> - Waldorf produces either complete boards for the
> international market or complete boards only for
> the european market and partly assembled ones for
> oversea.
>
> This is acceptable if the boards are sold to the Linux community
> at cost + shipping expenseses.
>
This would be great but I wouldn't expect it. As long as everything is
make public (ie the schematics and PCB layout), others could produce the
boards.
Technically, other people *can* produce the boards. However, if we've
made design concessions to Waldorf (ie, use of SMT components) the
number of potential other sources are greatly reduced, and the price
increased (ie, higher bandwidth bus for Waldorf's propriety boards).
Also, this will fragment the market (initially *extremely* small), meaning that
people end up paying more because the producers have bigger problems
making price breaks for chips because everyone is selling fewer.
This seems no different than what SLS and others are doing with
linux codes. All for a profit.
That's fine, it's still easy for me to grab Linux for free. It's
not easy for me to find another source for an SMT motheroard.
Neil said they'd also be offering support.
As long as the *hardware* works when I plug the appropriate cables
in the appropriate places, and I have databooks on the chips (which
I can get for free by calling the appropriate companies), I don't
give a rats ass about support, and really don't want to subsidize
handholding for lusers. I imagine that many of the hacker types
(rather than users) interested in the board have similar feelings.
If that is the case they deserve some profit. Of course too much and no on
e
will buy.
The question is : What does Waldorf want out of it, and what can the
Linux community give them? It's my impression that they want a reasonably
priced system to put their propriety product in (this product is their
money maker, rather than the board itself). If this is the case, then
it is in their best interest to get it into the hackers' hands cheap
(I think that if they gave Linus one, the kernel would work *real*
fast, if Fred got one the ethernet would work, if Eric or I got one SCSI
would work real soon). Hobbiests who've been hacking on Linux for
over a year and a half are going to be more familiar with the system
than the average waldorf employee. Selling at cost, or even giving
a few boards away and even a few hundred to a thousand US dollars in cash
to the right hobbiests could motivate them to have the software working
quickly and for a much lower cost than it would have for waldorf to do the
same since Waldorf isn't paying for a full-time engineer, 1/10th of a
secretary, 1/20th of a janitor, etc.
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