Slashdot Mirror
The Need for Open Hardware
bwt asks: "With all the talk of DRM lately, it occurs to me that the entire concept depends on limiting the choice for computer hardware. OK, so the proper reaction to the copyright industry's attempts at PC market control is to be able to build a PC that they can't control. I know there have been some discussions on open hardware, but most if it was prior to the emergence of DRM as a real threat. In fact, Richard Stallman wrote an editorial in 1999 and said 'Because copying hardware is so hard, the question of whether we're allowed to do it is not vitally important.' DRM has perhaps changed that. Isn't the need for open hardware becoming critical? What is the status of the open hardware efforts?"
How is hardware not currently open? Do you mean open hardware specs once the hardware is created and sold? This will not fly, since competition would destroy any chance at the company making profits... (China not abiding by copyright laws 'n all)...
Better specs on how to write drivers for the hardware sounds like a great idea, but not full hardware specs in the public domain for new hardware, that just won't work...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
What is the status of the open hardware efforts?
So far its closed, I'll let you know when I decide to void the warranty.
If any of evil legislation being proposed passes, wouldn't the status of open hardware be....
illegal
Really that is what the fight will be all about. Hardware will be made to defeat DRM, the only way it will not be is if it is all illegal.
Even if anti-DRM hardware is deemed illegal expect a black market in it that will put the alcohol black market during prohibition to shame.
General purpose components (processors, memory, storage) without DRM enforcement will be readily available until it is governmentally mandated otherwise, and at that point open hardware without DRM would be illegal. This discussion leads to a dead end.
I was under the impression that both SPARC and MIPS were open standards. On top of that, neither one seems to have any sort of DRM in any of the implementations of them. Why reinvent the wheel?
It reminds me of the consequences of the book "The Jungle," which led to the mandatory listing of all ingredients of a food on the label.
This would translate into basically letting you know what components of a product you have, but not necessarily how they work, with each other, or with you. And, you're allowed to test and research the product to make sure they aren't lying. With this, at least you'd know if there's DRM hardware in something you purchase. It could be more of a middle ground, and be some sort of comprimise. Sure, i'd rather have open-everything, and if you comprimise a little, they take a lot, but it's just a possibility.
There's always OpenPPC.
To quote the site: "The immediate goal of the project is to enable interested parties to build inexpensive, PPC-based Linux boxes from IBM's reference plans. In the longer term, we hope to expand the open-source ideals expressed in the GPL to hardware projects, primarily motherboards."
Perhaps we shouldn't be asking whether or not we should develop a new form of hardware to avoid DRM, but what is currently available that's so bloody weird that they'd not bother. NetBSD and Linux run on practicaly anything. If we all started using say, ARM CPUs, reusing old SPARCs, etc, it'd be alot easier and alot cheeper. Who is going to fund a company dedicated to making open, non-DRMed hardware? Next thing you know, as a VC, your being sued and/or prosecuted for facilitating piracy, terrorism, etc.
There is plent of non-Intel(and friends) stuff out there already. Microsoft doesn't controll it in the slightest, and itd be too much of an undertaking for them to do it. I don't think ARM has much to lose from "just saying no" to microsoft.
Isn't capitalism supposed to solve problems like this? Shouldn't companies who offer non-DRM hardware find favour with the consumer, and thus prosper over crippled-ware sellers? Oh wait, I forgot, the governments of the "Western" world are rapidly abdicating their role of legislating against the most abusive excesses of capitalism, in favour of legislation aiding and abetting them... Whoops.
Freedom: "I won't!"
New software will require DRM-enabled hardware. If you have knockoff anti-DRM hardware, you won't be able to use the new software. It's cyclical. If you're content to use today's software 5 years from now, have at it. Otherwise, you will be shut out in the cold.
There are a lot of open hardware designs at www.opencores.org.
CPU cores, Ethernet MACs, complete SOC designs, etc. It's a great site, especially if you are into fpga development.
Software can be written by anyone with even a very lowly computer. Hardware, however, is very expensive to develop. Corporations like Intel and AMD spend millions or billions on fabs to make their cpu's. It's not as if any joe shmoe can say " I'm going to make a 64-bit cpu and release it under the gnu hardware license ".
Personally from what I have seen open-source SOFTWARE developers seriously lack resources. Just look at linux companies such as loki or VA software (which even dropped the linux part from it's name because of its reputaion), they have almost all failed. How would they expect to create hardware?
Also, if all hardware designs were free, there would be no competition or real business associated with it. How would video card makers compete with each other if they knew all their competitor's tricks? Prices would rise due to lack of competition.
Personally, I think in a perfect world open source hardware would be a good option, but realistically it can't be done. The open-source community lacks the resources, is too fragmented, and has no way of marketing the products competitively.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Until there is a wide spread need for a "Non DRM" hardware solution this will not happen. Right now the masses are ignorant, and sheepish. If ever we will all wake up and realize we don't want this, then demand may one day fill the void.
supply and demand, and right now no one is asking for this product. When they do it will surface, I just don't think that will ever happen in big enough numbers. You will end up shelling out very large amounts of money for a niche product.
