Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] open firmware: experiences?
From: Erik Steffl (esteffl_AT_pbi.net)
Date: Mon May 01 2000 - 19:05:15 EEST
Joe Miklojcik wrote:
>
> I am about to start talking to a company that makes ALTERNATE
> MIDI controllers about opening their firmware, and I'm polling for
> advice and experiences any of you have had. See if you can get into a
> political MODE and help me with some ideas.
...
> 3) The firmware is feaure-rich. Too feature-rich, really. You can just
> wander around in the user-program space and get really wild things
> happening. Open sourceing the firmware would help iron this out a lot.
are there open source tools for playing with the firmware? lot of
development tools for embedded systems cost fortune. if it's too hard to
even start playing with firmware they won't get many developers playing
with it (you have to get the eeprom burner and possibly some additional
HW). when I was doing some embedded stuff we found that HW emulator of
processor was basically neccessary for debugging...
...
> 1) How many of you would buy one of these percussion controller things
> that you play with sticks (at about $900 a pop) if you could get the
> firmware source? You'd probably still have to buy an eprom burner of
> some sort to hack the stuff yourself, but if I tell these guys "I can
> get you five orders if you open your source" they may be quite willing
> to do it.
is it strictly midi controller or midi controller + synth? I mean how
complete it is? can I just take it and use it as midi drums/perc. or is
it more complicated than that? I definitely plan to buy some kind of
percussion type midi controller (so far the ones I like are $2000+) and
if it's opensource friendly it's a huge plus (even though I am not sure
if I would actually use the source)...
...
> 3) The scenario is: the little guy makes a hundred units and opens the
> source to the firmware. They sell better than pokemon cards. Roland
> wakes up and takes notice, makes a similar design with the same
> firmware, and sells a thousand units. Roland has brand recognition
> advantage, distribution and manufacturing advantage, capitol investment
> advantage, and on and on. What do I tell them, or what strategy of
if they GPL the firmware and roland uses it, roland has to leave
copyright notice intact. that's a free world wide marketing campaign
right there. what more can little guy want? so even the worst case
scenario seems quite positive.
other than that, I think the main question is - do they sell software
or hardware - if HW is their main product, the opensourcing of software
is obviously beneficial. if software is VERY important part of their
device, then it's more complicated.
erik
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