Fwd: The Open Laptop Project

Forwarded to you.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: William 'Cryo' Coldwell <billc@warped.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 1:27 AM
Subject: Re: The Open Laptop Project
To: Joe Nosay <superbisquit@gmail.com>
Cc: NetBSD Board <board@netbsd.org>

While they are very Linux-oriented, we have an excellent group of

PowerPC developers. When they have hardware to work on, rather than

just the development boards from Freescale, we can look into this

further. Let us know when this happens and if they want us to look

at porting NetBSD to it.

--
William J. Coldwell T:@Cryo G:+Cryo ARIN:WC25/AS7769 PGP:0x5E994445
Warped, Inc. warped.com 661-WARPED1 @warped @deadjournal @tapnet_app
NetBSD netbsd.org Foundation President,Project Security,Social Media
"Put on 3D glasses, otherwise you only see in 1½D.” [self opinion];

On Jan 6, 2016, at 3:15 PM, Joe Nosay <superbisquit@gmail.com> wrote:

From my email "Dear Joe,
I thank you to have contacted our team of Open Source PowerPC Notebook project,
we have chosen the NXP (Freescale) e6500 core Power Architecture processor for our Notebook,
few hundreds of people are already involved in some way in our project, in case you and the others people in the mailing list are interested in you can find more information on our website ( 7 languages available).

http://powerpc-notebook.org/

Have Fun!

Roberto"

They picked the e6500. I am sure that you could help, aide, and assist them on that part.

I have my reasons with trying to get the POWER8 to be used.

Now, since you are aware that they are trying with a smaller chip that can be used for a laptop, would you be more willing to give them assistance when needed?

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 4:16 PM, William 'Cryo' Coldwell <billc@warped.com> wrote:
Mr. Nosay,

Thank you for submitting this to the board, but given the context provided
of two likes to a forum that contained very little tangible material to
work with, or the parties that are involved in this, it appeared as you
were representing the project you describe. We are not in a position to
participate in hardware development, and would have no problem investigating
getting NetBSD ported to a physical product once it is out of hardware
testing.

There was no direct personal intent to discredit the project or you, but
we want to make clear that we are not a hardware development organization
in our complete history (and even the “toaster” was developer experiment
for their amusement and our publicity - we did not fund the development of
that).

The skepticism of POWER8 architecture in a laptop is warranted because
the power requirements of even a lower number core POWER8 requires far
more wattage than a laptop battery can provide. The heat emission would
exceed a passive heatsink size, and would require an active fan or water
cooling system, which is infeasible. The POWER8 architecture is not a
PowerPC. PPC is effectively dead after Apple stopped shipping, and is
available through Freescale and other embedded manufacturers. I agree
with the statement that it is not acceptable for building out a -NEW-
system, where people want low power usage, long battery life, passive
heatsink, and in competition to ARM/MIPS/Intel Atom and Edison which
already have massive backing and already built hardware to run on. The
suggestion of a RiscV is reasonable given what you are trying to build.

We are all for creating something beneficial for the communities and
easily available, and also very affordable, especially for developing
nations. However, this outside our development model of working with
manufacturers of products and chipsets to enhance their products with
NetBSD. This is not a personal attack, or an attack against such a
product, but that you’re asking a brain surgeon to build a car out
of whatever parts can be found. We would be more than happy, as I
said to see said car, and look at allocating resources necessary to
get NetBSD up on it.

Please do keep us updated on the progress of this, and we wish you
great success in getting it kickstarted and out. Good luck!

Speaking for the Board of Directors,
William J. Coldwell
President of the The NetBSD Foundation

--
William J. Coldwell T:@Cryo G:+Cryo ARIN:WC25/AS7769 PGP:0x5E994445
Warped, Inc. warped.com 661-WARPED1 @warped @deadjournal @tapnet_app
NetBSD netbsd.org Foundation President,Project Security,Social Media
"Put on 3D glasses, otherwise you only see in 1½D.” [self opinion];

On Jan 5, 2016, at 2:24 PM, Joe Nosay <superbisquit@gmail.com> wrote:

1. A mult-iboot laptop that is able to boot four or more systems from a single drive has not been done.
2. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses. Each OS can be dedicated to do a certain task.
3. The project is for the universities and colleges to work with the local environment/populace for what is important to both that area and the world.
4. The architecture was chosen by the group before I became involved.
5. To believe that something is limited to a certain task while you are part of an organization which has had NetBSD ported to different architectures with users having the machines for home, public, business, educational, and other uses seems odd. NetBSD was put on a toaster; and, you do not see me complaining that a toaster should only be used for toast and not for someone's personal computer hacking project.
6. I am not asking for money and I am remaining anonymous. I am homeless. I do not want money. I would rather try to create something beneficial while aiding and assisting others.

You are being given a good idea and yet you find some reason to complain about it.

I am humble and honest. I share what I have. I stand up for and represent others without asking anything in return.

You have no idea of the conditions I have been through or the danger that I have faced.

I ask for something to benefit others and you wish to complain about it.

You are always welcome to contact the original project and tell them your opinion.

I am sorry that I even contacted you and the NetBSD board about this.

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 2:05 AM, S.P.Zeidler <spz@netbsd.org> wrote:
Hello Joe,

Thus wrote Joe Nosay (superbisquit@gmail.com):

> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/making-it-public.54392/
>
> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/the-open-laptop-project.54545/

Thank you for contacting board@NetBSD.org with your idea.

I'm afraid it describes more what you want as a result (and it reads as if
"should also cure cancer" is only missing by accident) than any plan how
to get there, or any assessment of the efforts needed and whether they are
realistic.

What I do wonder is why you'd want to use PowerPC, which is designed for
datacenter operations (needs lots of electricity and cooling) and
a commercial design (aka, 'closed' .. getting specs if you sign a NDA is
not open source) rather than RISC-V which is an honest open source CPU
design that exists on silicon.

I also fail to understand what is supposed to be novel about a
multi-boot laptop.

best regards,
spz