I've ceased all iLiad development - Page 2

joblack · 02-01-2007, 08:11 PM

let the egg hatch again - relax ... the iliad is a banana hardware, it grows at the customer (you would call it beta - if it would be a software product ;o).

Azayzel · 02-02-2007, 02:21 AM

Wow, after reading Karel's reply I think I need to retract some of the venom I directed about intergrity & support. Sorry guys/gals!

Alexander Turcic · 02-02-2007, 03:25 AM

I agree, Karel did the right thing to apologize and offer assistance to Scotty. My favorite scenario would be for Scotty to continue developing on the iLiad, and at the same time do his magic on the Sony Reader and possibly other future readers (like the STAReBook) as well

Kirys · 02-02-2007, 03:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

I agree, Karel did the right thing to apologize and offer assistance to Scotty. My favorite scenario would be for Scotty to continue developing on the iLiad, and at the same time do his magic on the Sony Reader and possibly other future readers (like the STAReBook) as well

LOL we should leave some free time to scotty for something that is not developing

nekokami · 02-02-2007, 08:41 AM

Karel did seem to be offering everything Scotty wanted. I wonder where the communication breakdown was? Because I don't think Scotty was getting iRex's messages about being willing to reimburse for shipping, based on his own posts. My own experience is that email can be a difficult way to resolve such issues. With so much spam flying around the net, a lot of email gets lost or inadvertently blocked.

yvanleterrible · 02-02-2007, 08:56 AM

Scotty was down to his last defense. He's proven his seriousness about the possibilities of this tool. The luck and treatment he got were unfair. Karel woke up in time but I hope for Irex it's not too late.

This site is one that promoted the Iliad a bigger way that was thought. Scotty's last move would have shaken them down drastically.

I just hope Scotty, that you'll give it an other chance, if only for the fact that the Iliad was the first out !

jæd · 02-02-2007, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frisi42

I guess Scotty did a good job (for some of you), but he was a hype!

I wouldn't go as far as to say that... But I think there's more to this than meets the eye... But it is a pity that Scotty won't be opening up his contributions, especially the rtf reader and the bluetooth stack, but I appreciate he must be feeling quite bitter about this...

Karel · 02-02-2007, 09:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Scotty was down to his last defense. He's proven his seriousness about the possibilities of this tool. The luck and treatment he got were unfair. Karel woke up in time but I hope for Irex it's not too late.

Well there is always an other side to each story, but I do not believe it would be constructive to go into details about this.

But the offers that were mentioned in my previous post on this topic were offered some time ago to Scotty, so we weren't sleeping

Matthijs · 02-02-2007, 10:47 AM

Actually: the offer for the development iLiad was made at the same time that we didn't want to open up JTAG access. I have never received any reaction to that email.

vranghel · 02-02-2007, 09:42 PM

It's funny how in the era of such advances in electronic communications how so many messages get lost in transit (or so it seems);

Everyone has free choice, but no doubt that Scotty's presence & contributions will be missed.

cdie · 02-03-2007, 02:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frisi42

And there are always two sides of the medal.....

Before deciding to buy an Iliad, I was looking in this forum. From all the threads one could really think the Iliad sucks. But it does not! It's a great device and does a good job. I am looking for the next update, too - but more because I am curious not because I need it actually - the Iliad does everything I expect.

I guess Scotty did a good job (for some of you), but he was a hype! I did not need all the developments. I admit, I tried the HP48 Emu - but my real HP48 is much better!

So try to keep fair. Scotty decided to focus his development on the Sony reader - that is his very own decision. For the Sony users this might lead to the impression that the Sony reader needs further development. And it is a great chance for the Iliad to gain ground again.

Farewell Scotty...

Applause ! Very well said, and so true.

ghostwheel · 02-03-2007, 03:32 AM

scotty's leaving is very sad! I say this even though I have a sony reader, and not an Iliad. I was hoping for scotty/iRex/others to improve the iliad software, specifically battery life, suspend, and djvu support, so I could get the iliad with its high resolution screen.

