Improv Project, Vivaldi Tablet Officially Dead

sfcrazy (1542989) writes "It's a sad day for free software as one of the most ambitious free software projects, Improv, is officially dead. Along with the board also dies the promising Vivaldi tablet [video intro]. The developers have sent out emails to the backers of the project that they are pulling plugs on these. The end of the Improv project also means a disappointing end to the KDE Tablet project, as Aaron Seigo was funding both projects out of his own pocket (almost exactly $200,000 spent)."

Comments

The reason for the death

[Anonymous Coward]

The cause for the death is not mentioned in the summary, so I'm adding it here. The article says that the reason for the project failing was that "there was simply not enough support to make the project work, despite having fully functional, production ready devices and a strong commitment to succeed".

Re:The reason for the death

[tomhath]

Looks like it was a pretty cool product, but it targeted a small and already crowded niche market with shoestring funding. So yea, cut their losses and move on to something else.

Hardware is hard

[TechyImmigrant]

Hardware is hard. Good hardware is harder.

Re:Hardware is hard

[TechyImmigrant]

Read "hard" as "Expensive as Hell"

That is part of it yes. It requires a wide range of differently experienced people: low level software, high level software, circuit design, assembly, layout, component sourcing, factory liasion, DFt, Manufacturing etc.

Then you need to get them all to work together. And you have to pay them.

The component cost is irrelevant until you get into high volume manufacture.

Re:Hardware is hard

[lkcl]

Read "hard" as "Expensive as Hell"

That is part of it yes. It requires a wide range of differently experienced people: low level software, high level software, circuit design, assembly, layout, component sourcing, factory liasion, DFt, Manufacturing etc.

Then you need to get them all to work together. And you have to pay them.

... ynow... one of the reasons i came up with the idea to design mass-volume hardware that would be eco and libre friendly was because, after having developed the experience to deal with both low-level software and high-level software, and having done some circuit design at both school and university, i figured that the rest should not be too hard to learn... or manage.

  you wanna know the absolute toughest part [apart from managing people?] it's the component sourcing. maan, is that tough. if you want a laugh [out of sheer horror, not because it was actually funny] look up the story on how long it took to find a decently-priced mid-mount micro HDMI type D [8 months].

  so anyway, i set out to find people with the prerequisite skills that i *didn't* have, offered them a chance to participate and profit. the list of people who have helped and then fallen by the wayside... i... well.... i want to succeed at this so that i can give them something in return for what they did.

Re:Hardware is hard

[tlhIngan]

Not to mention - did you design your product for your anticipated volumes?

If you plan to sell 10,000 of them, you need to THINK about 10,000 units. What parts to order, can you even get them in 10,000 quantities, and will you get the requisite support? I mean, if you're planning 10,000 units, you need to also make sure that the vendors are willing to support you by getting you the information you need.

A while back, in the Tegra 2 days, nVidia will NOT talk to anyone with less than 1M units. It doesn't matter that you can buy their dev kit, you can design your whole software and hardware around it, they just will not talk to you. These days it's easier since nVidia is now on the sidelines and no longer the #1 segment.

Even the big buys like Qualcomm and Freescale won't talk to little peoeple. Instead, they contract out small scale support to other companies (the company I work for does exactly that). But that company is a middleman and can often only release limited amount of information. E.g., we can design hardware using Qualcomm chips for small runs (because we aggregate small runs into bigger runs, so Qualcomm supports us as whole, while we're smaller and nimbler and can support the small runs much better), but we cannot release information (due to NDAs) to anyone else, nor can we release the source code beyond what we're allowed to. So if you have some super-duper design using a Qualcomm chip, well, you'll have to convince us to make it for you and take a cut of the profits (we aren't doing it for free) or we do some NRE for you.

In fact, if you want some Qualcomm chips, you can't buy them except through smaller companies like us and we're not allowed to sell you raw chips that aren't soldered to a board.

