> Sorry I didn't answer you - I'm overwhelmed by email and I barely keep up. > Sometimes things slip through.
OK. > Re DRM: I'm not really sure, I can't recall seeing any discussion about > this, > but I'm pretty sure the answer is "not at this time". Well, I'm one of the few people on this list that actually believe in DRM. :-) Having been there, and done that, I recognize that some sort of DRM is demanded by content producers and in some cases it has value. Since it is a GSM cell phone, an API call to give you the IMEI may be enough. > Please don't read into this more than there is. The simple fact is this: We > are severly resource limited. You can see the difficulty we're having simply > manufacturing and selling a working phone, with basic cellphone > applications. Sure, you have to set your goals and stick to them. Too many things have "feature crept" to the point they were useless, too expensive to market or never finished. > The list of applications and features we wish we could add is endless. I'm > afraid that every time we even think about any new feature we run the risk > of delaying the functionality or schedule of the basic device. Oh no, not an other OLPC. :-) > So we really rely upon the community to help us here, both to identify > existing and to invent new interesting and useful features; and to help > develop and debug them. Obviously, you can't do that with the basic phone functionality, but that's a tough one to get across. In order for it to pass regulatory acceptence it has to be unmodifiable by the user for thinks that affect the radio transmitter portion of it, and GSM protocols. > This is why it is so important for us to continue to provide choice - if we > rely on the community, but then limit the community, we have failed. This is > why I take Shachar's comments, and similar comments from others, very > seriously, and am constantly trying to sort them out and to reconcile these > observations with what's going on inside the company. Sometimes this leads > to > a change of policy. > > We are deeply commited to keeping this device open, and to continue opening > up > more and more. We were able to make a phone with 100% open source drivers. > Next we were able to open the CAD files, which took considerable effort and > bravery. We know there is a lot of desire for open schematics, and we would > love to provide them, and we hope that at some point we will be able to do > this. We know that by making the device as open as possible, it will be > easier > for you to experiment with new ideas. Personaly, I would not release things that effect regulatory approval, GSM group acceptance, or actual hardware design without some sort of non competition/non modification agreement. The last thing anyone wants is to have the device banned because someone in a basement figured out how to make a cell phone jammer, call interception device, etc out of one. When I was designing a similar device (but not a cellphone), it was to have expansion ports on the circut board. You could not add anything to it without opening it except through the USB ports. Once you opened it, you could do anything you wanted and the specs were to have been made public. I'm sure someone would have been selling cases with slots cut out over the expansion ports, and other add ons on eBay. I also had a program for encouraging hardware experimentation (I was told to remove the words "hardware hacking") but my device was not a cell phone and need a lot less regulatory approval. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
