Market Forces and Open Hardware
03-06-2021, 05:04 AM
> I think that finding open hardware, installing linux, creating safe firewall, connecting to openvpn, etc, is too complicated for the average family. So I want to do it for them. My end game is provisioning my local home school community with open-hardware devices running slackware ported to the architecture of said devices, connecting to openvpn, and running services that help the community collaborate safely, and which protect the students from inappropriate content.
Go with what currently suites your needs then, rather than waiting out for something that may or may not be there in the future.
Honestly it doesn't sound like you local home school community need ARM/RISC-V and could make do with almost any system running Linux? The problems you describe are purely software. In which case I would suggest the second-hand computer market is the place to go for performance per currency. If for some reason they do need an SBC for example (say for twiddling a GPIO pin), then go with something like the Pine64 A64 which will have decent LTS and already is pretty well supported.
> Lack of responses, even during shortages of lcds, will turn developers and prospective assets to the pine64 community away.
When a resource has been depleted, an old company I used to work with would just take their phones off the hooks. Dealing with a million "when will it be ready" questions helps nobody, especially when you don't have a good answer to give.
> Thus, let's not repeat OSI Model's quest for perfection, because, as they learned, the market doesn't wait.
I think Pine are not trying to achieve perfection - they would be forever trying to chase this. They get as close as they can with reasonable effort. The first version of the PinePhone for example required lots of mods to get the functionality working correctly.
The problem they currently have is in sourcing a large number of cheap LCD panels to deliver the devices at the prices people expect. Even if they were willing to pay more, manufacturers are going to favour larger customers with larger orders. The reason there isn't many cheap LCD panels is because the more expensive panels are also in short supply. Changing the type of panel could require changing the driver and increases risk of DOA devices without extensive testing. There is no easy way out of this.
This components shortage is only going to get worse too - they were only just about keeping up with demand before the pandemic (I think it increases something like 20% year on year), it's actually not yet clear they can even recover by the end of the year. You're competing with industries that are willing to pay whatever it takes to get their product out the door (automotive, mobile, etc).
Go with what currently suites your needs then, rather than waiting out for something that may or may not be there in the future.
Honestly it doesn't sound like you local home school community need ARM/RISC-V and could make do with almost any system running Linux? The problems you describe are purely software. In which case I would suggest the second-hand computer market is the place to go for performance per currency. If for some reason they do need an SBC for example (say for twiddling a GPIO pin), then go with something like the Pine64 A64 which will have decent LTS and already is pretty well supported.
> Lack of responses, even during shortages of lcds, will turn developers and prospective assets to the pine64 community away.
When a resource has been depleted, an old company I used to work with would just take their phones off the hooks. Dealing with a million "when will it be ready" questions helps nobody, especially when you don't have a good answer to give.
> Thus, let's not repeat OSI Model's quest for perfection, because, as they learned, the market doesn't wait.
I think Pine are not trying to achieve perfection - they would be forever trying to chase this. They get as close as they can with reasonable effort. The first version of the PinePhone for example required lots of mods to get the functionality working correctly.
The problem they currently have is in sourcing a large number of cheap LCD panels to deliver the devices at the prices people expect. Even if they were willing to pay more, manufacturers are going to favour larger customers with larger orders. The reason there isn't many cheap LCD panels is because the more expensive panels are also in short supply. Changing the type of panel could require changing the driver and increases risk of DOA devices without extensive testing. There is no easy way out of this.
This components shortage is only going to get worse too - they were only just about keeping up with demand before the pandemic (I think it increases something like 20% year on year), it's actually not yet clear they can even recover by the end of the year. You're competing with industries that are willing to pay whatever it takes to get their product out the door (automotive, mobile, etc).
