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kborn(at)neurosaudio.com
Neuros Team
Moderator
1520 Posts |
 Posted - 11/03/2005 : 6:14:37 PM
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Hi All,
Recently, we at Neuros Technology received a lot of attention with the announcement of an open source portable media player, Neuros 442. The response was overwhelmingly positive, but there was some skepticism that this was a publicity stunt or a way to get free labor.
As your beloved PR girl, I’d like to respond in two ways. One, discuss the idea of the exploitation of open source by corporations, and two, explain the Neuros approach- where we went wrong with open source with Neuros Digital Audio Computer, our audio player, and how we corrected those mistakes with the 442.
I think the Geek community is wise to by cynical. I got my first spam email about open source just the other day. Open Source is “hot”, it gets press immediately and helps a company create an image that they’re “down” with the developer community. Right now, when a company says they’re open source, it’s probably legitimate. I believe that is all about to change, and open source will soon start to be mixed with hype.
The press painted Neuros as a true threat to the iPod. First of all, we don’t want to be an iPod killer, we just want consumers to have choices. But the sentiment that open source is an iPod killer has a lot to do with Apple being too big to be an underdog anymore. Open Source is more “other” than iPod, it’s underground, it has non-profit and anti-corporate associations to it. It’s the technology equivalent of Grunge.
Corporations looking to appear anti-corporate and looking to save a buck will try to be open source, and they will flop if their efforts are insincere. Never forget that open source developers are the smartest people in the room. A year ago, we talked to Rockbox, and outstretched our code and audio device to their team. They politely declined. They preferred to reverse engineer the Iriver, without their consent, rather than work with the Neuros Digital Audio Computer (our audio player). Why? They weren’t that crazy about the product. They weren’t that nuts about the design or the features. And that was that.
Open source developers must first be your customer. That’s the first and most important reason why some companies will fail to attract developers, the product simply won’t be strong enough. The second thing companies will do wrong is that the product will only be open source in the licensing sense of the term. They will release some packet of code with a GPL license and call it open source. To some degree, that’s what we did with our audio player, we released the firmware code and the hardware schematics, which was radical and brought tremendous goodwill. In addition, we were a manufacturer that was fighting behind the lines in a way that no grassroots movement could do. We worked aggressively with everyone from Texas Instruments and Microsoft to OEMs in China. But the code wasn’t all that usable. Unless you were a rocket scientist with the patience of a saint and a budget for extra equipment, it was incredibly hard tot make new firmware.
We designed the Neuros 442 with open source developers. We started with the chipset and basic features, and now are receiving feedback on the development board. We’ll continue in this way throughout the life of the product. That bring up another key element of open source success: support. We have our own staff of internal developers who work in conjunction with the developers. One key lesson we’ve learned from our community is that developers work on what they want, not necessarily what we want. We have utmost respect for this work ethic considering that they’re not getting paid. A volunteer army should be allowed to pick their own battles. Open source developers will have a massive choice of projects to contribute to, and can and should work on only the ones that appeal to them, for as long as they appeal to them.
Neuros Technology provides developers with a direct line of communication to the CEO, we hold IRC meetings, hold discussion with Rockbox, use a Wiki for support, host an entire site for the open source aspect of the company (open.neurosaudio.com) along with forums for developers and forums for regular customers, which doesn’t even include the discussion groups for the development board alone. We can provide free or subsidized developer tools, documentation, and early access to the product.
The last thing, and maybe the most important thing for an open source company, is that the idea that “open” means a non-proprietary thread should extend through the entire product line. Neuros offers products that avoid some of the obstacles have been included into the technology itself, like excessive security and proprietary formats. The 442 has a recorder that captures anything that plays on your TV, includes DVDs, cable, VHS tapes.
It would be counter to be open source while embodying a “pays for sure” agenda. Users wanting to watch a movie on their Sony PSP are currently limited to a selection of a few dozen films, in UMD format that can be watched on nothing but the PSP. Older movies cannot be played, or even converted onto a new iPod, and yesterday’s low resolution version of a television show requires a fee to download. These products deprive customers of content they have already paid for. Many technology companies work with content providers who lobby congress to criminalize usage that used to fall under fair use.
Obviously, this is a pitch for the Neuros 442, but as the PR person, it’s easy to see that when you snap your fingers and say “open source”, you suddenly get tons of press. Somewhere, someone is watching and will follow suit, even if in only in open source’s name. There will be a time to yell hype and publicity stunt, but open source is Darwinian, and only the strong projects will survive.
Take care, forum people! I've missed you all and I'll be around more going forward.
Kathryn
Neuros Support |
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Derek
Moderator
500 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2005 : 9:38:00 PM
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Amen to that Kathryn, Couldn't have said it better myself.
When I was a kid my mom used to tell me that curiosity killed the cat...What she forgot to tell me was that it also discovered the cat, invented the lightbulb, and forged the Neuros |
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