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"Gongkai" seems to be between public domain and open source. Interesting to see a sharing ecosystem developing without a firm legal framework.

by ww520 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago
Actually its more a collective exploitation of third party IP. The factories that build the chips, the people that put together the boards, the places that build the screens etc. They have generally at one time or another been contracted to or licensed to produce some product, which they do, and then well they make more for their friends without so much cost. In a fascinating sort of way it works like folks who burn copies of DVDs and sell them out of their trunk except these folks have access to much more sophisticated manufacturing gear. By and large its "harmless" in that none of the people buying a $12 phone are going to buy a $60 legitimate phone, even if that was the only phone available. So its hard to argue to economic loss as well. Very little of the stuff built into these phones and gizmos though seems like the original creator was doing it to give away.
- api 12y ago
  A good chunk of open source is reimplementated copies of closed source.
  - lotyrin 12y ago
    But not by people who just left the developer teams of those products and can take advantage of IP in a similar way (at least in the majority of cases)
- minthd 12y ago
  I don't think it happens at the chip level.Chip fabs have pretty good respect for IP.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    When I was at Intel we saw "breakage" at the packaging level, basically once die were packaged they would be run through a tester and a fraction of the parts would bin out (fail characterization testing). In theory those bad chips were ground up and recycled, sometimes they went missing. (this was back in the late 80's early 90's) At the time Intel invested in ways of tracking chips back through the process when those chips showed up in the market the source of the leak could be plugged. It is entirely unclear to me if companies like AllWinner which make a bunch ARM chips has similar sorts of controls.

"Gongkai" seems to be between public domain and open source. Interesting to see a sharing ecosystem developing without a firm legal framework.

by ww520 12y ago

"Gongkai" seems to be between public domain and open source. Interesting to see a sharing ecosystem developing without a firm legal framework.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Actually its more a collective exploitation of third party IP. The factories that build the chips, the people that put together the boards, the places that build the screens etc. They have generally at one time or another been contracted to or licensed to produce some product, which they do, and then well they make more for their friends without so much cost. In a fascinating sort of way it works like folks who burn copies of DVDs and sell them out of their trunk except these folks have access to much more sophisticated manufacturing gear. By and large its "harmless" in that none of the people buying a $12 phone are going to buy a $60 legitimate phone, even if that was the only phone available. So its hard to argue to economic loss as well. Very little of the stuff built into these phones and gizmos though seems like the original creator was doing it to give away.

api 12y ago
A good chunk of open source is reimplementated copies of closed source.
- lotyrin 12y ago
  But not by people who just left the developer teams of those products and can take advantage of IP in a similar way (at least in the majority of cases)
minthd 12y ago
I don't think it happens at the chip level.Chip fabs have pretty good respect for IP.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  When I was at Intel we saw "breakage" at the packaging level, basically once die were packaged they would be run through a tester and a fraction of the parts would bin out (fail characterization testing). In theory those bad chips were ground up and recycled, sometimes they went missing. (this was back in the late 80's early 90's) At the time Intel invested in ways of tracking chips back through the process when those chips showed up in the market the source of the leak could be plugged. It is entirely unclear to me if companies like AllWinner which make a bunch ARM chips has similar sorts of controls.