I just wanted to shout out TRMNL.
They have an interesting product, and they’re trying to build a business that includes a lot of open source aspects.
The device that they sell is proprietary, but it’s also just an ESP32, screen, enclosure, and battery, with a custom PCB for convenience. They plan to add instructions to build your own device, and their firmware is open source under a GPLv3 license.
By default, their device connects to their servers, and they have a slick web configuration tool for people who don’t care about having smart devices call home, but you can easily modify the firmware to connect to your own self-hosted server instead. As of this evening, both the Phoenix and Sinatra server implementations are open source under an MIT license after I pointed out that they had no license in an issue, and they pretty much immediately updated the repositories.
There are two other repositories that they have not added a license to, but given their swift response, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, and I would expect them to be updated shortly.
They have not shared all of the plugins that are available on their hosted service for use on a self-hosted instance, but a few are available for use and there are many plugins made by others available as well!
As soon as they update those last two repositories, I plan to pre-order one (unlike the conceptually cool VU Dials who’s creators still have not added a license even after being called out by the co-creator of Rocky Linux).
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Just a shoutout to openepaperlink which uses old price tags from stores.
$20 to unlock the API killed it for me. If it has a built in way yo lock it down, it’s not an open platform and is a great way for bugs to brick a device.
This is a really bad way to look at an Open Source project. Want an API for free? Host your own, they have a server you can run. They are providing that service as a hosted platform, that they pay for, so you don’t get that part for free. That’s not what FOSS is.
Two issues I have:
- There is a license on what you can install on the device. Open means no licenses on owned things, regardless of how open that license is initially, it can be changed.
- The server it connects to is not configurable. You have to build your own firmware and maintain it and that goes back to the first point in case they decide to change the license.
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You can compile whatever you want into the firmware and load it on the device.
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The server is configurable, by loading new firmware. It’s just like flashing an ESP32, which you could also build your own TRMNL out of.
In other words, those are not real issues.
But i have no desire to compile and maintain a fork of software just to set a URL and auth token. And again, this is a license to modify the firmware, so they could at some point decide to revoke the license to modify the firmware or stop publishing security updates on their git repo to allow for merging into the fork I have to maintain. Probably won’t if they are reputable and don’t get acquired, but still a risk. It’s just not worth it for me for any open product I purchase.
You should probably stop complaining about FOSS if you don’t understand how it works.
i have no desire to
So? Then don’t, but don’t claim the $20 is your issue. Firmware is easy, you just don’t want to learn it.
they could at some point decide to revoke the license
Nope. They need approval from all contributors to change, and even if they got that, anyone could fork from the time of the current license. This is how FOSS works. Lemmy itself could do the same thing.
It’s just not worth it for me for any open product I purchase.
What open products are you purchasing that you think don’t follow this pattern?
I said from the beginning it’s a deal breaker for me. You’re the one trying to convince me it’s not the issue I think it is.
And I’m not talking about the license to modify the firmware software itself. I’m talking about the EULA of the device itself. Pretty much any device you own that has any kind of software on it is not owned by you outright to modify as you wish. This website doesn’t show the agreement, but if it has a paid feature to unlock, it has to have one somewhere.
Pretty standard stuff.
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Charging a one time fee for the API seems like a decent way to ensure continued operation.
But if you don’t like it, you can run your own server
Problem for me is that there is some kind of restriction on accessing the device’s API at all and you pay extra for the key that will get created when you unlock it. This may mean that some kind of lock is in place on the device that has to have a key for it created. Even if they give you a key, what happens if an update removes that key’s validity, even unintentionally. I’ve had this happen with products in the past. A bug will restrict access to things or worst case, will totally brick the device because the lock is stuck in place.
Not saying this device has that problem, but the concept of a lock existing means it could intentionally for profit, maliciously by hacking, or unintentionally end up locked later, so I’m just against the concept in the first place. It’s a potential point of failure for no good reason but profit on a device that is supposed to be open. I’d happily accept if they changed a little extra for a device that had no lock at all. Just I don’t want a device with a lock on it.
Also, I’m not sure how having my own server helps here, in fact that’s my plan in the first place as I want to get the thing to interface with my own internal systems. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the implementation, but my understanding from the very brief information available is that you get on your device, connect to their server to pay a fee, and then a key is created for you and then you can access the endpoints running on the device either through the server or directly with REST calls. The alternative is to teardown the device and build your own custom firmware that uses different authentication mechanisms. I don’t really have the interest to mod the firmware and then have to maintain a fork for getting official updates. I just want to be able to be able to interface any servers I have with the device as I choose.
When does this ship to India?
There’s paperd.ink introduced some years back at IndiaFOSS
Thanks for sharing.
Their guide still implies that you need to pay a fee to unlock an API key before you can flash a new firmware.
How they plan to enforce that fee to unlock an API key when the firmware is supposedly open source I don’t know. When I looked over the source code it looked like it was being written to a log.
The esp32 supports efuses that can be used to require a signed binary to boot. So they could lock their hardware to only work with their binary. Source code wouldn’t matter.
Of course if the source is open you can buy and put together your own hardware and then put their code on it.
I’m not advocating what they’re doing. Rent seeking is rent seeking even if they need to recoup development costs. I’d rather pay for open hardware and software with no monthly fee.
Honestly, between this and not all the modules being open source I would personally avoid it, seen too many projects openbait and then go “open core”.
