[Gta04-owner] Openmoko Community Survey 2011 – Results

[xdrudis]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 01:22:08PM +0200, Eikka Laakso wrote:
> We need more boards in the hands of the kernel developers and when
> we have confirmed no major hwbugs, we need someone willing to invest
> money in the group tour so that it can be done without all the
> participants. Single board price is too high for most of the devs
> and those few hundred boards are the way to speed things up and to
> actually make things happen on this platform.
>

I think the crowfunding is a good idea and I'd put some little money
there too.
 
> The easiest way would be to get a bunch of resellers to buy a stock
> of ten or so boards. I already tried to get them interested, but
> most are still hiding the Openmoko fallout...
>

Well, I'm kind of in the opposite camp. When I heard of openmoko I 
was a long time in doubt about buying one, finally I didn't, and after
a year or two I regretted I didn't. But then I felt it was getting
too obsolete to buy so late, so now I'm happy (and will be happier
if GTA04 has lots of users).

But if it felt like I heard for Openmoko buyers and resellers, maybe
we should try to find resellers in some other places ? Maybe resellers
of arduino, beagle board, mylkimist or something like that (or is the
intersection with openmoko resellers too big)? Or even the 3d printing
community/resellers who may be interested in adapting the case of
their phone to their fancy ? (I think it's a bit too early for them,
they may want more mature software and the printable 3d design tested to base
on?).  Or some SIG (openstreetmap?) communities who could use a
UMTS/GPS board, specially if they can use it as a phone too (too early
again?  and those don't have resellers who can order a bunch)?  or ephel
or frankencamera or similar open camera people who may like to be able
to have a phone where they can integrate some sort of sophisticated
camera ? (this too unlikely, I guess)

> So anyone have an extra 100k€ in their pocket and no place to put it ;)?
> 

Sure, after all where else can one put it nowadays? there're even negative
interest rates. Pity people with 100k€ too spend are so weird as to want 
it back someday, somehow.

To finish my contribution of half-baked ideas: Would there be some 
easy way to give online access to a few (or even one) board to those
kernel developers willing to try. Is there a way to leave a GTA04 connected
to a dedicated PC with an ssh server and some way to replace the
kernel that the GTA04 boots (maybe having both a testing kernel and a development
kernel in the same card). Maybe complete with a webcam to look at the screen
or some kind of measurement equipment. If there were 3 or 4 developers 
but they didn't all work on the board at the same time maybe it would
be cheaper than getting 3 or 4 boards out to them ? On the other hand
it is difficult enough to get developer time giving them the hardware
let alone making it more unconfortable for them... but it's always
better than making them pay a few hundred €.