[Discuss] EOMA68 Libre Hardware Standard and Libre Software project, currently crowd-funding (deadline expires 26th aug 2016)

[lkcl .]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 1:24 AM, Michael Shiloh
<michaelshiloh1010 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, amazing. Nice work.
>
> It was my experience back when working on Openmoko that many manufacturers
> simply did not know what to do and welcomed us approaching them and offering
> to show them the way.

 !  well... really surprised to hear that was the case... but fantastic to hear.

> Of course this is many years ago I'd be surprised now
> if Allwinner has never heard of open source....

 it's complex.  it actually turns out that many of the middle
management had *never read* the GPL - they had no idea what it was,
nor of their obligations.  a westerner employed by allwinner went
round 18 months ago showing the chinese version to them.  many
responded with shock and fear (fear because they were afraid that
their "intellectual property" could be copied by others) but many were
extremely angry at never having known.

 it's made even more complex by the fact that they're under pressure,
and, from the china "gonkai" business model of copy-copy-copy-copy,
their downstream hardware customers have *no idea* what software
really is, so allwinner feels obliged to solve everything for them...
and if they're a one-stop-shop (hardware+software solution) there *is*
no request for source... and china's their main market *not* the west
(and is 5 to 10x bigger).


> (Not at all related to the ongoing discussion, but I note that you have 6
> days left on this campaign that is yet unfunded and so I encourage all of us
> who like this work to help)
>
> Good luck!

 thxman