Start stocking up on your pre-drm hard-drives you may have a market down the road.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
The European Space Agency has made available VHDL for a CPU that implements the SPARC V8 instruction set. The VHDL is available under the GNU LGPL license. Granted, implementations of LEON are slow (25 MHz?) but it's totally freely available. You may need to buy a $99 license from SPARC International to actually sell any CPUs you make, but that's pretty cheap.
The SPARC instruction set is pretty simple. I don't imagine that a similar effort for x86 CPUs would be as simple or as quick.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
A brief introduction to the simputer to those who don't already know:
"The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man. "
The system software is available under GPL, and the hardware specs under SGPL, the full licensing info is here.
The biggest problem with hardware is that in order to produce it you need expensive equipment. For example, most circuit boards for computer equipment have multi-layer PCB's (wires sandwiched between insulators) which are impossible to build without a PCB fab. Sure, you can get them made, but it gets expensive for low-volume runs. No, what we need is to support companies that fight DRM and boycott the companies that support it. Vote with your dollars.
Travis
Seems like a pretty simple and useful concept, actually... something like a GPL for hardware specs. Suppose someone designs a piece of hardware, and they release it under the "GHPL". The license specifies that anyone can take the design and fabricate actual hardware from it, sell the hardware, etc. They can also take the spec and create derived hardware from it, but if they decide to fabricate and distribute hardware from modified specs, they must also distribute their modifications to the public.
This might be be embraced even more quickly than the GPL... hardware manufacturers will be happy because, as mentioned, fab costs are still fairly high, so they can still make a profit from production and sales. Plus, they get to "leech" free hardware designs from the community, so their research costs go down. Finally, open specs means that competing manufacturers can fab and sell the same hardware, so prices go down on the consumer side. Sounds like a win all around!
You answered your own question in Stallman's quote. Do you think the ability to copy hardware, or produce it, has gotten easier since 1999? As other commenters have pointed out, open hardware would be illegal if DRM is mandated as the big companies hope. If it is only selectively implemented, then there will be producers of non-DRM hardware out there. And they will do quite well. As long as it is legal to have non-DRM hardware, we will have it. If it is illegal, then it won't matter. Open standards for something illegal don't really help anyone.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I suspect that companies like VIA will be more than happy to continue to ship non-DRM hardware to a world that probably would prefer their computers without Microsoft DRM in them. The Chi-Coms in particular are not too thrilled by MS software restrictions, and will probably not cotton to MS hardware restrictions either. If Pd becomes reality, expect a competing "Raise The Sail" platform without DRM and probably with a VIA CIII as a CPU.
If you want a preview, google for VIA EPIA. It won't be a barn-burner speed wise and it probably won't play games well, but it will be quiet and will be more than enough to run Open Office.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
If you are asking for companies to release their schematics and actual instructions for the fabrication of the chips, that wouldn't be likely (just like OSS and Free Software isn't likely) from big corporations without a *LOT* of pushing. Those represent thousands or millions of work hours, and a huge investment. Unlike releasing under GPL and OSS licenses, companies cannot reasonably expect hackers to improve on their work because of the cost of fabrication and development, and therefore wouldn't see any potential benefit. Consider the multi-billion transistor chipsets -- that's a lot of work to be putting out.
Of course, if there is a large group of EE talent that is willing to volunteer the hours building and re-engineering chips, it might work.
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
The real problem isn't availability of open hardware; anyone will (presumably) remain able to cobble together chips and wires and create a piece of computing equipment.
The problem will arise when you try to use your homebrew machine on the internet. There are two scenarios here.
The more likely scenario is that the big content suppliers and middlemen will pressure PC manufacturers into supplying only "DRM enabled" hardware to consumers; support for such hardware will be built into the Windows kernel and DMCA-protected against interference. What's more, a Palladium (or succeeding) web security system will interact with the trusted end-user hardware to enable net content access. In this scenario, users of noncompliant hardware will still be able to use their machines locally, and to access non-Palladium net content, but will be excluded from using the most popular OS and apps.
The less likely but still frighteningly probable scenario would involve the government (whichever government you happen to live under) passing a "net homeland security act" which would make it illegal to attach non-certified hardware to the internet. Needless to say, the certification process would be onerous and expensive for hobbyists, and would mandate compliance with DRM standards.
The latter may sound far-fetched, but consider that we already require cars to be certified as safe (and relatively non-polluting, in some states) before they're allowed to use public roads. The analogy is fairly direct.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
I'm generally for open anything, as long as everyone plays fair, but I can't say that I'm too interested in open hardware, and I certainly don't see some pressing need for it.
Well doc'd hardware is needed though, for sure. That is practical, to get new OSes on new hardware. However, outside of that, open hardware is a lot less pragmatically useful than open source. Most users and coders don't know how to make a change someone else's ugly C code that runs their computer, let alone have the knowledge to make any worthwhile chance. Having to deal with changes like this in BIOS or physical ones is even more far out.