I have been following the iliad for a long time, and even with Karel's comments, I have to put a lot of the blame on iRex. Development for the iliad has been an uphill battle from the beginning. It started even before the iliad was released, but after release, iRex seemed to really try to do their best to keep developers off the iliad. Starting with the lack of inclusion of an easy way to reflash it when stuck. Closing the iliad so that logging in and file access was impossible. The continuing battle with the developers, closing every loophole the developers found and were using to develop software on the ilad in successive firmware releases. Has an exploit for the iliad ever surfaced? Was it likely to? Why then this fixation on fixing these unimportant loopholes when much more serious problems exist on the iliad? No timely release of the gpl required source code, closing the rest of the code (who will steal this code? Who is iRex protecting itself from). iRex is slowly learing from their mistakes - things seem to be much better now then they were at the beginning.

Please, iRex, realize: the open-source developer community are your friends! Do your best to cooperate with them. Give them all the tools they need to help you make the iliad better.

ali · 02-03-2007, 05:59 AM

That's sad. Scotty leaving is pretty much the the worst possible news for us, though not unexpected.

Irex is pretty good at scaring away OS developers & geeks. "Offering a development Iliad" was obviously not enough. Scotty's role was (at least for me) to be the head of OS dev for the device. If iRex treated Scotty well, that would have attracted other developers. That's how it works with that community.

I always have the impression that there are two communities in this forum: One is people who just want to read books. This is the group who replies "i love the device, it does all i want" in all the iRex-bashing threads. (And obviously many people here have never seen, and can't imagine, what happens after you open the device completely and attract a substantial chunk of the OS community.)

And there's the OS-affine geek community, who are complaining all the time in this forum. This second community is large, much larger than the first. iRex would have needed to make the Iliad the ideal toy for that group, and they failed. The members of this community are not easy to deal with, that's for sure. But you can benefit from it, because they are committed and love to contribute.

It would have been iRex' job to please Scotty under all circumstances, because his treatment was watched by all the other geeks that may jump onto the train when it looks like fun. They should have sent scotty a bunch of Iliads, for free, no strings attached, and give him all information thats possible. They should have sent his wife flowers after scotty spent weekends in programming stuff for free that benefits iRex in the long run.

There are many potential developers out there. I am doing developments under linux, and I have a lot of contacts to research groups where people are programming embedded devices running linux. Where people do programming as a master's thesis, or research project.

These guys know I have an Iliad, that looks like the perfect toy to do cool things with, and they come to me and ask if they should get into it or not. And the story I can tell is this: When I did my first steps to play with the device, I bricked it, and there was no reinstall routine. It took me weeks to get it reinstalled, and there's still no way to do safe development. They had one dedicated programmer who could be seed of a dev community, and they scared him away."

b_k · 02-03-2007, 08:22 AM

iRex should learn from 2 cases of devices that were not originally meant to have a custom software installed.

A. The Linksys WRT54G
B. The Microsoft Xbox

Linksys had to pulish the sources, IIRC correct this was achieved through gpl-violations.org, but it hadn't harmed the device. Instead they get firmware with more and more functions developed for free.

Microsoft on the other hand tried to not let anyone else use the Xbox for anything else than it's original purpose, running games that bring money to them the one or or other way. But while trying to keep people outside, they made a good bunch of mistakes. Possibly if they had opened up to the people that were curious to run Linux on it, they would have not had that many attackers against the security system. In the end, if they had allowed Linux to run on it, maybe the security system would have not been circumvented or not in such a short time.
Source and more details on this:
http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/17_Mi...ecurity_System

I believe iRex fears that if they would open up the iLiad to allow a user customized OS on it, the users could circumvent the upcoming DRM system.

