<kristianpaul>
phr: aboyt moxie, sure it have, just another intersting project, free of patents? well it seems, also all gcc uclinuc and even rtems port, is amazing how this guy work
<wolfspraul>
when the naysayers get a little too loud, read this as source of inspiration :-)
<kristianpaul>
Okay and confirmed I'll give a quick intro workshop about writing patches for milkymist the 27th of this month, at the Universidad ICESI, programa Diseño de Medios Interactivos
<wolfspraul>
nice
<kristianpaul>
And hopefully but not confirmed yet in a national meeting about free software called JSL, that will be placed San Juan de Pasto, Nariño, thanks to "La Guardia de TUX" LUG.
<kristianpaul>
he, yes forgot to mention the place :)
<wolfspraul>
they have ca. 5000 students, maybe you can try to recruit ca. 100 full-time hackers for Milkymist? :-)
<kristianpaul>
I alredy asked then to buy a M1 the workshop :)
<kristianpaul>
I doubt the do it, but i tried :)
<kristianpaul>
(recruit) nah, i'm ont such us person, i mean, i even what to mention tecnical detailts in the work shop
<kristianpaul>
s/what/whan
<kristianpaul>
for developers i have a nother plan, but first need to met more hardware hackers, wich are not afraid of modifing the milkymist libc by then self ;)
<kristianpaul>
(starting with me :))
<wolfspraul>
sure sure, I was kidding
<wolfspraul>
it's great that you go there. do you need any marketing material like stickers or brochures?
<kristianpaul>
Actually cucuta is a nice place for that, but man almost 800km away from here.
<wolfspraul>
the best I have right now are the Milkymist stickers
<kristianpaul>
I need to write then again, those guys failed to buy some nanonotes from me, but i dont see other groups more itnerested than then so far
<wolfspraul>
great design thanks to Christopher Adams, and very good printing quality thanks to Yi Zhang
<kristianpaul>
ah yes !!
<kristianpaul>
I forgot i need marketing
<wolfspraul>
then we have brochures
<wolfspraul>
but they are heavy
<kristianpaul>
I have zero brochures aout MM
<wolfspraul>
the NanoNote and Sharism stickers are far worse technically than the new Milkymist stickers
<wolfspraul>
in design and print quality
<kristianpaul>
may be 20 stickers.. and still 200 nanonote flyers from cparty
<wolfspraul>
maybe I send you 300 Milkymist stickers, 30 brochures?
<wolfspraul>
ah great, yes
<kristianpaul>
and some from nanonote, yes please
<wolfspraul>
do you need more nanonote or sharism stickers?
<kristianpaul>
wpan had stricker ? ;)
<kristianpaul>
no, i first need run out of this one i had
<kristianpaul>
dont you have a Milkymist flyer?
<wolfspraul>
only brochure
<wolfspraul>
ah wait
<kristianpaul>
something i can give away no matter if end on the road :)
<wolfspraul>
Christophe made this 1-page flyer for the OHS Summit
<kristianpaul>
i save brochures for REALLY interested people, but i still miss a one page milkymist flyer
<kristianpaul>
that one from OHS looks nice, i think i can translate i later and print some 100 in Black and White
<kristianpaul>
bah no translate, to lazy anyway you need good enblgihs to get in to milkymist :)
<kristianpaul>
s/enblgihs/english
<wolfspraul>
can we make a complete list? :-)
<wolfspraul>
1. 300 milkymist stickers
<wolfspraul>
2. 30 milkymist 4-page brochures
<wolfspraul>
3. 200 nanonote stickers
<wolfspraul>
4. 200 sharism stickers
<wolfspraul>
like that?
<kristianpaul>
yes, sure
<wolfspraul>
great
<wolfspraul>
kristianpaul: can we get the moxie guy to give a better intro of his project?
<wolfspraul>
he seems to be aware of Milkymist, so I'm curious to understand how we can work together, what the overlap is, etc.
<wolfspraul>
what is special about moxie? why did he start the project? why not participate in milkymist? can he reuse anything from milkymist? can we help him in any way? and so on
<kristianpaul>
sure, i'm interested to read more from him too, (antgreen nick at milkymist), last i know he had a child, and have a was a phone call away from gcc developers ;)
<kristianpaul>
s/had/have
<kristianpaul>
also moxie cpu is in early stage,
<kristianpaul>
but he is talking about a muskoka soc too wich is cool
<wolfspraul>
which one? muskoka?