I'm a coder, but I avoid using applications written in languages with a culture of insane layout and poor IDEs, like C, C++ and assembly. Opera is about the only app I use along these lines. Even if it were open source, I couldn't do much to it without spending way to much time for little result.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I prefer logical software development systems and environments, like Emacs and Squeak. If there's a small change I want to make in either of these environments, I can do so quite quickly. I do a lot of Smalltalk programming, granted which helps in this- but I was using Squeak as a customizable environment before I was very experienced in Smalltalk. Likewise, I'm no elisp guru, very far from it, but I can navigate around and find where to make my chance.
For a person who is interested in a sensible computer system that works with me (rather than me working for it), these sort of things are the real power of open source. Not do I not have to worry about company abandoning me by cancelling the product (as in closed-source s/w), I don't have to worry about whether or not some group of coders will change what I want. I may have the source to every app on a Linux system, but the time and energy spent to find out what to do and where to do it is prohibitive, such that I still would have to rely on someone who has invested all of that time+energy.
Hardware is a lot like this to me. I just want hardware that works- if open hardware makes better and cheaper hardware, so be it. But unless I see some practical application to my own usage environments, I can't say I'll get to excited about it.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
opencores.org is a good starting place..
Problem will be when DRM is mandated in all digital hardware. In that case even 'DIY' hardware will have to include it, or be illegal.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Something like has happened before, just on a much smaller market/scale: Radio Scanners, at the behest of the Cell Phone Industry in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 were required to NOT BE ABLE TO SCAN the 800Mhz analog cell phone band. Previously, under 1930's communication laws, someone with a radio could listen to anything, altho it was illegal to use or act on such information. Anyway, here we are, cell band scanners are outlawed and only outlaws own cell enabled scanners. Again, scanner enthusiasts are a very small crowd - forcing such draconian measures on the PC market may be much more difficult.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Open specs do not need to give away hardware tricks manufacturers used to make the hardware better, faster, or what not. Specs are meant as a reference of what the hardware can do, how to get it to do it, and maybe some basic implementation notes and examples. Enough information so software developers can *use* the hardware, and users can figure out if they need or want it.
If someone wants to know how the hardware is made in intricate detail, take it apart yourself. Information is needed to verify that it should do what it's meant to do, and enough to allow developers to develop software that can use the hardware (after all, selling something one can't use is useless, go figure.).
Why don't you just drop Wintel next time around? You can get a Sun Blade 100 for around $1,000 right now. If you are using Linux now, migrating to Solaris wouldn't be too much of a challenge, assuming you let Sun install it for you. And, if you are really that attached to your Linux, I am pretty sure it will run there too, as well as on about a half-dozen other architectures.
Best Slashdot comment ever
" Open Hardware is engineers sharing their designs with each other through the disclosure of their schematics and software systems used on their designs. Do you remember the time when you purchased a circuit board, or computer, and the schematics came with it? I do..."
No, I don't work for them or have any other connection to them.
-- From Denmark
The key to open hardware, in my opinion, is paradoxical. To have open hardware, your design must be closed, immutable.
That's the only reason why Apple survives, even thrives today, because they control the OS as well as the hardware.
Just because the design is closed doesn't mean, however, that the use and functionality of the system cannot be adjusted. You can slam as many drives, RAM, processor upgrades, and PCI cards in a desktop Mac as you would any other PC. Only the circuit designs remain under the control of one company.
In the case of Apple, it's a benevolent dictatorship at the moment, with a CEO who is outspoken on DRM issues.
The Intel world is problematic because Intel calls the shots. This is good because all companies must follow the designs that fit their processor. But it leaves us in that benevolent dictatorship again. Add the Microsoft layers and things are pro-DRM again.
Yet, take out the MS layers and Intel loses the need for most of its processors and cannot afford to make them.
So, it does seem that the only way to break into a true open hardware design is to break out of the traditional processor model. The PowerPC chip specs are openly available, but I don't see processor manufacturing becoming a home or OSS project. Too much capital and hardware.
Was it the Crusoe project that was trying to make a processor that ran any OS? Could that be the key? Was it cheaper?
Somehow, there's gotta be a way to make a cheaper processor.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
When you look at hardware, the designing isn't the most expensive part, manufacturing is. (just like in software, support is the most expensive part :) So I could see a manufacturing company that was running some ultra cheap process try to make money - but there isn't much there. Plus, you have to do literally months of verification on each design before sending it to fab - I don't think most Open Source projects do that amount of testing...
The reality is that it still costs $1/4 million dollars to send a chip to Fab (rumored to cost a cool million for 0.1 micron). I don't know who is willing to put up that kinda money without some assurance the government isn't going to shoot them down half way through production.
What concerns us most is the thin layer between hardware and software: items like the BIOS and flash ROM. That layer is ripe for DRM and other technologies. That issue is quite different from Stallman's essay mentioned in the post. This isn't an issue of Free (as in freedom) hardware, but is about a matter of that "thin layer" of software where DRM will likely dwell.
FSF is currently extremely short on resources, but we hope to put at least some force behind initiatives to create Free Software in this area. In some sense, it is the last frontier for freedom on our computers. Indeed, the only proprietary software code anywhere in my computer is that which lives in the BIOS. Before now, the issue was not so strategically significant, but the fact that DRM technologies may soon live in that very BIOS makes it more significant than ever.