But in the end, the movement to circumvent the restrictions is driven by the people that want to run their customized software on it.

just my 2 cents on it. (as a user, I'm no developer)

nekokami · 02-03-2007, 08:28 AM

Just in the interest of balance, we might consider a couple of alternatives. E.g. Scotty may have wanted to be paid for his RTF viewer (which can be done with open source), and iRex may not have wanted to pay or may have objected to Scotty selling it elsewhere. iRex may have wanted some kind of NDA or agreement not to develop for other systems (e.g. the Sony Reader), etc. before offering a development unit or providing additional source to Scotty. (I can't imagine what held up the payment for shipping, which should have been taken care of with no strings attached and no response required by Scotty, as iRex has all the info needed to take care of that one.)

iRex has been focusing on the b2b market -- they may be very sensitive to potential exploits in a way that readers and hobbyists are not. (It would not be good to have one's flight manuals altered without knowing it, e.g.) There may also have been some personality conflicts, which can happen with intelligent, dedicated people even if they all have the same goals in mind.

Scotty, Karel, and Matthijs have opted not to air their dirty laundry in public. That's probably for the best. I'm very sorry that Scotty isn't continuing development for the iLiad, because I'm about to purchase one and I'm one of those people who likes to get more out of a system than its original designers may have intended. But there are, in fact, other interested developers, and there could be more if iRex wants to encourage an active developer community. Perhaps we can pull the positive out of this situation by making this the turning point, when iRex will be able to release a re-flash function, a proper SDK, the GPL sources, and offer some kind of defined community developer program. I belive it is strongly in iRex's interests to do so.

Personally, I don't think the iLiad is going to take off as an eBook reader. It's too expensive, boots too slowly, and the battery doesn't last long enough. It has a lot of great features for academic and other users, though, that need more software development (e.g. indexing/searchability of annotations, academic tools, etc.). If iRex decides to encourage the developer community to explore the possibilities, they can be working on a hardware revision that could really meet the needs of this large, untapped market. But for the academic community, in particular, the development environment has to be open and inviting.

02-01-2007, 08:11 PM	#16
joblack Wizard Posts: 1,746 Karma: 4382514 Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Somewhere on earth Device: Onyx Boox Tab X	let the egg hatch again - relax ... the iliad is a banana hardware, it grows at the customer (you would call it beta - if it would be a software product ;o). Last edited by joblack; 02-01-2007 at 08:34 PM.

02-03-2007, 03:32 AM	#27
ghostwheel Zealot Posts: 133 Karma: 93 Join Date: May 2006 Device: DBoox Max,Galaxy note 10.1 & 3,LE1700 tablet,sony PRS-500,iRex DR1000S	scotty's leaving is very sad! I say this even though I have a sony reader, and not an Iliad. I was hoping for scotty/iRex/others to improve the iliad software, specifically battery life, suspend, and djvu support, so I could get the iliad with its high resolution screen. I have been following the iliad for a long time, and even with Karel's comments, I have to put a lot of the blame on iRex. Development for the iliad has been an uphill battle from the beginning. It started even before the iliad was released, but after release, iRex seemed to really try to do their best to keep developers off the iliad. Starting with the lack of inclusion of an easy way to reflash it when stuck. Closing the iliad so that logging in and file access was impossible. The continuing battle with the developers, closing every loophole the developers found and were using to develop software on the ilad in successive firmware releases. Has an exploit for the iliad ever surfaced? Was it likely to? Why then this fixation on fixing these unimportant loopholes when much more serious problems exist on the iliad? No timely release of the gpl required source code, closing the rest of the code (who will steal this code? Who is iRex protecting itself from). iRex is slowly learing from their mistakes - things seem to be much better now then they were at the beginning. Please, iRex, realize: the open-source developer community are your friends! Do your best to cooperate with them. Give them all the tools they need to help you make the iliad better. Last edited by ghostwheel; 02-03-2007 at 03:35 AM.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
iLiad iLiad kernel development	jayakumar	iRex Developer's Corner	65	07-05-2010 04:00 AM
iLiad iLiad Development VMWare image	Adam B.	iRex Developer's Corner	73	11-15-2009 09:47 AM
iLiad iLiad Full Development Tutorial	Hamatole	iRex Developer's Corner	5	10-12-2009 06:29 AM
iLiad iRex iLiad development enviroment on VMware image	Alexander Turcic	iRex Developer's Corner	0	03-31-2007 02:02 PM
iLiad Professional development on the iLiad:	Riocaz	iRex Developer's Corner	2	11-29-2006 01:36 PM

