From: Brian Wolven <brian.wolven_at_verizon.net>
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 15:25:29 -0500

David H. Straayer wrote:

> Ok, several of you have taken to the idea of soliciting Asian
> manufacturers to make players for Rockbox.
>
> My idea is this: let's work on a magazine article for placement
> in design magazines in Asia. The article is likely to welcomed
> by the editors of these magazines, and it will get to the target
> audience we'd like to reach.
>
> I've done a (very crude) first draft of such an article, below.
> Let's pass it around and comment on it. I'll dredge through my
> old notes, and Google around to try to find placement for it.
>
> What do you think?

This sounds very interesting. If you can actually stir up some interest
in the manufacturing sector for projects of this type we could be
looking at a real renaissance in product development. I'd be glad to get
a new device with sturdy buttons, a larger (or higher resolution) LCD
screen and no proprietary non-user replaceable batteries - and a
rockbox-like firmware option. I bet a lot of the FMR owners here would,
too. =P

One question that comes to mind - if I were an employee of one of these
firms and was interested in pursuing this, who would I talk to, i.e.,
who is the 'project manager' for an open source project (the 'key
members' you refer to in your draft)? How do you determine who speaks
for the open source developers, and who do you turn to if there are
problems, or changes in hardware or interface specs, etc? I'd have to
imagine that most firms would like some sort of accountability or
responsibility (and CYA options) that might be hard to come by when
teaming with open source developers. If you've been following this
newsgroup for very long you certainly get a feel for who's doing what
and who are the de facto "leaders", but the corporate types won't have
any such knowledge. Just something to consider - I'm all for cooperative
anarchy myself.

One minor typo I noticed - "sigh-impaired" ought to be "sight-impaired".
It passes the spell checker, but doesn't make much sense the other way.
=) I wonder how much it would cost to have a separate RAM buffer (or
just partitioning of a larger chip) for menu voices and talkbox
features? The details will have to wait a bit...

_______________________________________________
http://cool.haxx.se/mailman/listinfo/rockbox
Received on 2004-03-21