<kristianpaul>
yes
<wolfspraul>
I'm just trying to understand the motivations, goals, how to collaborate and share, etc.
<kristianpaul>
sure
<kristianpaul>
ha, i already asked him, but few information for what you asked me
<wpwrak>
and of course, there have been setbacks with rtems as well. although nothing too nasty so far.
<wpwrak>
kristianpaul: nice :)
<wpwrak>
how does that moxie compare to lm32 performance-wise ?
<wolfspraul>
gee, I just realize we have to work on a world-class update process for M1
<wolfspraul>
it has been almost 3 months since the last release, and I don't even think we have a documented testing and release process in place, to avoid bricking units accidentally
<kristianpaul>
Btw, i will flash my M1 soon, and i was wondering if tha block flash thing will then avoid me to save patches?
<wolfspraul>
we need a strong release process with proper testing that avoids releasing regressions
<wolfspraul>
we need to communicate how people add features to a wishlist in one central place
<wolfspraul>
we need to communicate the changelog back to existing and potential future customers well
<kristianpaul>
uservoice was a wishlist, dunno if still there
<wolfspraul>
we need to come out with updates at most every 2 months or so, to keep the flow and to avoid discouraging people from filing bugs and feature requests (because it takes too long for them to be realized anyway)
<wolfspraul>
a lot of good work :-)
<wpwrak>
yeah, indeed. you need to clone xiangfu a few times :)
<kristianpaul>
"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down" lol
<kristianpaul>
oh man what follows..
<kristianpaul>
so the PDA is back, and now speaks, cool :)
<kristianpaul>
viric: that remind, can use the nanonote spearker/buzzer to remenber to do something?
<mac>
I am thinking of getting a nanonote and have looked unsuccessfully for estimates of battery life.  I am currently a Zaurus user and would like more than the one day life I get now.  How does the nanonote do?
<viric>
kristianpaul: I don't use the nn for that, though. It could work.
<LunaVorax>
Oh well
<LunaVorax>
A good thing I'm not religious, otherwise I would feel guilty for yesterday
<viric>
kristianpaul: ah, you mean the program 'remind'?
<wolfspraul>
mac: you had a question earlier but nobody was fast enough to answer I think :-)
<wolfspraul>
I think it was about battery lifetime? (checking backlogs now)
<mac>
wolfspraul:Â Â Yes, I was just wondering about typical battery lifetime.
<wolfspraul>
the NanoNote comes with a 850mAh battery by default
<mac>
Do you usually get a couple of days work out of that?
<wolfspraul>
that will give you between 4 and 15 hours, that seems to be the consensus
<wolfspraul>
15 hours for music playing with screen off
<wolfspraul>
backlight needs a lot of power
<wolfspraul>
and 4 hours with video playing
<wolfspraul>
I think over time the battery may loose some power, after hundreds of recharge cycles. Like any other li-ion cell.
<mac>
I will be using it for command line based data entry.
<wolfspraul>
some people are using 1200 mAh batteries in their nanonotes (nokia bl-5c types)
<wolfspraul>
they will not really fit well, it's about tolerances, but if you squeeze the battery door somewhat they do fit
<wolfspraul>
with a bl-5c or even bl-6c (but then the battery door will definitely not fit) you will get a lot more hours
<wolfspraul>
but anyway, most people use the normal bl-4c 850mAh type
<wolfspraul>
4-15 hours
<wolfspraul>
:-)
<mac>
I have been using a zaurus for this up until now.  I typically turn the unit on and off throughout a 6 hour period.  Does the nanonote go in and out of  sleep mode easily?
<mac>
Thanks for the responses.  As you can probably guess I am new at the chat thing.
<wolfspraul>
even better, you are very welcome here
<mth>
suspend and resume should be less than a second each
<mth>
with the latest kernel, not sure if the shipped kernel also has suspend to ram
<wolfspraul>
I don't think sleep (suspend/resume) are well implemented for the end user right now
<wolfspraul>
they do work in principal, but I doubt it's fully functional in the gui etc.
<mth>
we have a daemon for system functions on the Dingoo, suspend is power + A there
<mth>
the daemon could be ported, probably it just needs a different hotkey config
<wolfspraul>
yes we have triggerhappy on the nanonote, I'm just not *sure* right now it all works
<wolfspraul>
for suspend/resume
<mth>
ok
<mth>
worst case, you could issue the suspend command from the command line
<mac>
Suspend from command line will work just fine.  A little ZZ script.