02-02-2007, 02:21 AM	#17
Azayzel Cache Ninja! Posts: 643 Karma: 1002300 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Tokyo, Japan Device: PRS-500, HTC Shift, iPod Touch, iPaq 4150, TC1100, Panasonic WordsGear	Wow, after reading Karel's reply I think I need to retract some of the venom I directed about intergrity & support. Sorry guys/gals!

02-02-2007, 03:25 AM	#18
Alexander Turcic Fully Converged Posts: 18,163 Karma: 14021202 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Switzerland Device: Too many to count here.	I agree, Karel did the right thing to apologize and offer assistance to Scotty. My favorite scenario would be for Scotty to continue developing on the iLiad, and at the same time do his magic on the Sony Reader and possibly other future readers (like the STAReBook) as well

02-02-2007, 08:41 AM	#20
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	Karel did seem to be offering everything Scotty wanted. I wonder where the communication breakdown was? Because I don't think Scotty was getting iRex's messages about being willing to reimburse for shipping, based on his own posts. My own experience is that email can be a difficult way to resolve such issues. With so much spam flying around the net, a lot of email gets lost or inadvertently blocked.

02-02-2007, 08:56 AM	#21
yvanleterrible Reborn Paper User Posts: 8,616 Karma: 15446734 Join Date: May 2006 Location: Que Nada Device: iPhone8, iPad Air	Scotty was down to his last defense. He's proven his seriousness about the possibilities of this tool. The luck and treatment he got were unfair. Karel woke up in time but I hope for Irex it's not too late. This site is one that promoted the Iliad a bigger way that was thought. Scotty's last move would have shaken them down drastically. I just hope Scotty, that you'll give it an other chance, if only for the fact that the Iliad was the first out !

02-02-2007, 10:47 AM	#24
Matthijs Groupie Posts: 199 Karma: 666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands Device: iLiad, DR1000S, DR800SG	Actually: the offer for the development iLiad was made at the same time that we didn't want to open up JTAG access. I have never received any reaction to that email.

02-02-2007, 09:42 PM	#25
vranghel Addict Posts: 285 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Vancouver, Canada Device: Proud Iliad owner	It's funny how in the era of such advances in electronic communications how so many messages get lost in transit (or so it seems); Everyone has free choice, but no doubt that Scotty's presence & contributions will be missed.

02-03-2007, 05:59 AM	#28
ali Addict Posts: 302 Karma: 116 Join Date: May 2006 Device: Iliad, dude!	That's sad. Scotty leaving is pretty much the the worst possible news for us, though not unexpected. Irex is pretty good at scaring away OS developers & geeks. "Offering a development Iliad" was obviously not enough. Scotty's role was (at least for me) to be the head of OS dev for the device. If iRex treated Scotty well, that would have attracted other developers. That's how it works with that community. I always have the impression that there are two communities in this forum: One is people who just want to read books. This is the group who replies "i love the device, it does all i want" in all the iRex-bashing threads. (And obviously many people here have never seen, and can't imagine, what happens after you open the device completely and attract a substantial chunk of the OS community.) And there's the OS-affine geek community, who are complaining all the time in this forum. This second community is large, much larger than the first. iRex would have needed to make the Iliad the ideal toy for that group, and they failed. The members of this community are not easy to deal with, that's for sure. But you can benefit from it, because they are committed and love to contribute. It would have been iRex' job to please Scotty under all circumstances, because his treatment was watched by all the other geeks that may jump onto the train when it looks like fun. They should have sent scotty a bunch of Iliads, for free, no strings attached, and give him all information thats possible. They should have sent his wife flowers after scotty spent weekends in programming stuff for free that benefits iRex in the long run. There are many potential developers out there. I am doing developments under linux, and I have a lot of contacts to research groups where people are programming embedded devices running linux. Where people do programming as a master's thesis, or research project. These guys know I have an Iliad, that looks like the perfect toy to do cool things with, and they come to me and ask if they should get into it or not. And the story I can tell is this: When I did my first steps to play with the device, I bricked it, and there was no reinstall routine. It took me weeks to get it reinstalled, and there's still no way to do safe development. They had one dedicated programmer who could be seed of a dev community, and they scared him away."

