Pi vs BeagleBone-Black

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

mynameisJim wrote:

You're confusing two things:  being more open, and having more functionality.  They're completely and utterly different concepts.

 

Sure, those who want to use advanced but closed functions will praise their availability, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the hardware being more open or more closed.  You're looking at two entirely different types of stakeholder.

 

And this is why I'm saying things are flawed (and not because I don't highly value openness as you've stated ) because we are by our own actions creating the framework for a loss of functionality so we can have openness.  It's like we're cutting our noses to spite or faces.

 

But that's exactly what I said --- that desire for openness is being confused with desire for functionality.

 

To someone who wants openness, adding a closed feature is no benefit at all.  Only those who don't mind that the nose is closed would say that cutting it off spites their (otherwise open) face.  That analogy is emotionally biased because we don't like to lose our noses, but if you restate it with "leprous carbunkle" in place of nose, you'll see how cutting it off can be very desirable.  The leprous carbunkle is the closed feature in the analogy.

See there you're putting words in my mouth again.  I definitily want openness, but you're stating that I can only be for openness provided I think that adding a closed feature is of no benefit.  I would argue that calling it a leprous cabunkle is equally emotionally biased because obviously that's something you'd definitely want removed.

I fear, however that you're focusing too closely on a single part of my post and ignoring the greater context around it.  Namely that "[the current definition] encourages manufactures to put more info where we can't touch it in order to get the stamp of open source approval instead of actually rewarding those who make the effort to give us more control over the equipment." Now in none of my posts have I said that I want us to stop pushing for more openness, what I have said is we need to applauded the steps being done to make systems more open, rather than attacking people when they release something additional becuase they haven't released everything yet.

I've also stated that this attitude is creating an atmosphere which encourages manufacture to remove functionality.  This is not, as you've mistakenly stated, because I'm confusing functionality with openness, it's because I'm taking the current attitude amongst hobbyist and looking down the road and recognizing that this will ultimately work against us.  Through pattern recognition I can look at what's going on and see that we're ultimately going to be restricting growth.

Conversely if we were to focus on how open different boards were (using a weighted average rather than a blind count) and then encouraged the purchasing of boards that were more open, then the manufacturers would be motivated to open up more of the previously closed features rather than just restricting *any* use of closed systems.

The current mindset actually encourages an increase of black boxes that obfuscate the system rather than encouraging manufacturers to truly open up the process.  Which is why it's so flawed.  It is actually encouraging the regression of available technology instead of furthering the amount of technology that is truly open.

> And correspondingly, there is nothing wrong with pointing out that the manufacturer has delivered to the user a  programmable device which the user is being denied from programming through an artificial restriction.  Interest in open source software and open hardware is huge these days, and no manufacturer can pretend to be unaware of it.

This I can fully agree with lol

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

mynameisJim wrote:

You're confusing two things:  being more open, and having more functionality.  They're completely and utterly different concepts.

 

Sure, those who want to use advanced but closed functions will praise their availability, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the hardware being more open or more closed.  You're looking at two entirely different types of stakeholder.

 

And this is why I'm saying things are flawed (and not because I don't highly value openness as you've stated ) because we are by our own actions creating the framework for a loss of functionality so we can have openness.  It's like we're cutting our noses to spite or faces.

 

But that's exactly what I said --- that desire for openness is being confused with desire for functionality.

 

To someone who wants openness, adding a closed feature is no benefit at all.  Only those who don't mind that the nose is closed would say that cutting it off spites their (otherwise open) face.  That analogy is emotionally biased because we don't like to lose our noses, but if you restate it with "leprous carbunkle" in place of nose, you'll see how cutting it off can be very desirable.  The leprous carbunkle is the closed feature in the analogy.

See there you're putting words in my mouth again.  I definitily want openness, but you're stating that I can only be for openness provided I think that adding a closed feature is of no benefit.  I would argue that calling it a leprous cabunkle is equally emotionally biased because obviously that's something you'd definitely want removed.

I fear, however that you're focusing too closely on a single part of my post and ignoring the greater context around it.  Namely that "[the current definition] encourages manufactures to put more info where we can't touch it in order to get the stamp of open source approval instead of actually rewarding those who make the effort to give us more control over the equipment." Now in none of my posts have I said that I want us to stop pushing for more openness, what I have said is we need to applauded the steps being done to make systems more open, rather than attacking people when they release something additional becuase they haven't released everything yet.

I've also stated that this attitude is creating an atmosphere which encourages manufacture to remove functionality.  This is not, as you've mistakenly stated, because I'm confusing functionality with openness, it's because I'm taking the current attitude amongst hobbyist and looking down the road and recognizing that this will ultimately work against us.  Through pattern recognition I can look at what's going on and see that we're ultimately going to be restricting growth.

Conversely if we were to focus on how open different boards were (using a weighted average rather than a blind count) and then encouraged the purchasing of boards that were more open, then the manufacturers would be motivated to open up more of the previously closed features rather than just restricting *any* use of closed systems.

The current mindset actually encourages an increase of black boxes that obfuscate the system rather than encouraging manufacturers to truly open up the process.  Which is why it's so flawed.  It is actually encouraging the regression of available technology instead of furthering the amount of technology that is truly open.

> And correspondingly, there is nothing wrong with pointing out that the manufacturer has delivered to the user a  programmable device which the user is being denied from programming through an artificial restriction.  Interest in open source software and open hardware is huge these days, and no manufacturer can pretend to be unaware of it.

This I can fully agree with lol