On 02/05/2010 04:59 PM, Don Fanning wrote: > Am I denying that he shouldn't be paid? No. > He has done a great bit of work and much congratulations to him for > taking his business to the "next level". > > I'm not going to get all "awestruck" about the guy. No one is worthy > of that. He may be your friend, but this is just business. Nothing > personal. > > When someone touts a product that doesn't include all the pieces, then > they should be given a chance to respond and make it right. So, near as I can tell, the "missing piece" that you're all bothered about is that the PCB design files were never released, and this, somehow, makes the product "not include all the pieces". Last time I bought an LCD TV, for example, I didn't even get printed-on-paper schematics, let alone electronic design files. Matt could have chosen to not give away *any* of the hardware design information in an e-useful format, and he'd *still* be a towering member of the Open Source community. There is no "code" that says that "if you give away any of it, you have to give away all of it".
Not only is *all* the firmware, fpga designs, software (via gnu radio), available openly, but so are other "manufacturing" files like the BOMs, and schematic-capture files. Matt, as the owner of this stuff in the intellectual sense, has chosen to hold-back a rather-small piece of the pie--that's his choice, and he's been very public about that choice from the very early days--and I've been around since the very beginning so I think I'm speaking with at least some authority on the subject. I have a USRP1 with a very low serial number, and I was one of the BETA customers for the DBS_RX, and even in those days, the policy was that the PCB files were held back. Seems to me that the only people really affected by such a decision are those who want to put *zero* effort into exact-cloning his work. If the *real* reason is that you want to "integrate pieces of the design into your own product", then *everything* you need is already openly available. Implying otherwise is disingenuous in the extreme. Currently, there's a "glitch" in that websites got shuffled and Matt chose to take that opportunity to clean things up before putting all of that stuff back up. I think it really sucks that you're effectively accusing Matt of having a hidden agenda. Perhaps, I might suggest, Don, that maybe you're the one with the hidden agenda. Some peoples children.... _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
