Fernvale: An Open Hardware and Software Platform
events.ccc.de
events.ccc.de
I really hope this works out and they figure out how to get past the IP traps in a repeatable way based off of the work in China. Unfortunately, we won't know until this is tested in court and while I'm sure there is plenty of precedent, I don't think many companies will want to take the risk. Until someone does, I fear that projects like this will fail to bring in corporate supporters (like Red Hat supports the Linux kernel) that would really move both the hardware forward by leaps and bounds. If you look at all of the open hardware today, most of it is stagnant and only exists at the behest of the chip manufacturers so that they can have easily available but rather trivial reference designs (e.g. BeagleBone, PandaBoard, OpenRD, etc).
After working for a only a few years, I've developed the opinion that electrical engineering is one of those few fields where patents and other closely guarded IP demonstrably hold back innovation. When I work for big companies on mass manufactured products, 75% of the time I get my documentation from Chinese forums [1] and parts shipped in from Shenzhen a week or two before I really get a chance to engage with the manufacturer's reps. On a few occasions, I've even received better chip errata and more up to date software from the hardware pirates than from the original manufacturers! Considering how hostile the electronics industry is to their biggest customers, let alone amateurs and makers, it's a wonder that startups using cutting edge chips can launch at all.
[1] http://bbs.eetop.cn is one of my go to's
But where do you buy your chips from shenzen ? And how do you manage reliability and long term availability ?
For example, if there is a tight deadline (e.g. designing part of a motherboard based on a new chipset where time to market is critical) then the first few revisions will be made up of parts sourced mostly from Shenzhen. If it's a niche contract (like defense/aerospace) then it depends on how fast I get the primary parts (e.g. rad hardened processors take a minimum of 3 months lead time so all parts are from manufacturers starting from the first revision). However, unless there is an extreme deadline or a manufacturer I loath dealing with (cough Marvell cough) the final boards sent to the client are made with manufacturer sourced parts, for which I have to start the procurement process the second I get the contract.
Electrical engineering is all about trade offs and constraints which range from physical board size to manufacturing/assembly cost to R&D deadlines to software support. I would err on the side of investing more money into proper part selection and designing from the start with part swapping in mind because unlike with software, success or failure can be very binary with little room for error. The Shenzhen markets are great because I usually have to work under extreme deadlines that don't gel well with the pace of suppliers and my deliverables are at least several steps away from full production.
Unlike wifi/bluetooth, which happen in the license-free ISM bands (2.4 GHz), you need your entire product certified by FCC (US) and by whomever in Europe in order to legally operate in the GSM/UMTS bands; not to mention carriers won't exactly like you if you mess up their network.
AFAIK much of the rest of the spectrum, licensing + part procurement is significantly easier and although there are some more monopolies they are nowhere near as bad as Qualcomm/Broadcom.
but we already have open source GSM/LTE implementations, everything is ready from the hardware (various SDRs), thru baseband openbts, to whole network controllers like openbsc
The real barrier is the spectrum licensing, which is a matter for the operator rather than the manufacturer. These at the rules that say that a particular carrier payed for the exclusive use of a band of frequencies and no one else is allowed to use that spectrum.
As I understand it though, the law is reactive, in that the law is not broken by owning a capable device, but by using it. Even then, the enforcement depends on a complaint from the carrier (ie. they have to catch you), but if you get caught the penalties are severe.
Texas Instruments idea of IoT chip is $20-30 cc3000 wifi solution. Chinese company on the other hand is fine repurposing USB WIFI dongle chip and selling $2 ESP8266. Thats right 10:1 cost difference. Guess who will make and sell millions of those.
If the root certificate you're getting is from "CA Cert Signing Authority" and matches the details given on http://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=3 then you're probably not being MITM'd.