New Handheld Computer Is 100% Open Source

metasonix writes "While the rest of the industry has been babbling on about the iPad and imitations thereof, Qi Hardware is actually shipping a product that is completely open source and copyleft. Linux News reviews the Ben NanoNote (product page), a handheld computer apparently containing no proprietary technology. It uses a 366 MHz MIPS processor, 32MB RAM, 2 GB flash, a 320x240-pixel color display, and a Qwerty keyboard. No network is built in, though it is said to accept SD-card Wi-Fi or USB Ethernet adapters. Included is a very simple Linux OS based on the OpenWrt distro installed in Linksys routers, with Busybox GUI. It's apparently intended primarily for hardware and software hackers, not as a general-audience handheld. The price is right, though: $99."

Comments

Re:A couple of the potential uses

[jgagnon]

It would be a LOT more useful for remote desktop if it had built-in networking. /sigh

Open Pandora

[kiberovca]

What about http://www.open-pandora.org/? It's a much better device than this one, has all of the stuff mentioned, and more.

Re:Open Pandora

[tepples]

Pandora's PowerVR GPU is proprietary.

Re:Open Pandora

[horza]

You might not like the whole concept of "profit" but without a profit motive and some semblance of even temporary exclusivity, no competent company will ever develop an innovative product.

That's a bit ironic posting on Slashdot (one of the first public blogs which gave its source away, not initially written for profit), read in a browser (not written for profit), all via the web using HTML over HTTP (again not written for profit). There are plenty of other innovative products not initially written for profit (Napster/Kazaa/BitTorrent spring to mind).

Hiring real talent requires money and despite what everyone says, most techie people will not produce the same kind of quality on an open source project as they would on a closed source one where they are getting paid a lot of money.

You are confusing quality with speed of development, and time with money. No matter how good the techie, he still has to put food on the table. If his OS project isn't paying the bills then he has less time he is able to devote to it. You can easily flip the argument around and say an OS project is always going to come up with the best possible product because he has no time limit whereas a commercial product has a deadline to get out of the door. Both arguments are false, as each has its own unique set of constraints.

One of the major downfalls of all of those "open" initiatives is that, once you go beyond basic things like a web browser with an well established UI paradigm or core services, the design by committee effect drags down not only innovation but quality of the end product.

I do not believe this to be true. A good leader with a clear vision and realistic project management will lead to a successful end product. Linus Torvalds has managed to create a superior operating system to Microsoft, who employ thousands and pay very well. There are plenty of examples where OS are clear winners and others where proprietary are clear winners (eg Photoshop).

Ultimately the problem is not about money but rather a herd mentality in open source.

Oh please, that is nothing to do with open source. Any time there is a successful proprietary product there are always clones. Most of them pretty bad. If you want to look at herd mentality, look at all the proprietary developers flocking to write for the iPhone despite the fact their product may get canned by Apple for absolutely no reason.

With a closed product, the employees have some incentive to come up with the best possible product because bonuses could hinge on good sales and because any team member could get rewarded even more if they came up with a brilliant innovation which set the product apart from the field.

I've worked as a programmer most of my life, and I've always had a fixed salary. Share options sometimes, but that's not the same as a bonus. Possibly myself and my colleagues are exceptions, but the biggest motivator for the people we see around us is the risk of getting fired.

I am not arguing against that money motivates some people, but do not agree with the supposed inherent flaws you see in open source vs closed source.

Phillip.

Re:Open Pandora

[Lumpy]

Nice MBA degree you have there, too bad it's content is based outside of reality.

Open Source happes everywhere. Even medical fields.

Places like the Van Andel Institute are working to cure cancer and they attract the top of the crop doctors and researchers.... Not because they pay them insane amounts of money, but because they are working towards a goal that helps humanity.

In fact everywhere you will find the best of the best doing things for FREE. The ones that dont are never the Best but people who claim they are or try to act like they are.

Open source built and is running the internet. You think Microsoft would have been able to pull this off all for profit only? not a chance.

Re:Open Pandora

[Tacvek]

The idea of the Qi project is to have 100% open hardware, but I agree that not everything is open.
If it were 100% open hardware the following would need to be met:

• the Verilog or VHDL for any chips, would be included
• as would the exact masks used to manufacture the chips, including the memory chips
• Full specifications sufficient to fabricate the plastic shell, lcd, and any other component used would be included. They must be detailed enough that anybody familiar with fabricating that type of component could theoretically produce an indistinguishable product
• The PCB files would be included
• I would permit them to omit including instructions for simple well known components like widely available resistors, capacitors, and even LEDs, as long as the requirements for those parts are sufficiently specified, such as value, tolerance, mounting standard, wattage (for resistor), and information about required shape, and and the specific maximum current, and voltage drop for the LED. (There are for example multiple kinds of green LEDs, which have different voltage drops and current requirements, so they are not all inter-compatible).

While I'm sure they have included at least some of that, I doubt they have included all of it. Particularly, I find it very hard to believe that instructions sufficient to recreate the LCD were included. I also tend to doubt that semiconductor masks for all used chips were included, even if they included the VHDL/verilog.

This story contains one egregious error.

[Annirak]

MIPS is not open source. MIPS is a proprietary, licensed technology.

There are a few OSS processors out there, but they're pretty rare. One example is the xr16.

SD card?

[Sockatume]

The SD Card Association says:

If your company is planning to manufacture or have manufactured SD host products (eg. cell phones, cameras or computers) or SD ancillary products (eg. adapters or SD I/O cards), your company is required to:

      1. Join the SD Card Association and
      2. Enter into a Host/Ancillary Product License Agreement (HALA)** with the SD Card Association and the SD-3C, LLC. Latest Revision: December 12, 2009

I suspect that interface standards are probably the biggest barrier to doing a totally copyleft product. You can't lose them if you want a practical product, and can't keep them if you want complete IP release.

OSS App Store

[Toe, The]

Yeah, but if you want to run anything on it, you have to get approved by the Free Store. The draconian linux overlords will reject anything that isn't 100% free, open, copyleft, and blindingly geeky.

iPad? Really?

[TheOV]

I don't think this device deserves to be compared to the "iPad and imitations thereof" - A) it's not a tablet; B) it's far less powerful; C) it doesn't even have any built-in network capability, which is what the iPad and its following are intended for; and D) it's horribly ugly. That being said, it looks like an excellent little device to hack on, and a big bonus is that it has USB ports! I may actually pick one up one of these days.

MIPS has a free implementation

[tepples]

So is the MIPS.

The MIPS architecture has a Free implementation called Plasma. The trouble is that the PowerVR GPU is also a trade secret. That said, I do plan on buying a Pandora PDA once they get a couple more batches out; it'll surely be better than Apple's "iDon't touch".

Kindle killer? Not yet but...

[JThaddeus]

For what I want, this is the right track. I'm not interested in paying several hundred dollars for something that binds me to Amazon or Barnes & Nobel or Apple or whomever. I learned that lesson from having an iPod. It was a generous Christmas gift and I get a lot of use out of it, but managing it in my Linux-only world is a pain. My idea for an e-book reader is something I call Gutenberg friendly: It has what I need to download and display text, HTML, PDF, and Postscript files that I might download from Project Gutenberg or other open sites as well as software manuals. That and a $100 price tag could win me over to the e-book world.