If anyone has an interest and reverse engineering experience, and would like involved with working on the free BIOS projects, particularly for laptop devices, please contact me. Also, please contact me if you would like to donate to a restricted fund for this effort, as we are considering setting one up if there is substantial interest.
Sincerely,
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
Not living in the USA i couldnt give a crap if you get Fritz'ed or not. Im more worried that the just-as-evil governments around the world will decide they want this too. Whats worse, is that even if they don't, allot of important hardware comes from the US and the hardware companies there might decide that its easier to just make locked products and sell the same thing to everyone rather than have the extra over-head of building to versions of something. You never know, the government may decide that its illigal to even build unlocked devices for export.
DVD, Tivo, and modern games consoles have proven that no-one really cares if they have restricted control of a device in their own home, or if its proprietry. Just as long as they can see pretty colours, and drink their starbucks its all good.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Useless. Open hardware to do what, play open formats that only open-source geeks use? Of course, you could always make open hardware to play proprietary formats, at least for a day or two before you end up in jail.
www.sparc.com
From the SPARC site:
I've about had it with Slashdot's political bent. In the past year. Slashdot has gone from an site full of links to interesting and fun things to a mess of misinformation about the DMCA, DRM technology, patents, copyrights, and other issues that-- for reasons that escape me-- are fundamentally offensive to a good chunk of the Slashdot audience.
I believe that reasoned political debate is a wonderful thing. I love talking politics with my friends, whether we agree or disagree. Those sorts of conversations always leave be with the sense that I've learned something new, or heard an opinion that I haven't heard before.
But Slashdot is not the place for reasoned political debate. More often than not, the people who post to Slashdot seem to lack even the most basic information about the topic at hand. Instead of reading and listening and learning about significant issues, the Slashdot readership prefers instead to just repeat the same old litanies: DMCA bad, RIAA bad, MPAA bad, DRM bad, MS bad, Linux good, EFF good, RMS good, capitalism = greed, government = corruption, et cetera, et cetera.
A year ago, the solution was easy: I just chose not to see any articles from the "Your Rights Online" section on the front page. Poof. Done.
Now, half the articles, more or less, make reference to one of the collection of alphabet soup I listed above.
I'm tired of this. I've been an active participant on Slashdot for a long time-- I don't remember precisely how long, but I've posted some 1,200 comments, and I maxed out my karma a long time ago-- but I'm just about ready to give it up. I'm just not finding that much on Slashdot that's worth reading any more.
I know this is off-topic-- and I'm sure I'll be moderated accordingly-- but I just felt like letting go with a rant. Don't follow this up here. Instead, if you want to reply at all, do so on my journal.
It is actually kind of depressing that even though we were all so well aware of what was coming we are still here, right up against the wall with so little progress to show.
P.S. Yes, I am aware of how the "M$" makes me look :-) the sad thing is I am a lot like that guy, except until I got my well paying IT job it was my parent's garage, not basement.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The notion that the "Free market will solve everything" is based on some very flawed assumptions.
The first is the assumption of the perfectly informed consumer. There is no such thing as the perfectly informed consumer, a customer who is aware of which companies own which, which company behave ethically or distrubite products that do not conform the consumers ethical standards.
There is just too much information and it is just too complicated for even the concerned consumers to know it all. Most consumers dont even care if a company kills babies* so long as they get cheap gasoline (*i know of know such company).
the second flawed assumption is that the market can ever actually be free.
Governments can and do interfere. Governments usually* set minimum ethical standards and try to stop companies defrauding the investors or cheating their customers (* need i even say Enron, WorldCom etc?).
Governments are also one of the largest spenders in the market. The economies of many small towns are totally dependent on Goverment military spending, governmetn prison bugdets.
So government legislation and spending have a huge effect on the market place.
big businness calls for 'laissez faire' so they can make as much profit with the minimum obligation to show and morality or provide quality products.
Capitalism is not supposed to solve problems like this.
Democracy, and a goverment that represents the best interests of the majority of its people is supposed to sovle this.
The whole problem with DRM is that anytime someone can choose between having it or not, they will almost always choose not to have it. This is elementary common sense.
Manufacturers are rightly scared of DRM for this reason. Anything too radical or obstrusive will kill sales. And what MPAA/RIAA wants is highly radical.
They are thus pursuing two avenues around the problem. The first is to make DRM a part of Windows. Since as we've observed most users (for a variety of reasons) are locked into Windows, they will have no choice but to (eventually) upgrade into DRM. There are some problems with this approach; they (correctly) don't trust Microsoft, either to do a good job or to look out for their interests, and there are those pesky "competitors." Will Apple play ball? Think about it. They'll have a powerful incentive not to, to try to use the Windows-DRM shock as an opportunity to gain marketshare. But of course, as has been well established in the past, Apple can be bought. That still leaves Linux. And that's a bit frightening, frankly, since you can't reliably control Linux, and the buzz on the street is that, someday, it might be what everyone uses.
That brings me to the second prong of this attack: the CBDTPA, in its many forms, past and (undoubtedly) future. And that, basically, would make "Open Hardware" illegal. If past legislation is any guide, it would probably also make talking about how to build open hardware illegal.
