7 ms·

No.No.no.no.no.no.no.no. A million thousand times no. As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hard

No.No.no.no.no.no.no.no. A million thousand times no. As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hardware, open source software, right to repair and own. A company that doesn't purposefully force manufactured obsolescence as a business model, privacy intrusions, lip service to OSS, bullying right to repair in courts, tax evasions doesn't deserve any free work from the skilled people in the community. All of this, just so that they can make more billions when people around the world are suffering just to give their restrictive supply chain their blood, lives and tears. You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. Hardware manufacturers want the Apple cash, so they wait for the Apple contract and when they get that, any other contracts that you might have will get delayed and sidelined with lower quality stuff. Essentially, a monopoly in the supply chain

flyinglizard 6y ago
> As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hardware, open source software, right to repair and own. What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? > You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. Apple is not even in contention over the same stuff. Nothing open sourced can fund the development process of a 5nm IC, as the tooling alone would be tens of millions if not more. The total cost of an IC would be in the hundreds of millions (making something of the M1 class is billions). Open source is lower quality unless there is a commercial sponsor. This is almost universally true for software and hardware. This is because people, naturally, have less resources to invest in something with zero to no financial return.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  > What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? I mean, Olimex isn't exactly poor. https://www.olimex.com/ https://www.olimex.com/
  - flyinglizard 6y ago
    Olimex makes low end development tools, not consumer products; and it’s not a large company by any means.
- fsflover 6y ago
  > What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? https://puri.sm/products https://puri.sm/products
  - flyinglizard 6y ago
    Is their hardware really open source? Are they making money? Is a $799 phone with hardware that dates 5 years back considered a "viable consumer product", or is this a niche device that just shows how open source fails to produce viable consumer products?
    - fsflover 6y ago
      See my reply above and check the FAQ: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque.... > Is their hardware really open source? The phone is going to get Respects Your Freedom certification by the FSF.
      - flyinglizard 6y ago
        Can I download a zip file which contains all of the phone’s engineering information, which I can then submit to Foxconn and manufacture millions?
        fsflover 6y ago
        https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#19-is-the-librem-5-freeopen-hardware https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
        flyinglizard 6y ago
        So the answer is a resounding “no”: >> Purism published the KiCAD schematics files for the DevKit, which was entirely designed with free software tools. However, Purism has not released the CAD files or the Gerber files for the Librem 5, in order to prevent the creation of clones. CEO Todd Weaver says that Purism needs to recover its development costs before releasing the Gerber files, which they are “thinking about releasing in a time capsule” of “3 years, 5 years, something like that.” Not to mention the plastic CAD files, tooling, etc.
dabernathy89 6y ago
> A company that doesn't purposefully force manufactured obsolescence as a business model Apple's mobile devices, laptops, and desktops have some of the best longevity and the best resale values in the market.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
simonh 6y ago
Wow, thats some conspiracy theory. Only a teeny tiny fraction of hardware companies have any relationship with Apple whatsoever. For those that do yes their Apple work is lucrative, but for most of them like Sony or Samsung it's a minuscule fraction of their overall revenue, and even then is only for very specific components. Large swathes of their output has nothing to do with Apple. The supply chains of most PC manufacturers never go anywhere near Apple or any of Apple's suppliers at all, yet somehow Apple is responsible for their shoddy quality and poor compatibility? Amazing. Also the cognitive dissonance is deafening. The company with industry leading device lifetimes and premium long lasting second hand market value is, er, guilty of built-in obsolescence. How does that work exactly? I mean Ive got to think you must know both those points are true. The fact that Apple has nothing to do with the vast majority of the PC supply chain, and the fact that Apple devices have industry leading lifetimes and service and support is just overwhelmingly supported by the evidence. I just don't see how you can not know those things. Yet here you are making this argument. I just find it really puzzling. Are you really not aware of these things, or deny that they are true? Are these things we actually need to dig into and discuss? I'll concede on the repairability point, yes that's a valid argument. I would contend that it's mostly just a tradeoff between compactness and simplicity of design, versus repairability and it's up to customers to choose which they value most, but Apple has sometimes gone too far in unnecessarily obstructing repairability.
- ksec 6y ago
  >I mean Ive got to think you must know both those points are true. Hardware relating Comments on HN has always been fairly low quality to say the least, comparatively speaking to many other subjects. But Apple M1 sort of brings the worst out of it. My current counting right now over 10K comment suggest most have very limited understanding of Hardware tech, little on Hardware business, and quite literally zero on supply chain. So I would not be suspired If many doesn't know. I could count people with one hand who have to constantly comment and correcting all the wrong assumption, TSMC capacity limitation, NAND and DRAM price fixing etc etc. And now we have Apple's supply chain monopoly. The world currently ships approx ~1.2B Smartphone every year, and Apple represent less than 20% of it. And if you include Tablet, PC and Laptop ( Which shares the same supply chain ) Apple is much closer to 10%. The premium Apple pays is not leading edge ( apart from 5nm TSMC ) but very strict quality control and capacity guarantee. My observation into this issue, is that most software developers and tech workers are so far removed from old model ( non-tech ) of business they have very little understanding of Logistics, Supply Chain, Lead Time, Sales Channel, Distribution and Discovery ( Marketing ). And ironically enough the world best company at doing all of the above is also a tech Company called Apple.
mschuster91 6y ago
I agree with the majority of your post, but this part here is flat out wrong: > You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. Hardware is hard. Some Atmel or whatever low brain microcontroller can be had on a board with hand-painted selfmade-etched circuits or shoddy breadboard stuff, at the frequencies these things operate signal integrity doesn't really matter. But anything with a brain powerful enough to run Linux? Then you're delving into differential signalling at extremely high frequencies - which means you have to precisely account for trace widths, trace thickness and trace length matching simply to ensure that the signal from your CPU arrives at your RAM chip intact. You'll ned an awful lot of awfully precise voltage levels other than 3v3/5v, with equally precise requirements on timing in getting them up. You also won't be able to get away with a two layer board, you'll need three or more layers and a lot of vias - and now, you can't manufacture your own prototypes any more but need to order at a PCB shop which means you either pay through your nose for speedy turnaround and low volume or wait for weeks for pool orders. And once you have the PCB you'll need to populate and solder it - where you will run into such nasty things as minimum order quantities and the need for a pick-and-place machine if you don't want to go nuts. And if that's not enough, have fun with NDAs and no support for hobbyists by big SoC vendors due to small volumes (I have extensively written about that topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208056). The best solution if you needs smarts is to look into either adopting a Raspberry Pi 4 Compute Module if you can get away with its performance, or look into COMexpress if you need serious, up to Intel Xeon scale levels performance - but be warned, designing for that ain't exactly easy either.
- amelius 6y ago
  You seem to be forgetting about the powerful EDA software that will help with the design and its verification.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    Which isn't free (and easy to use!) either. And I forgot about another thing too: the supply of people. While everyone and their dog can attend some six weeks coding bootcamp or teach themselves using free and open resources and can then start contributing to open source code, dealing with hardware requires a good education in fundamental physics, good amounts of money for components and tooling (a good soldering iron, air filters, fine-controlled hot air gun, a decent oven, the equipment and the chemicals for etching, a precise micro-drill, ...). Many people don't have that amount of upfront money and skills, and those that do often don't have the amount of free time to help advance open source because, as I wrote, it takes lots of time and money to deal with smart hardware.
rdsubhas 6y ago
> You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. "pays the premium on the premium quality stuff" reads very weird to me. Isn't that how generally the world is supposed to work? You pay a premium for premium stuff? If not Apple, somebody is anyways going to do it right...

