FreeSoft and the Ever-Changing Hardware of Today

Sat Nov 4 04:44:48 MST 2006

I will respond since I'm the only one so far.

Currently I don't even have my BN.
It was returned to be repaired yet again.
The agency here has 20 units and about 80 percent of them had to be returned
for a battery charging system/battery replacement because the hardware
didn't work correctly.
So right now anything I can even attempt to do is dead awaiting the return
of hardware.

I personally hate to surrender on any project but there may be some valid
points.

We're now up to around six vendors that make various flavors of accessable
PDA.
At this point I'll pause for thought ... <grin>

J. R.

----------------------------------------
J. R. Westmoreland
E-mail: jr at jrw.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory Nowak [mailto:greg at romuald.net.eu.org] 
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 5:47 PM
To: notelinux at romuald.net.eu.org
Subject: Re: FreeSoft and the Ever-Changing Hardware of Today

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Thank you for your eloquent post Sabahattin. One thing I'd like to mention
is that there was a similar project way back when, before we got started,
that had the same goals that we have, but that failed to get off the ground
because they didn't have hardware to work with, they didn't have
specifications for the hardware, and Pulsedata refused to help back then,
although they had supposedly promised to provide units to that team when it
got started. This other project was mentioned early on, when this list first
got started, by Frank Carmikle (spelling), who was on the freesoft
development team, and according to him, was also on the team of the first
project, but who left our project when his domain registration expired, and
didn't bother resubscribing under a new address.

So as Sabahattin stated, Please let us know if you're still out there, and
what your thoughts are on the future of freesoft. If it is decided that the
project should be scrapped, it won't be the first linux on braillenote, (or
in our case, netbsd on braillenote) project to end in such a way, to the
detriment of all those who own these units, and want to have more choice
about what software is available.

Greg

On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 11:46:42PM -0000, Sabahattin Gucukoglu wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> It's come to light recently, after a somewhat lengthy interlude of 
> silence, that we are no longer in possession of the Humanware hardware 
> we once were: one of our members had to give his unit back, the other 
> has upgraded to the latest hardware available.  We therefore no longer 
> have the original basis for FreeSoft, that of early-day, expensive 
> hardware upon which to run a cool suite of apps powered by Open Source 
> rather than the cludgy software currently in use.  Not, of course, to 
> say that we haven't discussed running FreeSoft on anything else, of 
> course; it's just that we really are spread thin now as far as 
> supporting any given platform goes.
> 
> It seems like a good opportunity to ask everyone what they think of 
> the whole idea now that times are changing, Freedom Scientific is 
> offering trade-in programs few people are apparently able to refuse, 
> key staff of PulseData have left for other jobs or worlds, and the 
> prospect of any kind of external support in anything but the vaguest 
> geek projects spun off by other people elsewhere working on entirely 
> different projects is entirely unlikely.  Help from Humanware seems 
> certainly unlikely.  We were here to bring Open Source to an expensive 
> but very suitably blind-friendly hardware basis, and although we've 
> had some geek successes in running a NetBSD kernel and developing a 
> couple of system tools in aid of the project, we just haven't got 
> enough to make any kind of progress on any given platform.  One of a kind
and no tech specs isn't enough.
> 
> It would be disappointing indeed to consign these expensive units to 
> the grave and abandon the project, but if we must then we must.  We 
> ask you to give your opinions.  Is the enterprise worth pursuing?  
> Other projects may start up on clean slates, other projects already 
> run Linux on accessible PDAs, and the world of Windows CE is open to 
> anyone who will pay for it or trade in using Freedom Scientific's current
offer.
> 
> Please tell us if you're alive and whether you think anything can come 
> out of this.  We'd rather scrap the whole idea if there's no 
> enthusiasm in it than try fruitlessly to continue in the current 
> conditions.  Any last- ditch appeals, offers of help or other
recommendations are welcome.
> 
> Cheers,
> Sabahattin
> 
> --
> Sabahattin Gucukoglu <mail<at>sabahattin<dash>gucukoglu<dot>com>
> Address harvesters, snag this: feedme at yamta.org
> Phone: +44 20 88008915
> Mobile: +44 7986 053399
> 
> 

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