So if you're considering spending time and energy getting involved in the design and (god forbid) manufacture of open hardware, please don't bother. If you're determined to contribute to the issue, you're needed in Washington.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
IBM did the same with it's PC; you could get the actual circuit diagrams, as well as the assembly code listing of the BIOS. You know, of course, how much market share IBM has.
Then Apple got greedy with is totally closed Macintrash. And it got the resulting market share it deserves, thanks to a bunch of computer ignoramuses who are brainwashed into the apple religion.
Somehow i don't think they'll fit DRM systems and onboard encryption and signing into PIC microprocessors - the poster-child of mod-chips. Anyone want to try and build an entire PC-Compatible out of these? :)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
yeah that kind of thing wouldnt fly here...
some things you might find interesting:
1953 -
Joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments are conducted in which tens of thousands of people in New York and San Francisco are exposed to the airborne germs Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii.
1966 -
U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.
it's a good thing we have laws here protecting us from the government. you know a guy died from the airborne germs spread in san francisco. when his son tried to sue the government, the judge informed him that he couldn't do it.
-- john
gEDA is also a good project for Linux people interested in open hardware: they develop a GNU liscenced set of hardware design tools.
Just my bookmarks two cents on the topic.
All circuits busy.
Sure, current cip sets are massive, but why? Lots of legacy support and feature bloat. slim down your target specs and a chip set becomes much more manageable. Want a new feature, just get the HDL, add the code, simulate, test and ship. More like adding a driver that developing a new chip set.
Yes, that's true. Many of my coworkers think that the big white box is their hard drive. Explaining this issue to them would be difficult at best... "but it works" is kind of hard to get around if they don't have a personal stake in the politics.
while the free speech thing works out well here eventually, resposible parties are still not held accountable. so...
in the us: govt kills people --> responsible parties go free
in china: govt kills people --> responsible parties go free
not to mention the people we kill in other countries trying to control foreign governments. hell we even put the taliban in power.
you should really stop pretending my government
respects human rights
cares about people
isnt run by corporations
is any better than that of china
when you start a business in china you give half of your profits to the government. when you start one here you do the same until you are making enough to buy off the government. at least in china they dont pretend to be free.
-- john
There actually already is a great deal of open hardware out there. It just depends on what you want to build, if you want to look at some neat circuit designs for various applications the University of Washington EE dept maintains a list of older circuit designs here (hey guess where I go to school). Pretty simple stuff like how to make Oscillators, pelter coolers, using serial ports, multi-vibrator circuit A-D converters, etc.
There are lots of other archives and examples, around the web. BUT, the catch is that this information is useless to most people. Unless you have a few hundred thousands of dollars to spend to make your own IC's the only option is microprocessors, FPGAs, CPLDs, etc. The design of custom IC's is not a consumer market and never will be untill someone comes out with a neat little Star Trek replicator. The closest thing to consumer IC's is MOSIS, which will make a few chips for you for around $10,000. The UW actually has two IC fabrication labs and only a few people can (and need to) make chips with them because the lithographic masks cost $30k each.
You can make your own processors if you really want, there are plenty of books that will teach you how to make your own Verilog MIPS processor. But, the software to take that design and turn it into a chip layout costs a couple hundred thousand dollars. But, if you want to build your own Pentium class processor, you're out of luck. Those designs are the property of whoever makes them, and with good reason. It costs millions of dollars to make and design these chips (don't forget just getting your chip to work is only 1/3 of the work, manufacturing it reliably is a far greater problem). There was a case several years ago against AMD (I believe) who suddenly came out with a memory design that was smaller than the industry standard. Funny thing was that another smaller company had come out with the design several months earlier... and guess what happened? They got a hold of the chips realized AMD had copied the design EXACTLY, except for a single reversed transistor (which didn't really change anything). Needless to say AMD lost a shit load of money and had to pay royalties. So, with respect to Stallman's rather silly statement the question is important and the answer is a resounding NO.
If you want to make your own circuits though, there are plenty of resources out there pcbexpress.com will take your PCB (printed circuit board) layouts and manufacture boards for under $100. And there's even free PCB design software out there (a lot of companies have their own for their services but everyone takes GERBER files - the industry standard for PCB layout). One popular free program is EAGLE which has Linux and Windows clients http://www.cadsoft.de/ , which has pretty good quality - hey its free. Plus there are lots of other PCB programs on Freshmeat. There are plenty of resources out there to make your own boards and lots of people do, but open hardware will never be as simple as downloading a design and hitting a button (even open source software isn't even that easy) because electronics isn't that simple. You can solder things together perfectly and have your design not work, because of some small detail or it could work perfectly, which is what makes it so fun!
ok, first off, it's not like all our "clean" motherboards will turn into pumkins when these new DRM motherboards are released. if no one buys these boards, the market will be forced to our will.
ok so yeah, we may be stuck with p4's and athlon xps for a bit, but hell *someone* in asia will do something aobut it. they *always* do. your dvd player didn't have that nifty little code or hack to change regions by accident kids.
anyway...
do we know how motherboards work? (yes)
are we all going to suddenly forget this? (no)
then wtf is the problem?!
at first we may only be able to get these boards from limited mom and pop shops.. but soon enough, they'll be everywhere.
sheesh.
