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Uh, no thanks EFF. We were working on this idea, we approached you - all we wanted was a little endorsement from you, and our large company partner was willing

by chiro 12y ago

Uh, no thanks EFF. We were working on this idea, we approached you - all we wanted was a little endorsement from you, and our large company partner was willing to open license a slew of patents, RPI style. What we got back was from the EFF was a bunch of nerd arrogance and essentially this: We are too busy reading the news about the Snowden affair (which was new at the time) to talk with you. A month or two later we facepalmed reading a post from another EFF staffer about the importance of open patents...

Infinitesimus 12y ago
Are there any more details you can provide about this issue? (The present form is just a claim). Unless you're bound by contracts and can't disclose the group you were working with. If this is true, it is important to bring it to the attention of the public imo
lvs 12y ago
This is all a little too cagey for anyone else to understand. It sounds like you got snubbed by someone at EFF at a time when they were somewhat distracted by arguably the largest geopolitical event the internet may ever have experienced. Can you point to what it is you're working on that is relevant to the announcement?
Gracana 12y ago
Only a month or two ago? Sounds like you could get their support now and be all set.
chiro 12y ago
I can't mention BigCo's name, they definitely wouldn't appreciate it and the deal would be off the table now anyway. Other info: We asked to keep our discussions confidential. We weren't asking them to sign an NDA, we explicitly mentioned that their word would have been enough. It's pretty simple, they weren't willing to discuss it confidentially, so we let it drop after about 9 emails. It's true it was a snubbing, but I'm not upset about it. It is however somewhat ironic to read this call for help after we proactively contacted the EFF with just such an offer of help. A lesson I learned was - you can admire what an organization stands for, but not always the way that organization is run. It also may be an ineffective organization. I guess these comments could hold for quite a few charitable organizations.
- lvs 12y ago
  "you can admire what an organization stands for, but not always the way that organization is run" If you don't mind, it seems as if you may have a misconception about what they stand for. I clearly don't have any of the details, but it sounds like a non-sequitur to talk about an open wireless standard and an open wireless community and then require those discussions to be closed up in an NDA. You may not quite be on the same wavelength on the concept of open standards as they are.
  - chiro 12y ago
    "We weren't asking them to sign an NDA" Huh? We didn't require those discussions to be closed up in an NDA. We were just trying to do right by our partner, who wanted to negotiate the EFF / OpenWireless endorsement, neither of which they seemed to keen to give, so we walked away.
AlyssaRowan 12y ago
Do what you were going to do anyway. Wanted to open-licence the patents? Do it. But unless you can open all the firmware, no-one who knows what they're doing will want to know, in this scenario. No excuses. (As for the Raspberry Pi - actually, the stock firmware uses the ThreadX RTOS which Broadcom don't own and can't completely open-source - but they've got someone writing a set of open firmware, although it'll be a while in coming.)
dtaht 12y ago
I note that the bufferbloat.net project is looking for new hardware, and sponsors. The main foci of the project are apolitical in nature - just trying to build a faster, better internet. Most of cerowrt's original goals have been met, except the mandate to seriously improve wifi, which is next on the list.

by chiro 12y ago

Infinitesimus 12y ago

Are there any more details you can provide about this issue? (The present form is just a claim). Unless you're bound by contracts and can't disclose the group you were working with. If this is true, it is important to bring it to the attention of the public imo

lvs 12y ago

This is all a little too cagey for anyone else to understand. It sounds like you got snubbed by someone at EFF at a time when they were somewhat distracted by arguably the largest geopolitical event the internet may ever have experienced. Can you point to what it is you're working on that is relevant to the announcement?

Gracana 12y ago

Only a month or two ago? Sounds like you could get their support now and be all set.

chiro 12y ago

I can't mention BigCo's name, they definitely wouldn't appreciate it and the deal would be off the table now anyway. Other info: We asked to keep our discussions confidential. We weren't asking them to sign an NDA, we explicitly mentioned that their word would have been enough. It's pretty simple, they weren't willing to discuss it confidentially, so we let it drop after about 9 emails. It's true it was a snubbing, but I'm not upset about it. It is however somewhat ironic to read this call for help after we proactively contacted the EFF with just such an offer of help. A lesson I learned was - you can admire what an organization stands for, but not always the way that organization is run. It also may be an ineffective organization. I guess these comments could hold for quite a few charitable organizations.

lvs 12y ago
"you can admire what an organization stands for, but not always the way that organization is run" If you don't mind, it seems as if you may have a misconception about what they stand for. I clearly don't have any of the details, but it sounds like a non-sequitur to talk about an open wireless standard and an open wireless community and then require those discussions to be closed up in an NDA. You may not quite be on the same wavelength on the concept of open standards as they are.
- chiro 12y ago
  "We weren't asking them to sign an NDA" Huh? We didn't require those discussions to be closed up in an NDA. We were just trying to do right by our partner, who wanted to negotiate the EFF / OpenWireless endorsement, neither of which they seemed to keen to give, so we walked away.

AlyssaRowan 12y ago

Do what you were going to do anyway. Wanted to open-licence the patents? Do it. But unless you can open all the firmware, no-one who knows what they're doing will want to know, in this scenario. No excuses. (As for the Raspberry Pi - actually, the stock firmware uses the ThreadX RTOS which Broadcom don't own and can't completely open-source - but they've got someone writing a set of open firmware, although it'll be a while in coming.)

dtaht 12y ago

I note that the bufferbloat.net project is looking for new hardware, and sponsors. The main foci of the project are apolitical in nature - just trying to build a faster, better internet. Most of cerowrt's original goals have been met, except the mandate to seriously improve wifi, which is next on the list.