Re:KDE, Canonical, Mozilla, and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE does give you a desktop! And thanks to plasma, other options, but no one took your precious desktop.

Re:To little too late.

[Lumpy]

"GNU/Linux systems just can't seem to get a foothold in the consumer market."

Actually almost 100% of homes in the USA have GNU/Linux systems. Their TV, Their Bluray Players all run Linux. Tons of consumer devices run linux in homes.

Re:To little too late.

[hairyfeet]

Linux is to Android what Linux is to TiVo, it was cheaper to snatch the kernel than write their own, the rest, including the idea of FOSS (look up on Ars the excellent article about Android going proprietary Google is pulling a EEE on Android) they didn't want.

So to make your sentence accurate it should read, Google does, Apple does, Microsoft does, which explains it all...money, money, and money. The public has shown repeatedly they don't give even a single fuck about walled gardens or openness, hence the runaway success of iPad, so if the ONLY feature you can tout over the other guy is "freedom"? You are fucking dead, or like OpenPandora on life support.

Re:KDE, Canonical, Mozilla, and GNOME

[lister king of smeg]

Use Mate Desktop or Cinnamon Desktop they both have been aiming for a sane attractive traditional desktop environment ever since Gnome went nuts. Then there is e17, lxde, just open your repository there are far more that i cant remember the names of.

Re:KDE, Canonical, Mozilla, and GNOME

[Eravnrekaree]

Nonsense. No one forces you to use the multimedia applications if you dont want to. I do want to be able to watch a video on KDE, and actually have something where you can do things with multimedia. I don't see how this in any way affects your ability to do whatever you do. The comment made was about the desktop metaphor being abandoned by Unity etc. Multimedia applications work well with a desktop based UI are not opposed to it. KDE does still provide a desktop metaphor. If you don't like the high level of functionality in KDE, you can feel free to use FVWM.

moving forward: next crowdfunding launch

[lkcl]

short version: the plan is to carry on, using the lessons learned to
try again, with a crowd-funding campaign that is transparent. please
keep an eye on the mailing list, i will also post here on slashdot
when it begins.

http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipe...

long version:

this has been a hugely ambitious venture, i think henrik's post explains much:
http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipe...

the - extremely ambitious - goal set by me is to solve a huge range of
issues, the heart of which is to create environmentally-conscious
mass-volume appliances that software libre developers are *directly*
involved in at every step of the way.

so, not to be disparaging to any project past or future, but this isn't
"another beagleboard", or "another raspberry pi beater": it's a way to
help the average person *own* their computer appliances and save
money over the long term. software libre developers are invited
to help make that happen.

by "own" we mean "proper copyright compliance, no locked boot
loaders and a thriving software libre environment that they can
walk straight into to help them do what they want with *their*
device... if they want to".

the actual OS installed on the appliance will be one that is
relevant for that appliance, be it ChromeOS, Android, even
Windows or MacOSX. regardless of the pre-installed OS, the
products i am or will be involved in *will* be ones that Software
Libre Developers would be proud to own and would recommend
even to the average person.

by "saving money over the long term" we mean "the device is
split into two around a stable long-term standard
with a thriving second-hand market on each side, with new
CPU Cards coming along as well as new products as well.
buy one CPU Card and one product, it'll be a little bit more
expensive than a monolithic non-upgradeable product,
but buy two and you save 30% because you only need
one CPU Card. break the base unit and instead of the whole
product becoming land-fill you just have to replace the base,
you can transfer not just the applications and data but
the *entire computer*".

it was the environmental modular aspects as well as
the committment to free software *and* the desire to reach
mass-volume levels that attracted aaron to the Rhombus Tech
project.

perhaps unsurprisingly - and i take responsibility for this - the
details of the above did not translate well into the Improv
launch. the reason i can say that is because even henrik,
who has been helping out and a member of the arm netbooks
mailing list for quite some time, *still* has not fully grasped
the full impact of the technical details behind the standards

