[Libre-soc-dev] 3d gpu business plan

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 4:45 PM Lauri Kasanen <cand at gmx.com> wrote:

> Playing devil's advocate: that is all pre-release points. What happens
> after?
>
> After release, 1-5 have been taken care of by us. Aka we've handled the
> NREs, but the product is something anybody with a fab can copy, and
> then they have ready drivers too which we helpfully gave them.

no, we won't have - because we don't have them yet.  and the early
adopter customer that we're talking to is quite happy with this, is
happy to deploy the product with only a 2D framebuffer, and holds key
hardware patents.

> Thus they'd reap the profit at that point with little work.

no... they won't.  or they might - in 4 years time, by which point
we'll already have established customers, products, reputations and
more.

the people that i am speaking with understand this extremely well.
the lag time from when "someone-else-copies-the-idea" to "they get up
to speed" is literally years, here, lauri.

if we can't get ready and established before then, then, well, we
don't really deserve to succeed, commercially.  we go back to being
"Foundation-driven", and that's fine with me, too.


> 6, half of those will buy the exact same product from a cheaper vendor.
> Half would stay, the wider market would buy from whoever is cheapest.
>
> So to be 100% clear: once there's a ready product, ready drivers, which
> is open, someone like Mediatek can fab it cheaper than we can.

great.  they can help by getting the reputation out there, getting the
source code out their which will have "Copyright (C) The LibreSOC
Team" splattered all over it.  most likely though Mediatek will
instantly cause GPL violations, and i can either nicely ask the 450
Law Professors accessible via the NLnet mailing lists to have a crack
at them and be all nice, or we can get a really aggressive no-win
no-fee lawyer to bitch-smack them about a bit.

if they play ball and actually collaborate, help with documentation,
source code etc. and enage with the Open POWER Foundation - members
include IBM, Freescale / NXP - none of whom are going to be happy that
a "small strategic team is being taken advantage of by {insert
GPL-violating Company here}" - then _great_.

whichever way it plays, i don't mind.

l.