Little tangible progess so far, but I now use Linux on a laptop to gain practical experience.
The project is activly seeking partners!
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
I'm not even to the point yet where I can compile my own kernel, and now you want me to build a clean room so I can build my own hardware?
It'd be nice if I could do this, but what's the point in OSH if you can't build your own?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Hardware manufacturers are out to make as much money as possible- not to consort with the evil empire in plans to control your content.
I guess that depends on how much of a kick-back er I mean discount on the OEM OS they get and whether they think that it'll offset any losses for sales. I'm afraid that hardware from civialized countries will be DRMed and hardware from uncivialized asian countries will be more open. Just like the DVD player from Korea that is easy to remove regonal code from. Then we'll have to depend on Customs agents to protect us.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
But changes do happen, laws are passed, the truth comes out and it is made rather clear that such things should not happen again.
changes do indeed happen. look at the patriot act, where you can be held without a lawyer and tried under a military tribunal. rights? hell you dont have rights, you're a terrorist or have terrorist associations.
well now, i have friends from other countries. i gave them accounts on my computer. they use the accounts to do illegal things.. hell i just associated with a terrorist.
the patriot act redefined alot of terms which enables the government to easily extend the term terroist to someone using their free speech rights.
things are changing in china also. ask people who lived in shanghai 20 years ago what it's like now. they have kfc's and all sorts of happiness. actually china is getting better while the us is falling.
once again stop pretending how superior my government is. try getting information from alternative news sources. cnn is one of the greatest propaganda machines around.
-- john
Which is that the MPAA/RIAA can just issue "black boxes" which allow the user to handle the data in exactly the ways they choose. These systems are tamper-resistant and implement the content producers' desired policy, and new media would only be available in a proprietary format they can decrypt.
Of course, we all still have our regular VCRs and computers, but we can no longer rent tapes and buy CDs - content producers don't make them anymore. But hey, consumer choice and all that. Capitalism at work.
What happens then however is that it only takes a single person to arrange a jailbreak, and extract content from inside the box. Once converted to an open format, it is then endlessly distributed and enjoyed on conventional, non-black box hardware.
What we are discussing is the DVD in a nutshell, and RIAA is considering "secure CDs" along similar lines. DVDs are DRM embodied. The problem comes from the fact that DRM is inherently stupid, and is actually guaranteed to fail in a world where non-DRM devices are readily available. The issue we're considering when we talk about "open hardware" and "DRM hardware" is that, because of this problem with the black box, the MPAA/RIAA is now actively campaigning to make non-DRM hardware and software illegal.
Hence our discussion thus far. In the real world, of course, in absence of such awe-inspiringly hateful legislation, there is always an uneasy dance between the content producers and the consumer electronics manufacturers when considering new standards. Many excellent formats have fizzled and died for far smaller reasons than that they intentionally eliminate your fair use rights. The black box, on its own merits, will always lose. In a non-Orwellian scenario, the format transition could never occur, since during that transition, neither side (the content people or the electronics people) can jump without the other (or they risk a zero-sales incident) and there are too many parties for everyone to jump at once. Thus any transitional period would have both formats available, hence my point: consumers would have to choose, and as long as they have the choice, they won't choose DRM.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
But what's the point in designing open, DRM free hardware if the DEA busts down your door on the behalf of Hillary Rosen because you are not including government aproved DRM controls? That it's a PC or not is irrelevant, all the text I have seen says that an approved DRM would be applied to all electronics.
OK, Palladium is of corporate origin, but you can be sure that they will lobby hard to promote it as the final solution to the issues vexing Sen. Hollings et al. This issue needs to be faced and not ignored in the hope it will go away and bother someone else.
I can see it now, I get busted for carrying a traffickable quantity of Z80 chips...
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
ATI just released binary drivers for Radeon 8500. Feel stupid now?
Who cares. That doesn't change the fact that ATI adequately documents their hardware while NVidia does not. Open Source DRI drivers for the Radeon 8500 have existed for some time now. With NVidia, you're stuck with their binary crap drivers that only support Linux and Windoze. What if I run FreeBSD instead, eh? NVidia cards are totally worthless to me unless I want a GeForce4 Ti4600 that only does 2D. (And yes, there is DRI for BSD. See this page. ). Check your facts before you go around calling people stupid next time.
The driver for TV Out on the G400 is in a binary only module.
IIRC, Matrox refuses to document the TV Out because they were forced by the DVDCCA to license Macrovision in order to have DVD decoding onboard or some such nonsense. An open driver would allow users to disable Macrovision on the NTSC output and thus break Matrox's contract. Disgusting? You bet. Hopefully Matrox will not make similar mistakes with MPAA-sponsored, anti-consumer, third party tech in the future. Sorry I have no source. If anybody can confirm or correct me, please do.
I appreciate it very much. However, I am not convinced yet.
First of all, I don't understand your response to my point. You say "(2) a DRM box will be more attractive to the general public than an open box." and you go on to say "I explained (2) in my previous post, so now to explain (1)..."
