Progress On the Open Laptop 57
An anonymous reader writes "Last October, we discussed Andrew 'bunnie' Huang's effort to build a complete open hardware laptop, called the Novena. bunnie has now posted a progress report on the laptop's design and construction, showing the latest revision of the board, the display, and a hack to use it as a secure router. bunnie says, 'At the end of the day, we're having fun building the laptop we always wanted — it's now somewhere between a python-scriptable oscilloscope, logic analyzer, and a laptop. I think it will be an indispensable tool for hacking, particularly for doing signal analysis which requires coordination across multiple protocol layers, complex trigger conditions and/or feedback stimulus loops. As for the inevitable question about if these will be sold, and for how muchonce we're done building the system (and, "done" is a moving target — really, the whole idea is this is continuously under development and improving) I'll make it available to qualified buyers. Because it's open-source and a bit quirky, I'm shy on the idea of just selling it to anyone who comes along wanting a laptop. I'm worried about buyers who don't understand that "open" also means a bit of DIY hacking to get things working, and that things are continuously under development."
Is this actually a laptop? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure this meets the standard criteria for a laptop these days. That doesn't mean it isn't a valid, useful device, but if you think about the things most people buy a laptop to *do*, they're going to be secondary to the function of this machine. When you say "Laptop" people think "Sophisticated operating system, wide range of available software, media player, useful for software development, gaming machine (maybe), interfaces with wide range of modern portable devices, etc).
This sounds like it's got a rather different set of capabilities in mind. Apple probably wouldn't like "HackBook", but it seems to fit better.
Strange definition of open (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm shy on the idea of just selling it to anyone who comes along wanting a laptop. I'm worried about buyers who don't understand that "open" also means a bit of DIY hacking to get things working, and that things are continuously under development.
I use "open" software all the time and I certainly don't do any DIY hacking to get it running and keep it running. So why does this "open" hardware have such a different interpretation? I can only surmise that "open" is actually being used as a synonym of "incomplete".