pardon my ignorance, but how this is different from non-branded chinese laptops. since those are non-branded i guess they don't have legal rights over it too.
The "open source" part is what is different.
Building an Open Source Laptop
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: Building an Open Source Laptop
#22I appreciate the goal but I'd rather we started with an IP-free core manufactured by multiple fabs and work up from there. The Chinese got somewhere with this by ripping off MIPS but I'm not sure that is the right solution. Then there's the wireless stack and peripheral space which is even more complicated. Edit: this was my intention when I went to university in the early 90's but I found sitting in front of a Sun w…
Building IP-free core/wireless/... seems to be orthogonal to their goal. I think they would prefer to use such components, but I don't think they are in the right position to build them. It's enough of a problem that cores with NDA-free docs are not common (Bunnie wrote about it in the article).
Re: Building an Open Source Laptop
#23from his blog [1]:
"Funny story about travel – I was on my way back from 30C3, going through securty in Frankfurt. The security agent looked at my laptop and asked me what I do. I said “computer engineer”. He then asks, “did you make it yourself?” and I sheepishly say yes. His face lights up and he says, “ah, so you can trust what’s in it! Now that’s taking it seriously.” I was amazed, the guy totally got it. Wish we had more folks like him working airplane security."
[1] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3597#comment-1341727
Re: Building an Open Source Laptop
#24So The Freescale IM.X platform is well documented, that's very nice, and I know there's no other company offering something even remotely comparable with more documentation.
It leaves an important question though, there's been speak of NSA/China adding hardware level backdoors to stuff. Is the fact that the firmware is opensource enough to be reasonably sure there are no more backdoors?
For example, Intel has put backdoors in the chips that control their ethernet interfaces. Would something like that be defined in firmware, or at an even lower level? Would we be able to find out if it was lower level? Would we know if Freescale did the same?
Re: Building an Open Source Laptop
#25Oh my I love this, open source hardware is the future. Come to think of how Red Hat is doing great even though they are an open source company. Why can't this work for hardware as well?
It works. Arduino, Makerbot, DIYDrones and a couple of others had 1M+ yearly revenues in 2010, they probably have all grown since then. Open source hardware is probably easier to commercialize than software, because it still has to be manufactured by someone.
Re: Building an Open Source Laptop
#26Somewhat related talk from 30c3 (speaker is a bit dull but the topic matters):
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5529_-_en_-_...
Edit: I see the author was also there, nice (the talk I linked is not the one he gave though)
Re: Building an Open Source Laptop
#27"Open source laptop"? Physical objects don't have a source, either open or close. It is rather a laptop capable of running on only "free software" for full functionality.
While accepting the other replies, I do wonder how hardware trust is achieved. The security point about open source is peer review. For a dunce like me, I can pretty much rely on people much smarter than me to review open sourced code. In reasonable time, if there is a iffy routine buried in some bit of software, such people will out it. So, people like me can pretty much trust it, and even if something is missed but…
Quote from the original linked article:
"Our Novena Project is of course still vulnerable to techniques such as silicon poisoning, but at least it pushes openness and disclosure down a layer, which is tangible progress in the right direction."
Many of the security flaws and known back doors are in the firmware, (see routers for example), which Bunny is resolving by making Open Source. It's probably impossible to eliminate all attack vectors, but by opening the processes up, you can eliminate most of the easier ones.
Re: Building an Open Source Laptop
#28Oh my I love this, open source hardware is the future. Come to think of how Red Hat is doing great even though they are an open source company. Why can't this work for hardware as well?
> Why can't this work for hardware as well?
I'd be concerned about drafting up blueprints and having them copied by Chinese manufacturers.
Though what I'd do is make my first system just standard libre rights on everything, and that should build a platform for me to kickstart / donation fund future design efforts, and when those are done just release those as free as the last without a care if someone dupes the hardware because we already funded the design.
Re: Building an Open Source Laptop
#29Bunnie Huang[1] is like the Energizer Bunny that keeps going on and on. Glad to hear that he kept plugging away at the project. [1] http://www.bunniestudios.com/
He's one of my hacking idols, along with Fabrice Bellard!
Re: Building an Open Source Laptop
#30Anyone spec the cost of making one?
If I recall correctly, bunnie's laptop was in the $2.5k range? I could be wrong, but I remember it being very high compared to mass-produced things, which makes perfect sense.