However, I feel as though I have sufficiently explained why it is not the case that the public would prefer DRM, and I not seen any specific responses to my arguments on that point. I think it's fairly clear that, all else being equal, the only attraction a DRM device could have over a non-DRM device is that there is no new content for the non-DRM device. And as I have explained, this is far from a trivial thing to accomplish.
Your other point rests on the unbreakability of the black box. I can, for instance, circumvent your hypothetical protections with hypothetical exploits: a motherboard tap anywhere inside the DA should be sufficient to recover bit-perfect digital data from your device. Think they can make the hardware too tamper proof for that to work? Now you have to prove your case. Remember, the content only needs to escape once, and you are up against the best; professional pirates in Asia, South America, and the West - bootleggers who have millions to spend on the best equipment and talent.
I am not aware of any evidence presented in a respectable setting that watermarks can be used in the way you describe. I would appreciate correction on that point if I am wrong, but remember, marks can be tiny, but they won't survive recompression. They can be big and redundant, but then they will be easy to spot and remove. Not that it matters. Watermarks won't even be useful for tracking down pirates, who if enforcement is aggressive will simply steal equipment/keys the way bank robbers steal cars.
This is ignoring the biggest problem in your plan, which is real-time encrypted digital video delivery to a mass-market audience. I would optimistically guess we are at least a decade away from this capability. Remember, we're talking about the last mile problem now. Let alone the expense.
Of course, ultimately we can agree to disagree about whether or not you can make your black box strong enough. Yet I feel extremely confident that you can't, now or in the future. If you have to put a variety of implementations of your hardware in hundreds of millions of hands, you will need a fundamental advance, nay, a paradigm shift, in fabrication technology for that to change.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
"Buy Encore's Simputer
Encore's Software is launching a limited number of Evaluation pieces soon. To be a "Encore Simputer Beta-Evaluator" please contact for more details. " here's the rest.
Does not fit my concept of vaporware but is very concrete. Encore seeks distributors, OEMs for Simputer
and as extra: Production of Simputer to begin by month-end.
Shell Oil has been supporting a rather brutal military regime in Nigeria in order to extract oil. I suppose this involves killing babies.
Oh, and the original poster is an idiot for not providing some sort of reference. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof... didn't anyone tell him that?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I believe Neal Stephenson made a pretty good argument for "open hardware" being a significant contributor to the existence of linux. He mentions the unlikely trinity of Bill Gates, IBM clones, and Linus as being the combination of things needed for linux to be created. Read it here
Adam Smith also wrote that governments needed to protect the workers/customers against treacherous and dishonest businesses by making laws. I'm not a believer in the "religion" of capitalism by any means, I see that it contains some good ideas but there's no reason why you can't incorporate some "socialistic" ideas in there too. Such as, why make the atmosphere an "owned resource" at all? Why not just say "The democratic government has legislated that polluting greater than X amount is punishable by $Y fine, or Z years in jail for the CEO." No need to invent the fiction of a "missing market" when what you really need is the people's representatives using their power to protect the common resources which belong simultaneously to everybody, and nobody. I was saying it's unfortunate that said representatives have become corrupted by the very interests they're supposed to be protecting us from. This is why you get bullshit like "pollution credits" and the DMCA.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Of course, by "open" I mean non-DRM. I mean, come on, no sane military would trust its computing needs to a system with secret source code, proprietary undocumented file formats, and remote-control licensing, any one of which could stop things in mid-flight.
Oh, wait...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I understand Xilinix is offering a 400Mhz FPGA chip these days, but it's about three grand. But more interesting to me was a presntation I found by some guy who said Xilinix's FPGA was necessarily slow because it used what could be described as a warped matrix as opposed to a simple checkerboard square.
Apparently the motivation for Xilinx to use this other design was a patent consideration rather than a decision made from a strict engineering standpoint. An open FPGA from China based on a simplified design would be interesting at the 60nm level. It would require lots of new circuit designs, but it might happen some day and that may be soon.
Oh, and the original poster is an idiot for not providing some sort of reference. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof... didn't anyone tell him that?
Am I the only person here who read the statement as an accidental homonym substitution? The original poster wrote:
(*i know of know such company).
From the context, I read it as a disclaimer to indicate that the example was for rhetorical purposes. He should have written this:
(*i know of no such company).
Now, doesn't this seem more likely to be what he meant, rather than a vague, unsubstantianted, extraordinary claim? Yet, strangely, we have poster after poster demanding the name of the supposed company in question. Think, people!
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
Several people have suggested creating CPUs from FPGAs. Others have objected that such CPUs would be slow. Maybe they are, but you gotta start somewhere, right? (Just how slow is "slow" anyhow? Maybe you can't yet make a 2 GHz chip from an FPGA, but can you make a 200 MHz one?)
Here's an idea -- if anyone wants to design CPUs with FPGAs, why not aim for asynchronous CPUs? (See It's Time for Clockless Chips.) "In 1997, Intel developed an asynchronous, Pentium-compatible test chip that ran three times as fast, on half the power, as its synchronous equivalent." (Of course, that's assuming that FPGAs aren't already locked into a synchronous design...)
