Quote:
Originally Posted by borisb
Frankly, perhaps now is the time for enTourage to do a full source code dump to the community (other than items like the Reader software that is licensed to them by Adobe, etc.). Even source code written and owned by enTourage and not thought of as "open source". A formal SDK isn't even required by the developer community, as they know what they're doing and could easily try things out on the eDGe directly without an emulator, provided enTourage also fully enables debug and root access. The community would educate itself.
A source code dump could stir up a large enthusiast community, not to mention help speed up all kinds of bug fixes, enhancements and new apps.
I propose that enTourage would retain ownership of the code, but accept "suggestions" from the community where possible and fold that into official updates, sort of the way the Linux kernel works (I believe). Anyone could build their own eDGe distro, but the skittish among us can get our "official" update from enTourage.
This could spur more sales in academic circles to brilliant people that love customizing their device, and the increased prevalence of eDGes on campus could then fan the flames of sales to classmates. A wide open device may go on to encourage other markets to see the device as something that's unrestricted by the arbitrary whims of companies like Apple and the various phone and tablet manufacturers.
This would require a complete 180 degree turnabout by enTourage, but there's nothing to lose at this point.
|
Boris, that is the sort of thing that has kept many other device afloat. I know our programmer would stop glaring at me every time I appear with the EE in my hand. It might also allow us to produce some of the specialist software that we currently have on the notebooks and so would make our engineers happy.
As you may have guessed we are not in education but in services to industry which is another area that could be pursued. The EE makes an ideal tool - service manuals in PDF on the eink side and contact with the office and writing reports on the spot on the LCD side. At the moment we mainly use a notebook and a kindle DX - two items to carry around instead of one. Everyone that has taken the EE out on a job has reported that they like it and asked when can we get our special software on it. Our programmes says 'no way' without a lot more information.
I wonder why the industrial use was not thought of at the start - maybe it was but academia called more loudly.
Anyway I see no reason why us, the users, could not do as you say - fix bugs, add enhancements, even work round the hardware drawbacks (we've done it with some machine tools that we couldn't change the computer hardware on) and so keep what we have going for a very long time (something like our running OS/2 from 1996 with updates on AMD 6 core processors SMP only in reverse).