b. no one asked me to make it more hacker friendly at all - in fact all i was
asked was to make the qtopia keyboard work as-is. no asking for hacker-friendly
features (ctrl, alt, terminal etc. etc.). focus was entirely on its ability to
do fuzzy dictionary correction and all its hidden swipes and text matching
selection. it was i that was worried about 'hacker-friendly' after the massive
negative feedback of the numberpad entry keyboard that had no "/" (well it did
but everyone kept asking where it is and complaining how its not usable for a
terminal) that replaced the old matchbox-qwerty keyboard in 2007.x - i paid
close attention to the community lists and what people were doing, what they
said etc. - i don't like to go make the same mistakes already made again.

as such in april holger agreed with my assessment that it was easier the way i
did it - wolfgang was told much earlier after i was asked to look at the qtopia
keyboard that it'd be easier for me to do the way i did. holger even said that
40% of the work was just be shared infra for handling virtual keyboards in
general (i would have said it was more) - be it the qtopia one or any other and
fixing protocols etc. also i was doing launcher, wm, general app switching,
helping with efl and some python binding issues, connman back end and also
front end testing tools for wifi, and more during the lead up to om2008.x
release

i also found that will (product manager) was weeks behind my source tree (which
was on projects.om.org and code went in as soon as it worked) so he was
complaining about things that were already fixed weeks before. i also heard the
complaints vicariously (2nd hand) - just mumbles but never anything specific
until much later when i asked for details a few times.

in the end om got what it wanted - the qtopia keyboard. users were given what om
wanted to give them - the qtopia keyboard working - as-is and that's it. "40%"
of my work was infra for that keyboard (and other possible ones - including
illume's own) to plug into. just the "other 60%" was never used. so as such they
were delivered just what om wanted to deliver and if the users dont like the
choice of the qtopia keyboard (with no other keyboards and layouts available),
that is what the "questions for sean" is for. so as such its not a
"controversy that led om to ship with the qtopia keyboard". that is EXACTLY
what om wanted in the first place the controversy is me disagreeing with it.

ask why om didn't think a keyboard that works for them with a terminal etc. was
considered important (sms/email/text etc. entry with dictionary correction was
considered of utmost importance). nothing to do with me. i always agreed the
idea inherent in the qtopia keyboard was nice and it was really cool - but it
had issues that needed fixing. om wanted the qtopia keyboard as it was - and
that's just what was shipped, and still is.

i was entirely unhappy with a basic thing like key entry depending on a big qpe
process that was temporarily there to be tossed out later. qpe was also the
dialler, sms and contact suite etc. keyboard entry just was out of place given
everything else it was doing was not related to basic "desktop ui".

anyway - i don't want to debate this. just it sounded like i sat on my hands
for 2 months ignoring everyone and arrogantly went off and just did my own
thing because i wanted to (since most of my answer was cut out). i made an
assessment - as asked. i responded with my results. i implemented accordingly
(and said i would), in a way that was able to accept alternatives.

--
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    [hidden email]


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