It sounds like asynchronous chips are the "way of the future" and inherently more efficient -- if free tools are going to be created anyway, why not have some geared toward asynchronous designs? It would be a worthwhile research effort, at least.
Who knows? If a particular design works out well on FPGAs, maybe some chip manufacturer will be willing to mass-produce the chip at much higher speeds. It could be a good thing all around...
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
You say, "[with] lots of extra content for the DRM box
You say, "If you publish your bit perfect digital data, then the key to your DRM box gets pulled and your publishing days are over (until your buy another computer)." We are still discussing the viability of watermarks. While I was hoping you could describe an academic evaluation of such systems, or point to any instance in the real-world where they are at work doing roughly what you describe, in the absence of such evidence (and even in the face of some rather intriguing demonstrations), I remain skeptical that the mark won't either be too fragile to survive PG compression or too big to avoid detection and "removal" (or damage beyond recognition, the same thing). Remember, if each file is watermarked with a unique set of data (a users key, as you describe), pirates studying the watermark can compare the same movie downloaded with different keys, a powerful ally in analysis. My impression is that the history of that business thus far has been of uniform success of the countermeasures once countermeasures are considered by professionals. I refer you to the excellent paper by Felten. Nonetheless, I am fascinated by the techniques involved, and I am open to changing my mind about their feasability. A watermarking technique that can survive the unpredictable and rapidly advancing array of psychographic compression technology and remain uncleanable would be really remarkable. Well, anything is possible.
One thing I remain certain on is that your proposed use of watermarks is moot. You say, "The real security of this hypothetical system lies more in being able to pull keys on demand than obfuscation." I feel as though I have not had an adequate response to my point:
"Watermarks won't even be useful for tracking down pirates, who if enforcement is aggressive will simply steal equipment/keys the way bank robbers steal cars." A few movies on each "stolen" box, and then on to the next one. Remember, throwing out their "DRM Media Player" for each new movie (if the system were that fast to respond, which I doubt) is nothing to them. They're making millions selling bootlegged copies.
I see the anonymous reply makes the statement, "it will most certainly kill off all the armchair pirates, and with them goes the variety of the pirated content available on the internet." I can only disagree.
"Remember, the content only needs to escape once." All it takes is one professional pirate to liberate the content, then he bootlegs it to half of china. Three days later it's on the internet. DRM's failure doesn't require that "casual users" are able to break the box. It only requires that anyone can, because with P2P, armchair pirates are not necessary at all.
I want to be very clear in my point because I am curious about your specific response to it. My point is that, hypothetically, if CSS had been "unbreakable" by consumers (a whole other can of worms - it's not clear to me that that's possible), the P2P networks would be just as full. Professional pirates would crack the protection and sell their wares (intentional pun, intentional ommission of the "z"), and they would instantly reach the internet and be just as plentiful as they are now. But the hypothetical argument is not transparent enough, I have a real world example of this principle in action. I refer you to any of the peer to peer networks to look for disc images of console games for Dreamcast, PS1/2, XBox, etc. which are plentiful, despite the fact that it is impossible to rip an image of that media without special hardware, and in many cases also impossible to burn these images without further special hardware (a mod chip). You could take another step backward and consider the entire PC copy-protection regime in the same context (in that it takes a professional cracker to put a game in distributable form). Virtually every PC game on the network came via a professional. Yet they are by and large all there, all readily available. I hope by now my point is clear.
You say, "if there was DRM then the entire catalogue of the RIAA would probably be available for download at high quality also." However, only a specific discussion of the internet's carrying capacity could dissuade me from disagreement. I think it's clear that the current internet cannot be used to replace current (insecure) video distribution. The telling phrase I've heard uttered many times in the lab is, "never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of [tape/CDs/DVDs] driving down the highway." The last-mile alone is a problem: if the internet were to become the delivery medium to replace audio and video sales and rental, assuming no backbone contention and the quality adequacy of say Divx5 into 700MB files for a standard movie, most broadband users will wait hours to get their movie under perfect conditions (Most DSL connections are 768/128. And most cable connections, while peaking much faster, are far smaller - even as small as 128/32 - when considered at maximum utilization, since cable connections are shared between all users in a "cable cell"). But it turns out backbone contention is the dealbreaker. The amount of data transferred on physical media in this country is vast. Blockbuster alone rents a billion movies a year. ISPs (while probably lying) are already complaining that "pirate" data alone is too onerous a traffic burden. My apologies for not finding a better source for traffic figures, but this should hopefully give you an idea of what the internet is handling now. Imagine if you add to that all of blockbuster's "data traffic." Or "Hollywood Video." For music, the bandwidth and backbone capacity to replace insecure retail is probably there or could be put in place, but for video, definitely not. Once again, we have a real world example; there are numerous instances which you can read about in the news of providers (usually cable companies here and abroad) who have studied, and in some cases attempted (i.e. pilot projects) "Video on Demand." Their collective conclusion is that we are not even close to this being anything other than a prohibitively expensive investment in new infrastructure. I will spare you a similarly damning analysis of the back-end requirements for real-time strong encryption of video streams for millions of customers a day (you're encrypting over 2 petabytes a day, based on an conservative extrapolation from our figures thus far).
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!