[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's a hobby project. Not a real alternative ereader to 6" Kobo / Amazon Kindle. Also the fact is that most people use their ereader like an oven, TV, DVD player or HiFi. It's an appliance to read ebooks (PDFs are not ebooks).

This is not a mass market item. It is for people who have some very specific requirements:

• * Do not want to be constantly tracked;
  * Have the tech know-how to follow blueprints;
  * Have the tools to construct the device;

Claiming PDFs are not ebooks, is akin to claiming that the USS Wasp is not an aircraft carrier.

I've no interest in this and very little in Arduino stuff as most can be built in less than an hour in a better form factor on stripboard or matrix board.

The virtue of Arduino is that it is an ecosystem, in which most parts that one might desire are easily available. You don't have to hand make each and every item you need, for your project to work as expected.

There is a reason The Open Source Lab ISBN 978-0-12-410462-4 used Arduino's for most of the projects it described, even though the target audience knows how to assemble from breadboards.

Unless you are an Ardunio style tinkerer (Ardunio is sort of lego for people not wanting to learn design or soldering), this is a pointless project.

For people outside the target audience, this project is irrelevant.

It is pointless only to those who think that being tracked 7/24, with unknown third parties knowing what page in which books you are currently reading, is an extremely good thing.

I use opensource. I've released stuff as open source, but the fact this is open source is irrelevant for reading ebooks.

AFAIK, no ebook hardware vendors have deliberately bricked their devices, the way Spectrum did, when they announced that they were getting out of the security business,or Tesla does, as a matter of policy, when an insurance company writes off a Tesla. There are no legal obstacles to any ebook reader manufacturer bricking all existing devices, when they release their next downgrade in their ebook reader line.

For those who have such concerns, an open source ebook reader is a very comforting thought.

but a 4.3" low resolution screen would be worse.

Because the design is available, and the distribution license, in theory, allows for user modifications, that 4.3 inch low resolution screen can be replaced with a 4.3 inch high resolution screen. You may have to have to modify the screen drivers in software, but that is relatively straightforward process.