tinkerphones

ProjectManifest

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Table of Content

About this project

(was, warum; wozu)

Project Goals

The goal of the GTA04 project is: design and build a new and modern motherboard replacement for the Openmoko GTA01 and GTA02. Use the open documentation from the BeagleBoard to speed up development.

Reason (Why does the world need OpenPhoenux?)

why this project there were a lot of complaints by the GTA02 users that everything (CPU, GPU, Wireless) is so slow and far behind state of the art. Since we felt that we can dramatically improve that by building on the OMAP3 based BeagleBoard and using some off-the-shelf UMTS modem module, we started this project.

Why develop our own and produce our own? Why not buy $DEVICE from $MANUFACTURER and get it opened?

  1. $MANUFACTURER is not willing to provide schematics and documentation - unless we pay a lot of money
  2. $MANUFACTURER may change the device hardware for production optimization - and we are the last ones to be informed
  3. $MANUFACTURER may have choosen chips for which there is only a non-open driver - we try to avoid this (as good as possible)

Community Contributions and participation (why should I contribute?)

Just hanging around and discussing

Plain discussion without contributing a single line of code is a very imporant part of a project. It helps to get new ideas, find clarifications, understand what others don't understand in the same way. Please let the core team and others know through the mailing lists what you need and see as improvements. Add entries to the "Issues" list.

Contributing Code and Wisdom

  • write your own Applications
  • publish them through the SWI

Openness

Although hardware development is being done by a small team hidden from the eyes and influences of the public, the software is free and open source. Starting from the boot loader (U-Boot) over the kernel (Linux) to graphical user interfaces (e.g. SHR and QtMoko). And we are even working on the last pieces and bits of non-free firmware (e.g. WLAN or 3D-Graphics acceleration).

Donations

Funding such a project isn't easy since we are small and therefore don't have the purchasing power to get down the price for the components. Donations may help to reduce the sales price of an OpenPhoenux a little for those who can't afford it and otherwise would have to switch to a non-free device.

Other contributions

Rules

  • there aren't many rules
  • everything is allowed to say as long as it is kept friendly
  • what we don't want to see is illegaly leaked information (beyond legal reverse engineering) or links to such information

Licences

  • hardware schematics and user manual are open (CC)
  • u-boot, kernel, user-space software is under GPL or similar open source licenses

Supporters

so far Goldelico plus some generous (>1000 EUR) donators (C. and W.)

Infrastructure

servers, domains, source archives

Organziation

formal/informal who elections, influence on future etc.

Community Events