<wolfspraul>
and a request from someone like mac who wants to use a NanoNote for a real life application may be the one last drop that makes us prioritize this to the point that it gets done well :-)
<mac>
One last:  I use sqlite.  Does that come with the os/ is it in the feed?
<wolfspraul>
good question, let's see
<bartbes>
antoniodariush: I tried both, iirc
<bartbes>
though of course I had no way of seeing which one actually worked
<wolfspraul>
mac: so yes, pretty sure it's in the latest OpenWrt image
<wolfspraul>
when you get a NanoNote, it will not have the latest image, so you first need to upgrade to the latest image, 2011-08-28
<mac>
Thanks.  I ordered last night and look forward to getting started on it.
<wolfspraul>
wow great
<wolfspraul>
mac: please stop by here again when you get it, we can most likely make your first steps much easier
<wolfspraul>
even if something doesn't work, your feedback may make us fix whatever problems you run into
<mac>
wolfspraul:  I will.  Thanks again.
<kristianpaul>
I'm really happy with my ben,
<kristianpaul>
Boot time had improved a lot, so i yday used it (instead of my laptop) to  transfer son logs files from a fsck log
<kristianpaul>
s/son/some
<kristianpaul>
I must recall i was in a datacenter, so the faster the better to get out of the place soon :)
<wolfspraul>
nice
<wolfspraul>
I think the software for the Ben is on a good track
<wolfspraul>
the goals remain the same :-) still more and better kernel.org upstream support, finally the same for u-boot, keep a small diff with openwrt upstream
<wolfspraul>
better testing process for image releases
<wolfspraul>
better update procedures (not just full reflashing)
<kristianpaul>
ah,ye, last days i been loading the ben memcard with some content, most of then in html
<wolfspraul>
better software (music, math, dictionary, etc), better scripting, better ways to download data like maps, music, videos
<wolfspraul>
and so on :-)
<wolfspraul>
delay tolerant networks, voip
<kristianpaul>
there are plenty software now, improve documentatio yes, and a better file manager
<wolfspraul>
faster boot, suspend/resume, reliable alarm clock, fix bugs in general
<wolfspraul>
I'm wondering whether Hans Bezemer got his nano back to boot from nand
<wolfspraul>
it looked like he got a bad block exactly in a place where our software cannot handle it
<wolfspraul>
unfortunately then it went silent, I hope his nano works. need to followup, that would be an interesting bug to fix.
<wolfspraul>
oh we need to look at the partitioning again as well
<kristianpaul>
:)
<wolfspraul>
maybe find an easy solution to backup all data, and/or to encrypt all data
<kristianpaul>
at least to keep setting after upgrade
<wolfspraul>
usb gadgets! make it easy to switch the ben to become a keyboard, mouse, soundcard, usb storage, etc.
<kristianpaul>
i lost 6 levels from alex4 last time :?
<kristianpaul>
s/:?/:/
<wolfspraul>
so there's a lot of good stuff that I hope we get to in time, without creating a maintenance mess, i.e. everything 100% upstream
<wolfspraul>
or as much as possible
<wolfspraul>
I think more and easier ways to upgrade software, to backup and encrypt data would be great
<wolfspraul>
right now it's all too manual and too complicated
<kristianpaul>
slow :)
<kristianpaul>
yes,backup make sense too
<kristianpaul>
may be something like,if you plug a memcard it automatically askyou to backup your /root/ /etc folder on it
<wolfspraul>
antgreen: you are the moxie guy, right? a nice project and it's good we finally take more notice of it!
<antgreen>
yes - that's me!
<wolfspraul>
what do you hope to achieve with moxie?
<antgreen>
is working - have a work related IRC going on right now. will be slow to respond.
<wolfspraul>
you are aware of Milkymist - is there overlap? what's different from Milkymist? can you reuse anything from Milkymist or vice versa? what help are you looking for the most wrt moxie right now?
<wolfspraul>
no problem, this channel is logged and easy to search
<wolfspraul>
and I think moxie is a search friendly name :-)
<wolfspraul>
so you can reply slowly, we find it in the backlog or search...
<wolfspraul>
this may be a stupid question, but hey, have to dare to ask, right? :-) so...
