[Arm-netbook] EOMA, Improv etc

[Nico Rikken]

Hi,

This ongoing discussion, despite the wealth of personal arguments, has
clarified a lot of details for me as an enthusiast and potential
customer.

Ever since I heard about the Spark tablet I truly believed this would
dramatically change the playing field of FOSS and FOS-hardware. Hearing
about the underlying EOMA-board adheres to this vision, where this would
be the new standard in FOS-land and the overall maker-community.

As far as I understand it, over time some other SoC's have already been
re-engineered. In addition the recent RaspberryPi-board and the
crowd-sourced Novena board have closed in on the proposition of the
EOMA-board. However the EOMA-board still seems to hold a place of its
own for compactness and power.

In my job I've got to get a glimpse of the embedded-hardware development
business and knowing now about development costs involved, it is truly
heartbreaking to see this project in this state. I believe the potential
is still there, the hard work has been done, it just takes a great
launch to bootstrap production, community adoption and even further
development.

As for the launch Improv didn't cut it for me as a potential customer.
The lack of detailed communication and the strong focus on the
make-play-live proposition (which to me seems limited and seems to go
against the hacker market). And above all, I just wanted to have a
FOS-tablet to play with, not an offering similar to my RaspberryPi
(which I even hardly use).

Say the EOMA-board would run a crowdfunding effort to start commercial
development, what would be a good proposition? To me it seems to be a
tablet combination, to also aid in the FOSS development (like
make-play-live).

Personally I could see the board earn a place on it's own, by being a
great replacement for the RaspberryPi, specically for other
RaspberryPi-projects for which the RaspberryPi is just a way of
achieving a service, like: Generic fileserver (NAS), Owncloud-instance,
ArkOS install (multiple local services), XBMC-player or Android-player
(say for games, probably requiring Replicant Android).
Others might even be: 3D-printer-driver, VJ-visual generator (like the
M-Labs m1), Freedombox (although currently in development and requiring
an additional network interface), home-automation or parallel processing
using multiple boards.
One of the main benefits of the EOMA-board is the fact that it can
easily be handled by regular users, without fearing ESD-problems. The
Improv-board, despite offering decent breakouts, doesn't adhere to this
user-level, still requiring an additional case.

Considering that like me others saw a place for this development but
didn't fully support for various reasons, it might be worth another try
to find the required support for this to take off. Say by preparing and
starting a crowdfunding campaign offering the EOMA-boards, various
breakouts (Improv-type breakout with option of a plastic case,
NAS-enclosure with HDD-space, tablet (with room for batteries)) linked
to various donation levels, paid pre-installation as a way of turning
time into money and finally products like mugs and t-shirts.

Even though I'm not fully emerged into the FOSS-community, I believe the
Novena project has set an example by creating social presence even
before launching the crowdfunding campaing by initially demonstrating
skill (overall blog and SD-card analysis) and next showing off the
product (e.g. Chaos Communication Congress). This makes me believe that
with proper marketing and having a great offer, the community will at
least consider supporting this 'project' and better yet fully fund the
project.
Seeing the EOMA-board as the underlying basis for further efforts, I
believe Luke should be (involved in) initiating such an effort, despite
all politics involved in the recent debates.

(hope I didn't fuel a rant with this e-mail).

Kind regards,
Nico Rikken, NL

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