[Arm-netbook] Two Questions: MEB/Card/Case and VGA Proto

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday, November 4, 2013 18:12:18 Arokux X wrote:
> Dear Aaron,
> 
> > If you can wait ~8 weeks for delivery: US$75 for MEB + A20 card. I will
> > know Wednesday when this will launch, but I’m hoping we’ll be taking
> > orders next week.
> 
> can you please introduce yourself and your position in the
> MEB/EOMA68-A20 projects?

Sure :)

For the last many years, I’ve been a Free software developer. It’s what I do 
for a living, and that was a conscious decision. I won’t bore you with the 
details .. but it may be useful/interesting to know that I do what I do 
because I believe in the importance of Free and open technology in a world 
that increasingly relies on that same technology.

I also like computers and computing. A lot. ;)

~2 years ago a few of us started a project to bring a fully Free software 
mobile user experience into the world. We started off with a focus on tablets, 
and our UI work is based on the KDE Plasma frameworks which was designed for 
device spectrum computing in mind. I know that because I founded that project 
and continue to be one of the leads in what has become a relatively large 
team. 

Quick, but relevant, aside: When I maintained the panels and various other 
bits in the KDE 3.x desktop: it was me, myself and I working on the panels and 
occasionally 1-2 others on the desktop layer, 1 person on the window manager 
and a small handful of people on other bits like the control center, though I 
also maintained that for a while, too. Today when we have in-person Plasma dev 
meetings, we easily hit the 15-20 person ceiling we usually put on them with 
many others not attending. There are probably close to 10 people who are paid 
to work on various parts of Plasma these days, and a multiplier on that of 
community contributors. Some have been with the project now since its 
beginning.

Relevancy? I am familiar with running open projects, building communities and 
finding ways to tie in business and other commercial interests. Without killing 
the community or people wanting to kill each other ;)

So, the result of our tablet effort is here:

	http://plasma-active.org/

We’ve even developed a full content distribution server to along with it 
(think “app store” but “less constrained and not a walled garden”). It is, of 
course, also Free software.

I took the Plasma Active UI to a number of hardware companies, several of 
which you’d recognize by name. Probably your non-tech friends would too. The 
answer I got repeatedly was “looks great, but we’ll wait until someone else 
takes the first plunge”. So I decided we’d have to take the first plunge.

After discovering the challenges with getting custom tablet hardware that you 
could count on:

* being produced in 6 months time
* being GPL compliant

I eventually ran into the EOMA68 concept via Luke. We have Plasma Active 
booting and running on the AllWinner cards, including h/w accel graphics. Our 
hope is that one day the “flying squirrel” device will become a commercially 
available device running Plasma Active. 

As that project saw its own share of hiccups, and having received an early 
revision of an engineering board for the A20, it occurred to me that we could 
take some of the things we’d learned in the process and do a engineering board 
as a proper, purchasable product.

It wasn’t going to happen with project management and some sense of retail 
logistics. I took that project on, oh, what, 6 weeks ago now? Sth like that...

> As far as I know the MEB is produced by
> Christopher Thomas and I was going to buy it from him. In the case of
> EOMA68-A20 it was Luke Leighton.

Both are involved, yes. The A20 cards we’ll be purchasing via Luke’s business 
interests and Christopher is involved in the engineering of the engineering 
board along with another fellow.

When you buy one of these devices, those involved will be getting a share of 
the profit, so nobody is stealing out of the mouth of Christopher or anyone 
else. I believe in working together and making everyone win from things we 
accomplish as a team.

In the process of making this device, we’ve arranged for online purchasing, 
international shipping, retail boxing (and not just a boring generic box 
stuffed with bubble wrap ;), branding (yes, a name and a logo and everything! 
*gasp*) and what we hope can be the start of a more vigorous and visible 
online community around the EOMA68 platform.

On launch day i think there will be a few things that will surprise, in a good 
way, and am very excited to help make this happen.

More than anything, I can’t wait to see what you all make with them ...

If you have specific questions, I’ll do my best to answer them here. You can 
also find me on irc.freenode.net as aseigo, sometimes on skype by the same name 
and my email .. well, you have that already don’t you :)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo