PowerPC (MPC8610) Open Source Hardware Bounty

The Market research for new PowerPC system didn't prove as fruitful as originally hoped, but it generated a lot of interest all around. This inspired Power2People to create a bounty to help the design and production of the board!

So, I'm glad to announce the "Open Source Hardware Bounty"! More details on the bounty can be found here (scroll down to the open bounties and check the design steps). Genesi fully supports this effort as it is close to the spirit of their successful Pegasos systems.

So what is so special about this project?

ALL GENERATED MATERIAL WILL BE OPEN SOURCED! That is, schematics (PDF/Protel), PCB design (Gerber files), Bill of materials, etc. The license chosen is one suited well for similar hardware projects, and close to the spirit of GPL, the TAPR Open Hardware License. This means, after the design is finished, ANYONE can use the design to build a product based on it and sell it with no extra requirements. Also, the good thing about the license chosen is that it ensures there can be no patent claims from one board producer to another.

Software bounties will also be started in association to this bounty.

I want you people to know that I'm looking at this project very seriously, to prove this I already have donated 1000EUR to the first bounty, and I don't intend to stop there.

Discussion relevant to the development of the board will take place in the PowerDeveloper forum, but feel free to ask anything related here or by mail.

@feanor

I wish you luck as it sound like a mighty task to be open source...are you sure that you don't want to contact Acube about a future venture....

@328gts

Who says I won't, Acube might equally benefit from an open source board after all, should they choose.

@All

The goal first step is at 10.500 ?

The whole amount is around 65000 Euros.

If the open hardware gives the opportunity to get a board at the end, so this is good news !

feanor : I would like to put money in this bounty but I have questions :
- Do you plan to assign yourself to the project ? Else, if we put money and nobody takes the bounty, what will happen ?
- If not all steps are done ... could we stay stopped with for example 30000 Euros consumed ?
- Do you think some partners / investors you talked to would put money in this bounty ?

@corto

Quote:

Yes, but for software development, the 65k is for hardware stuff. I'm not getting any of that, I'm not a hardware engineer, the prices came were directly influenced by the actual offer I got from bplan when I intended to fund this project on my own. The only case that nobody takes the money is if no bounty milestone is reached and after a while donations are returned to the donors.

As we explain in the bounty page, soon there will also be software bounties and anyone could apply for a cool project that could be done on this board. There will be evaluation, and all approved projects will be funded via bounties. So the more popular the project you have thought about is, the more donations it could get :D

Quote:

Well, as the bounty is step/milestone-based, it would mean that we would proceed up to step 2 and just a bit into step 3. That would leave us with complete and open source schematics and a BOM list. I would hope that we would actually reach to at least a complete design and some prototypes. This is going to prove more popular than people think.

Quote:

We are also working on it yes. Corporate donations will probably give the needed "spice" in such a project.