flyinglizard 6y ago

> As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hardware, open source software, right to repair and own. What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? > You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. Apple is not even in contention over the same stuff. Nothing open sourced can fund the development process of a 5nm IC, as the tooling alone would be tens of millions if not more. The total cost of an IC would be in the hundreds of millions (making something of the M1 class is billions). Open source is lower quality unless there is a commercial sponsor. This is almost universally true for software and hardware. This is because people, naturally, have less resources to invest in something with zero to no financial return.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
> What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? I mean, Olimex isn't exactly poor. https://www.olimex.com/ https://www.olimex.com/
- flyinglizard 6y ago
  Olimex makes low end development tools, not consumer products; and it’s not a large company by any means.
fsflover 6y ago
> What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? https://puri.sm/products https://puri.sm/products
- flyinglizard 6y ago
  Is their hardware really open source? Are they making money? Is a $799 phone with hardware that dates 5 years back considered a "viable consumer product", or is this a niche device that just shows how open source fails to produce viable consumer products?
  - fsflover 6y ago
    See my reply above and check the FAQ: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque.... > Is their hardware really open source? The phone is going to get Respects Your Freedom certification by the FSF.
    - flyinglizard 6y ago
      Can I download a zip file which contains all of the phone’s engineering information, which I can then submit to Foxconn and manufacture millions?
      - fsflover 6y ago
        https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#19-is-the-librem-5-freeopen-hardware https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
        flyinglizard 6y ago
        So the answer is a resounding “no”: >> Purism published the KiCAD schematics files for the DevKit, which was entirely designed with free software tools. However, Purism has not released the CAD files or the Gerber files for the Librem 5, in order to prevent the creation of clones. CEO Todd Weaver says that Purism needs to recover its development costs before releasing the Gerber files, which they are “thinking about releasing in a time capsule” of “3 years, 5 years, something like that.” Not to mention the plastic CAD files, tooling, etc.