<wolfspraul>
there is always this talk of adding a MMU to lm32
<antgreen>
yes, I've known about milkymist for a long time, and lekernel and I have traded a few mails and chatted on IRC over the past couple of years
<wolfspraul>
if we would do that, would that mmu be lm32-specific? does moxie have an mmu? if not, can a yet-to-be-written lm32 mmu be ported over to moxie one day, or is it closely tied to the core so that that makes no sense
<bartbes>
antoniodariush: that might be why it used libiconv, it compiled and didn't complain
<bartbes>
:P
<antgreen>
re: "what do you hope to achieve with moxie?".  right now it is a learning platform for me, but I certainly hope that it becomes a useful and competitive soft-core with a solid software stack.
<antoniodariush>
bartbes, it went fine now with liconv-full but now I cannot build that simple program
<antgreen>
I come from a dev tools background, and have been involved in many many GNU tools ports (including the original NIOS GCC port, which was my first exposure to FPGAs)
<antgreen>
and I was surprised at how many compiler-unfriendly processors there were out there
<antgreen>
so creating my own compiler friendly ISA has a been an interest for a long time,
<antgreen>
and definitely possible with all of the great free software these days.
<bartbes>
antoniodariush: sounds like a missing -l flag
<antgreen>
wolfspraul: there is no MMU for moxie yet, although somebody sent me notes on a possible MMU design
<antgreen>
I would love to collaborate on an MMU, but am concerned about licensing.
<antgreen>
I currently use GPL, but eventually will switch to something more liberal (less Free), like MIT or BSD
<wolfspraul>
curious - why?
<antgreen>
So I would like an MIT or BSD licensed MMU
<wolfspraul>
the core is the only part in Milkymist that is not GPL :-)
<antgreen>
GPL doesn't map cleanly to hardware descriptions, also, I want moxie to be maximally useful to people, and there is still a lot of resistance around GPL, especially in embedded
<antoniodariush>
bart
<antoniodariush>
bartbes, * where about?
<antgreen>
I love the GPL, don't get me wrong.
<bartbes>
antoniodariush: it just looks like it's not linking with libiconv
<antgreen>
I wrote/maintain a library called libffi that is very popular and gets lots of contributions, but I think the BSD license is a big part of that
<wolfspraul>
no worries, we are all relaxed here and try to understand
<wolfspraul>
I would agree about the resistance in the industry, but you can say the same about patents. to most companies, unless you stuff is patented it hardly exists, definitely not 'yours', etc.
<wolfspraul>
so if you have unpatented bsd stuff, you will still see the same end result, people saying "legally unsafe" (because unpatented :-))
<antgreen>
bah - don't get me started
<wolfspraul>
then you will start to file patents as well?
<antgreen>
I'm not sure.
<wolfspraul>
I'm just saying those in embedded that have a problem with the GPL probably also have a problem with unpatented tech
<antgreen>
Yes, I'm sure there's some overlap.
<wolfspraul>
it's just so natural to patent for them, if you don't that means something is wrong with your stuff
<wolfspraul>
but feel free to choose whatever you like and let us know whether you feel it changes anything
<antgreen>
they are mostly useful to raise money from investors
<antgreen>
what would be really great is a license that speaks directly to processor IP.
<wolfspraul>
scary, isn't it :-) the herd...
<antgreen>
like I said, GPL doesn't map very cleanly, so I don't think people will immedialy know what their responsibilities are for GPL HDL
<antgreen>
LGPL makes even less sense IMO
<wolfspraul>
so you mean an mmu could well be designed and work for both moxie and lm32? the same mmu?
<antgreen>
opencores has really promoted LGPL for hardware IP, and I think that's sad
<wolfspraul>
would that make it sub-optimal for both?
<antgreen>
I don't think so
<antgreen>
I mean, I think the same MMU could work for both, and not be sub-optimal
<wolfspraul>
interesting
<wolfspraul>
what are the highest quality opencores projects in your opinion
<wolfspraul>
and in which products are opencores projects used?
<antgreen>
I don't know enough to judge
<wolfspraul>
sorry gotta go soon, this is all very helpful that you explain a bit about moxie! cool!
<wolfspraul>
one more question:
<LunaVorax>
is BSD licensing wrong?
<wolfspraul>
what are the next most important features/bugs you want to work on in moxie?
<wolfspraul>
I have the impression that in the long run, gpl licensed projects tend to have a more balanced multi-party contributor structure (the ones that are successful and have any active contributors at all)
<wolfspraul>
when I see a BSD project, I tend to be a little cautious on that, and check whether it's actually mainly controlled by 1 party (which may or may not be a problem, just saying in response to your gpl/bsd question)
<wolfspraul>
but no, I don't think there is anything wrong with BSD
<aisa>
There was a fascinating article, some long while ago, researching user communities around BSD/GPL/&c licenses.
