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Phi – Jailbreak for new locked-down Numworks calculators

• greatgib 5y ago
  What happened to Numworks? Last time I heard about them, they were supposed to be the open source calculators. That was their added value and reason to be. And now they are locked down? So disappointed! I hesitated to buy one before but so now I'm happy that I never went through buying one.
  • _aavaa_ 5y ago
    They still are open source [1]. If I had to guess, the reason they locked the bootloader is the same reason they removed the symbolic math functionality (which is re-added in Omega [2]), test accreditation. They want to create a calculator to provide a good and viable alternative to TI. They can only do that if their calculator is allowed on tests like the ACT, SAT, etc. [1]: https://github.com/numworks/epsilon https://github.com/numworks/epsilon [2]: https://getomega.dev/ https://getomega.dev/
    • kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
      [1] Source-available. They changed the license to be non-free/not approved by the OSI after Epsilon 15 (I think you can't fork the code, for example). Their calculator used to be approved for the ACT/SAT even before it was locked down. I believe it was pressure from the Dutch government that caused their calculators to become locked down.
      • _aavaa_ 5y ago
        I have heard about this, but I coudn't find a license on their github page. Do you have a link for it?
        • kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
          According to some GitHub issues, it's the copyright at the bottom of the repo for Epsilon. Which is still not a license, so I'm not completely sure.