dabernathy89 6y ago

> A company that doesn't purposefully force manufactured obsolescence as a business model Apple's mobile devices, laptops, and desktops have some of the best longevity and the best resale values in the market.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

simonh 6y ago

Wow, thats some conspiracy theory. Only a teeny tiny fraction of hardware companies have any relationship with Apple whatsoever. For those that do yes their Apple work is lucrative, but for most of them like Sony or Samsung it's a minuscule fraction of their overall revenue, and even then is only for very specific components. Large swathes of their output has nothing to do with Apple. The supply chains of most PC manufacturers never go anywhere near Apple or any of Apple's suppliers at all, yet somehow Apple is responsible for their shoddy quality and poor compatibility? Amazing. Also the cognitive dissonance is deafening. The company with industry leading device lifetimes and premium long lasting second hand market value is, er, guilty of built-in obsolescence. How does that work exactly? I mean Ive got to think you must know both those points are true. The fact that Apple has nothing to do with the vast majority of the PC supply chain, and the fact that Apple devices have industry leading lifetimes and service and support is just overwhelmingly supported by the evidence. I just don't see how you can not know those things. Yet here you are making this argument. I just find it really puzzling. Are you really not aware of these things, or deny that they are true? Are these things we actually need to dig into and discuss? I'll concede on the repairability point, yes that's a valid argument. I would contend that it's mostly just a tradeoff between compactness and simplicity of design, versus repairability and it's up to customers to choose which they value most, but Apple has sometimes gone too far in unnecessarily obstructing repairability.

ksec 6y ago
>I mean Ive got to think you must know both those points are true. Hardware relating Comments on HN has always been fairly low quality to say the least, comparatively speaking to many other subjects. But Apple M1 sort of brings the worst out of it. My current counting right now over 10K comment suggest most have very limited understanding of Hardware tech, little on Hardware business, and quite literally zero on supply chain. So I would not be suspired If many doesn't know. I could count people with one hand who have to constantly comment and correcting all the wrong assumption, TSMC capacity limitation, NAND and DRAM price fixing etc etc. And now we have Apple's supply chain monopoly. The world currently ships approx ~1.2B Smartphone every year, and Apple represent less than 20% of it. And if you include Tablet, PC and Laptop ( Which shares the same supply chain ) Apple is much closer to 10%. The premium Apple pays is not leading edge ( apart from 5nm TSMC ) but very strict quality control and capacity guarantee. My observation into this issue, is that most software developers and tech workers are so far removed from old model ( non-tech ) of business they have very little understanding of Logistics, Supply Chain, Lead Time, Sales Channel, Distribution and Discovery ( Marketing ). And ironically enough the world best company at doing all of the above is also a tech Company called Apple.

mschuster91 6y ago

I agree with the majority of your post, but this part here is flat out wrong: > You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. Hardware is hard. Some Atmel or whatever low brain microcontroller can be had on a board with hand-painted selfmade-etched circuits or shoddy breadboard stuff, at the frequencies these things operate signal integrity doesn't really matter. But anything with a brain powerful enough to run Linux? Then you're delving into differential signalling at extremely high frequencies - which means you have to precisely account for trace widths, trace thickness and trace length matching simply to ensure that the signal from your CPU arrives at your RAM chip intact. You'll ned an awful lot of awfully precise voltage levels other than 3v3/5v, with equally precise requirements on timing in getting them up. You also won't be able to get away with a two layer board, you'll need three or more layers and a lot of vias - and now, you can't manufacture your own prototypes any more but need to order at a PCB shop which means you either pay through your nose for speedy turnaround and low volume or wait for weeks for pool orders. And once you have the PCB you'll need to populate and solder it - where you will run into such nasty things as minimum order quantities and the need for a pick-and-place machine if you don't want to go nuts. And if that's not enough, have fun with NDAs and no support for hobbyists by big SoC vendors due to small volumes (I have extensively written about that topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208056). The best solution if you needs smarts is to look into either adopting a Raspberry Pi 4 Compute Module if you can get away with its performance, or look into COMexpress if you need serious, up to Intel Xeon scale levels performance - but be warned, designing for that ain't exactly easy either.

amelius 6y ago
You seem to be forgetting about the powerful EDA software that will help with the design and its verification.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  Which isn't free (and easy to use!) either. And I forgot about another thing too: the supply of people. While everyone and their dog can attend some six weeks coding bootcamp or teach themselves using free and open resources and can then start contributing to open source code, dealing with hardware requires a good education in fundamental physics, good amounts of money for components and tooling (a good soldering iron, air filters, fine-controlled hot air gun, a decent oven, the equipment and the chemicals for etching, a precise micro-drill, ...). Many people don't have that amount of upfront money and skills, and those that do often don't have the amount of free time to help advance open source because, as I wrote, it takes lots of time and money to deal with smart hardware.

rdsubhas 6y ago

> You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. "pays the premium on the premium quality stuff" reads very weird to me. Isn't that how generally the world is supposed to work? You pay a premium for premium stuff? If not Apple, somebody is anyways going to do it right...