02-03-2007, 08:22 AM	#29
b_k Übernerd Posts: 238 Karma: 74 Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Germany Device: iRex iLiad	iRex should learn from 2 cases of devices that were not originally meant to have a custom software installed. A. The Linksys WRT54G B. The Microsoft Xbox Linksys had to pulish the sources, IIRC correct this was achieved through gpl-violations.org, but it hadn't harmed the device. Instead they get firmware with more and more functions developed for free. Microsoft on the other hand tried to not let anyone else use the Xbox for anything else than it's original purpose, running games that bring money to them the one or or other way. But while trying to keep people outside, they made a good bunch of mistakes. Possibly if they had opened up to the people that were curious to run Linux on it, they would have not had that many attackers against the security system. In the end, if they had allowed Linux to run on it, maybe the security system would have not been circumvented or not in such a short time. Source and more details on this: http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/17_Mi...ecurity_System I believe iRex fears that if they would open up the iLiad to allow a user customized OS on it, the users could circumvent the upcoming DRM system. But in the end, the movement to circumvent the restrictions is driven by the people that want to run their customized software on it. just my 2 cents on it. (as a user, I'm no developer)

02-03-2007, 08:28 AM	#30
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	Just in the interest of balance, we might consider a couple of alternatives. E.g. Scotty may have wanted to be paid for his RTF viewer (which can be done with open source), and iRex may not have wanted to pay or may have objected to Scotty selling it elsewhere. iRex may have wanted some kind of NDA or agreement not to develop for other systems (e.g. the Sony Reader), etc. before offering a development unit or providing additional source to Scotty. (I can't imagine what held up the payment for shipping, which should have been taken care of with no strings attached and no response required by Scotty, as iRex has all the info needed to take care of that one.) iRex has been focusing on the b2b market -- they may be very sensitive to potential exploits in a way that readers and hobbyists are not. (It would not be good to have one's flight manuals altered without knowing it, e.g.) There may also have been some personality conflicts, which can happen with intelligent, dedicated people even if they all have the same goals in mind. Scotty, Karel, and Matthijs have opted not to air their dirty laundry in public. That's probably for the best. I'm very sorry that Scotty isn't continuing development for the iLiad, because I'm about to purchase one and I'm one of those people who likes to get more out of a system than its original designers may have intended. But there are, in fact, other interested developers, and there could be more if iRex wants to encourage an active developer community. Perhaps we can pull the positive out of this situation by making this the turning point, when iRex will be able to release a re-flash function, a proper SDK, the GPL sources, and offer some kind of defined community developer program. I belive it is strongly in iRex's interests to do so. Personally, I don't think the iLiad is going to take off as an eBook reader. It's too expensive, boots too slowly, and the battery doesn't last long enough. It has a lot of great features for academic and other users, though, that need more software development (e.g. indexing/searchability of annotations, academic tools, etc.). If iRex decides to encourage the developer community to explore the possibilities, they can be working on a hardware revision that could really meet the needs of this large, untapped market. But for the academic community, in particular, the development environment has to be open and inviting.

Advert

Advert