Open Fabs

[odinn]

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my replies below

On 08/02/2015 08:54 AM, Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:
> We will not get 50% of the population to use semi-good-crypto. Far
> more than that just do not give any damns at all.

This is probably true... on the other hand, looking at the flip side
of this (referring to software side... the textsecure / stuff based on
textsecure implemented in WhatsApp on massive scale) has worked for
people on a massive scale who don't give much of a damn but who do
care enough to use software with a privacy label and is easy to use.
And I think that works to the benefit of the public.

This makes me think that if the hardware is similarly easy to use (or
at least easier for the user) then it will be easier to present the
open source hardware as a benefit.

The fact is that the OSH/SC (open source hardware / software
communities) really have kind of sucked at marketing.  That should chang
e.

> 
> Legal protection for those that make insecure shit is so huge that 
> society is literally stacked against privacy as a whole.

Agreed.


> The "protected-consumer" culture has led to widespread market
> failure - rather than think people buy with their hearts. Simply
> put, "Think Different" turned into "Don't think at all".
> 
> That said, I don't see why there's no company attempting to address
> the niche of "I want it truly secure". Wouldn't governments like if
> the US doesn't spy on them? Wouldn't large companies' officers be
> very happy with a secure e-mail/voice call system?
> 
> If it runs Android apps (protip: Android's JVM is open source) in a
> more secure manner (like, uhm, in-hardware-sandboxing? Libre
> Hypervisor CPU with the OS on it, and a jailed EvilCorp coprocessor
> that does the Android stuff?) it doesn't seem to take that much to
> build a smartphone nowadays (looking at Chinaphones, that is).
> 
> And, many of the people that want it "truly secure" will understand
> that the products will cost more than a mass-produced NSA sponsored
> unit.

This makes a lot of sense, and I'm guessing that the smaller scale
projects we've seen so far are indicative that this can happen at
small to medium scale without problem for specific clients or
anticipated customer base. Here are some successful examples:

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page
(refer also to http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/Hardware/Phones
and http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/)

https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena
http://vr-zone.com/articles/novena-open-laptop-project-exceeds-280-perce
nt-crowd-funding-target/77905.html

TBD, but looks pretty good (same concept as Novena):
https://puri.sm/

And of course, see:
https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom

These are by no means the only examples of open source hardware being
marketed to a larger public, albeit at a limited production scale for
the time being.  It definitely is a market which is in need of attention
.

- -- 
http://abis.io ~
"a protocol concept to enable decentralization
and expansion of a giving economy, and a new social good"
https://keybase.io/odinn
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