[Arm-netbook] thoughts about EOMA68

[luke.leighton]

On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 10:39 PM, green <greenfreedom10 at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is interesting following the conversation here;

 great.  that's good to hear.

> I have been looking for 'free hardware' options for some time, and have had
> very little success.

 i believe the main problem is that people equate "free" with "not to
be taken seriously".  in other words they equate "if it's free, it
must not make money" or "if it's free, it will be shit quality".  or
"if it's free, people will not commit to getting it done on time".

 finding low-power SoCs for example that can be FSF Hardware-Endorsed
yet also are attractive as mass-volume items is *literally*
impossible, thanks to the requirement of 3D Graphics and Video
playback.

 phones is of course a special area: the number of people willing to
pay $EUR 500+ for a Flow G1.5 is quite small.  dr schaeller's
experience with creating the GTA04 PCB for upgrading openmokos is a
very good case study: although successfully completed and proven to
work, the production cost in small quantities is *enormously* higher
than the mass-volume cost.

> I am mostly open to whatever features might someday be available on a 'free
> hardware' device, in whatever form factor, though a pocket size device would
> be great.  I would be especially pleased to see the possibility of swapping a
> EOMA68 card quickly from one form-factor chassis to another or somehow
> hot-connecting the card to a larger display/keyboard.  This would allow a
> single operating system to be used with multiple chassis.

 preeeecisely.  i'm so delighted to see that you understand this.

> Comments?  Perhaps some of this is just pending the actual availability of a
> EOMA68 card and some chassis.  Thanks for reading.

 yes.  that's the key.  we *know* that there are technical benefits,
business risk mitigation benefits, environmental benefits - so many
benefits it's unreal.

 the issue is: how to bootstrap from here to there?

 l.