<wolfspraul>
for data, I'm even leaning towards public domain lately, cc-zero etc. nobody follows those multi-page agreements anyway
<aisa>
IIRC, GPL was an amazing bootstrap, but that some communities would/could/did benefit, after becoming mature, in switching to the BSD license.
<wolfspraul>
can you find the url?
<bartbes>
antgreen: you made libffi? awesome!
<antgreen>
bartbes: thanks!
<aisa>
I'm looking.  I'm finding conversation, but not convinced yet that I've found exactly what I read.
<antgreen>
wolfspraul: I agree that GPL is a great choice for the reason you describe above.  I've been dealing with GPL-in-embedded for many years now (since '95), and I think it's the wrong choice for semiconductor IP today.
<aisa>
I'm not sure if that is what I read, though.
<antgreen>
GPLv3 is particularly bad.
<antgreen>
Well, let me step back a second...
<antgreen>
If you want to maximize your user base, the GPL isn't the first license I would choose.
<aisa>
The article I read was strictly a research paper, and didn't have a horse in the race, as it where.
<aisa>
so if my above linked article takes a stand in conclusion, it's the wrong one :-)
<antgreen>
wolfspraul: re "what are the next most important features/bugs you want to work
<antgreen>
    on in moxie?": there's so much to do!  First, I want it to run code!  I don't know if you've been following my blog, but I basically got it to execute its first few instructions the other day. Â
<antgreen>
Now I need to access RAM, and am trying to figure out how to best do that.
<antgreen>
It looks like I will use separate busses for instruction and data memory
<antgreen>
but I'm not sure yet how to handle reads and writes on the same data bus.
<antgreen>
this is computer architecture 101 stuff
<antgreen>
I'm starting at the beginning!
<antgreen>
it will (and has been) a long haul
<antgreen>
maybe I'll be ready for Milkymist Three
<antgreen>
:-)
<wpwrak>
aisa: (changing license) if the project has a mixed group of contributors and doesn't require copyright assignments for contributions or similar, it's usually not feasible to switch the license at a later point in time
<aisa>
I was trying to quote the researcher, you're correct that the problem contains nuance.
<aisa>
IIRC, and I may not, the researcher was saying that socially, being able to do such a thing would result in a net-benefit.
<aisa>
but it has been many years.
<wpwrak>
what the GPL does very nicely is to give people who contribute the safety that they're not being exploited. it may also keep some of the nastier characters away from the project, which also helps.
<wpwrak>
for companies, there's probably not such a big difference between contributing to BSD-licensed and contributing to GPL-licensed (at least for GPLv2). few really have the kind of long-term plans where the difference would matter.
<aisa>
I guess you'll have to find the researcher in question and ask him about it. :-)
<phr>
i tend to stay away from volunteer development for BSD projects... i'm happy to work on them if i'm getting paid
<aisa>
I certainly have my own horse in this race, but I'm not entertaining a change of opinion on the matter, myself.  I was hoping, in my mentioning it, to cite data, whether it matched my preference or not.  Which I find always interesting even when it challenges my own assumptions.
<wpwrak>
(net benefit) hmm, i see it as a good flame bait if you do it without including it in the roadmap from very early on ;-) and if people know it's coming, it may actually prevent contributions even before the switch. kinda like the osborne effect.
<wpwrak>
aisa: yeah, if you can dig out the reference, that would be interesting
<aisa>
I posted above what it *might* have been, alas I was not able to confirm this was what I read.
<aisa>
It was a good number of years ago, and a lot of electrons have been inconvenienced on the topic since thene,
<wpwrak>
licensing discussions tend to have that effect, yes ;-)
<aisa>
then*, and I wasn't sufficiently able to articulate to google that I didn't want the results it was returning.
<aisa>
all of the links I'm finding are advocacy, alas.
<kristianpaul>
antgreen: You are making your own wishbone variant,or all upstream as posible including IP cores?
<kristianpaul>
antgreen: btw so you moxie cpu is ready, just missing how to put the SoC towork together?
<kristianpaul>
yeah,your repo is quite impresive ;)
<antgreen>
thanks!
<bartbes>
regarding licensing: copyleft is fine for 'products', but imo a library(/utility?) or similar really benefits from copyfree, since copyleft severely limits your users
<bartbes>
even for 'products', if you plan on letting other people work with your code, copyleft is kind of a dick move