(hi henrik, how are ya, thank you very very much for helping
with the boot of the first A10 / A20 CPU card, your post on
the mailing list last week was very helpful because it shows
that i still have a long way to go to get the message across
in a short concise way).

the level of logical deduction, the details that need to be taken
into account, the number of processors whose full specifications
must be known in order to make a decent long-term stable
standard.... many people i know reading that sentence will think i
am some sort of self-promoting egotistical dick but i can tell you
right now you *don't* want to be holding in your head the
kinds of mind-numbing details needed to design a long-term
mass-volume computing standard. it's fun... but only in a
masochistic sort of way!

anyway. i did say long, so i have an excuse, but to get to the
point: now that the money is being returned, we can start again
with a new campaign - using a crowdfunding site that shows
numbers, and starts with a lower target (250) that offers more value
for that same amount of money to everyone invo

Re:What was desirable about it?

[lkcl]

Open hardware sounds cool, but as others have noted, good hardware design is both difficult and expensive. Considering how rapidly the components advance (CPU/SoC, I/O, displays, etc.),

aaaah gotcha! that's the _whole_ reason why i designed the long-term modular standards, so that products *can* be split around the arms race of CPU/SoC on the one hand and battery life / display etc. on the other.

and the factory that we are in touch with (the big one), they _love_ this concept, because the one thing that you might not be aware of is that even the big guys cannot react fast enough nowadays.

imagine what it would mean to them to be able to buy HUGE numbers of CPUs (and related components), drop them into a little module that they KNOW is going to work across every single product that conforms to the long-term standard. in 6 months time there will be a faster SoC, more memory, less power, but that's ok, because *right now* they can get better discounts on the SoC that's available *now*.

on the other side of the interface, imagine what it would mean to them that they could buy the exact same components for a base unit for well... three to five years (or until something better came along or some component went end-of-life)?

it took them a while, but they _loved_ the idea. the problem is: as a PRC State-Sponsored company they are *prohibited* from doing anything other than following the rules... i can't tell you what those rules are: they're confidential, but it meant that we had to find other... creative ways to get the designs made.

We're in a world where a first generation Nexus 7 tablet sells for $140 or less. At Walmart.

yeah. now that prices are dropping, just like the PC price wars, the profits are becoming so small that the manufacturers are getting alarmed (or just dropping out of the market entirely). those people are now looking for something else. they're willing to try something that might get them a profit. what should we tell them?

anyway: thank you for your post, darylb, it provides a very useful starting point for some of the key insights i want to get across to people.

Re:Would it kill you to hint at what Improv is (wa

[lkcl]

If only there was some way to get more information, perhaps with a sort of "link" of some kind to a more detailed description.

here is the [old] specification of the [revision 1] CPU Card:
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwin...

the current revision 2 which i am looking for factories to produce (RFQs sent out already) we will try with 2gb of RAM. this is just a component change not a layout change so chances of success are high.

here is the [old] specification of the Micro-Engineering Board:
http://rhombus-tech.net/commun...

that was our "minimal test rig" which helped verify the interfaces on the first CPU Cards (and will help verify the next ones as well, with no further financial outlay needed. ever. ok, that would be true if i hadn't taken the opportunity to change the spec before we go properly live with it!! you only get one shot at designing a decade-long standard.... i'd rather get it right)

this will be the basis of the planned crowd-funding campaign: it's more of a micro-desktop PC:
http://rhombus-tech.net/commun...

the micro-desktop chassis is very basic: VGA, 2x USB, Ethernet, Power In (5.5 to 21V DC). all the other interfaces are on the CPU Card (USB-OTG, Micro-HDMI, Micro-SD). however unlike the Micro-Engineering Board, the power is done with a view to the average end-user (as is the VGA connector which means 2 independent screens, straight out the box).

does that help answer the question?