4 Nov
2011
4 Nov
'11
4:04 p.m.
On 4 Nov 2011, at 16:32, Ray Arachelian wrote:
Even more of a reason to document the hardware and
open source some of
the software. If you do that, the community will help and support your
hardware and will create drivers for both the hardware as well as
provide conversion tools for file systems and low level formats.. Hell,
you should setup an SVN server and accept submissions.
The hardware is a standard piece of kit really. It's basically an ARM dev board with
some bits and bobs and a drive interface.
I definitely sympathise with people, particularly here, who would want to see and play
with the guts of the KryoFlux software. However, the software is what makes us money to
fund our preservation efforts at SPS. Well, more than the personal edition anyway, so it
is a much harder decision for us. We don't see any other way to fund that work, and it
is so important...
I definitely agree about documenting the firmware interface though.
Stick to selling the hardware and make that the profit
center. The more
As mentioned before. There isn't really any money in hardware without making it far
too expensive. We definitely wanted it to be under 100 EUR (the basic edition is 90 EUR),
and we can only do that by selling it near cost. The commercial licenses we provide are
for the software.
Also, this way, you can get KryoFlux for free by building a board yourself (okay, the cost
of the components).
of time wring up code that others would be happy to,
or worse have to
hire others to do it and cut into your profit margins each time someone
asks for a new file system or low level format.
Not really needed for that. The file format for the raw data is open, so people can (and
have) built their own tools and converters. If you can get the raw data and a good
selection of sector image output (and more being added all the time), that seems to me to
solve all normal usage.
Build something useful and open instead of locked down
and useful only
in a very narrow sense.
The only reason I can think of people needing the code is to tinker (which is very nice I
admit, but not really a "need" surely?). Are there other uses you are thinking
of?
Kieron