On 09/22/2016 07:33 AM, Joseph Honold wrote:
On 09/21/2016 10:46 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
In a case where a housing is designed to be a router, if I plug my A20 cpu card that ships with a desktop gui OS, it is in no way configured to be usable as a router.
that's absolutely fine and permitted: i would expect the user to plug in an OTG Cable, plug in an HDMI cable, boot from internal NAND or internal MicroSD and off they go. in effect they would merely be using the router for "power provision". if the desktop OS is kept properly patched and up-to-date, the device-tree binaries would already be on the CPU Card, so it would even recognise the USB devices and other hardware of the Housing. not that there might necessarily be any applications installed which could take advantage of the extra hardware, but that's the user's problem to deal with by installing the applications that they require.
the key bit that's glossed over there is: the user should be keeping the OS (specifically the u-boot and linux kernel) up-to-date so that it is capable of recognising all Housings. for _that_ to work, all Housings implementers / designers *must* keep the device-tree fragments up-to-date.
any end-user that doesn't keep their OS up-to-date (stops automatic updates from being installed, for example) is "on their own".
the envisaged process isn't perfect, by any means: we do have to be realistic about that.
So, would you deny that the router housing EOMA compliance?
of course not, because the question is a misunderstanding of the process.
anyone who is plugging in (for example) an EOMA68-A20 into a (for example) router Housing is probably the kind of expert who knows what they're doing. if they're even *remotely* contemplating that kind of re-purposing / mixing-and-matching (and are the first or one of the first to consider doing it) i think it's safe to assume that they would be capable of customising (or entirely replacing) the OS with one that is more suited to the job of "being a router" as opposed to "being a desktop OS".
If an average consumer buys a housing that claims it is a router and plugs in their old A20 cpu card (that contains a pre-installed desktop style OS) the hardware may be configured correctly per the dtb, but they surely won't be happy when they find out they need to setup a firewall, dhcp server, etc, etc, and much much more. The definition of "plug it in and it works" here is sketchy at best. IMO, "works" means, works as a router like the housing packaging said it would, and I expect most consumers would think the same. Now, average consumer tosses cpu card and housing in the trash and never buys EOMA again because it didn't *just work*.
Consumers should expect some kind of setup for any new hardware, especially a networking appliance, but asking them to install and properly configure a router OS is preposterous. If you allow a provision for housings to boot, the router housing manufacturer can provide a suitable OS (eg openwrt) and average consumer can be happy.
As a user, I would expect to be sold a router housing and a router EOMA68 computer card. I would expect the router housing to be able to host my desktop card as well. I would also expect the router card to work in my desktop housing.