It's great to say that the bumping facility can't wrap their heads around urgency.
It's also a lie. Every step of the way, every other company they work with is always the one that won't meet promised schedules. Sooner or later Josh looses all credibility. You can't believe anything he says about dates, because he's just making them up as he goes along. 2 days in bumping becomes 2 weeks. Why? Because that 2-day schedule was all in his mind. |
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I think one of the problems is that Josh squandered even the confidence that some of the hardcore supporters had left when he said bumping would take 2 days and it's been a little over a week. The main problem is that he's giving people best case estimates when he should be giving worst case estimates and then tacking on a week or two to those estimates.
No, the problem is the dates he gives are what he calls worst-case scenarios, when they really are impossibly best-case scenarios. "Honest Abe! The schedule is already padded. There's no way we'll miss the dates this time." BS |
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but we haven't even seen more than two Avalon's...what's up with that?
From day 1 they said they'd ship in February. It's still February, so hardly surprising. Unlike another company that is coming up on 4 months late and counting. |
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What shipping method is being used for most of Batch #1?
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That kind of implies the chips that were on the pictured boards were early ASICs that were damaged by heat. Other statements made seem to indicate that there's never been an actual hashing prototype of the chip though.
Has BFL ever had an ASIC (in any package) that actually communicated and hashed? If the QFN chips soldered onto the SC rev 1 board weren't ASICs, what were they?
That just makes no sense. You don't just do a run of 8 chips. And even if you are crazy enough to produce just 8 chips, if you burn them all out, then there's no point in running thermal simulations. You already proved they can't handle the heat. |
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We paid a company out of California quite a bit of money to run a run of simulations under different scenarios on our boards
What Syke so conveniently "forgot" to include was that the quote was in reference to THERMAL simulations of how heat propagates throughout the board. If Syke wasn't a liar, he would have included that information. But since he IS, in fact, a liar (this time by omission)... you get the half quote you see there.
If you had actual working chips, you wouldn't have needed to run "simulations" on thermal propagation, you would have tested the *actual* thermal propagation. |
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So what was on those PCBs? Boxes of air and fans?
Not working chips, that's for sure. But don't take my word for it. Here's what Josh had to say: We paid a company out of California quite a bit of money to run a run of simulations under different scenarios on our boards
When BFL really does have a working chip, you'll hear about it. |
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Summary: Lots of activity, lots of preparation, lots of hardware ready to be assembled, but no sign of the actual chips which are in the bumping facility...
I'm rather surprised BFL doesn't have 'something' to show them. A jalepeno or two, perhaps at low speed, working. After all, didn't they get some quantity of sample chips in back in December when it was determined that the original package type chosen had inadequate heat dissipation? What, did they fry *all* of them? They never had chips. They came to those conclusions based on simulations. |
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B) Their adds never say that they have a product ready to ship. The add you screenshot on the BCT forums links to their website, which has a giant "PRE-ORDER NOW" orange button on their home page, and a bolded pre-order disclaimer on every single product description. I don't know how you want them to be more clear.
What website are you looking at? Clicking through the ad goes to http://butterflylabs.com/products?s1 and lets you checkout without ever mentioning the pre-order status. That's no giant "PRE-ORDER NOW" button. That's a giant ORDER NOW button.  |
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It's the weekend as promised, CNY is ending and shipping is going to resume shortly after
Do you think you'll be able to ship more than 2 units this time? |
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The fact that they haven't released the source in a timely manner and are violating GPL by withholding it (yes, I actually agree with Kano on this one)... should be raising alarm bells like crazy... You're talking about running a few scripts to remove debug related code. doing a test compile and publishing. That should literally take one coder a couple of hours tops... and that's if they have to manually locate everything they'd want to remove. If the code is at all decent they'd have it tagged already so it could be removed much more quickly.
It's even more than that. Whatever source was used to create the binaries, that's the source that needs to be made available. There's no cleanup to do! In fact, doing some sort of cleanup would be in violation of the GPL, as then the sources wouldn't match the binaries they already shipped. |
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Human relationship 101 is not going to help you if the other side unilateraly changes an agreement.
In fact, according to my human relationship manual it should be avalon apologizing to the community for breaking the license.
You try to somehow turn it all upside down.
Of course he's defending them. He's earning $270 profit per day because Avalon shipped only him an ASIC unit and he can rake in the bitcoins before the difficulty adjusts. |
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How are we tying an article about Bitcoin scams and getting source code released together? I am at a loss? If the scams go unpunished, more scams will result. If license violations go unpunished, more license violations will result. "playing nice" just encourages more people to break the law/license/etc. |
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Ok.
Hey Bitsyncom, could you please post the source to your modifications to the GPL licensed cgminer code?
Thanks,
Con.
will do once organized, We have no intention to not disclose the source code. That's not for you to chose. You are in violation of the GPL. You shipped binaries, now deliver the source code. There is nothing to organize. |
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They were in violation of international copyright treaties the moment they shipped. The GPL doesn't say that you must intend in the future to release the source code, it says that the physical product must be accompanied by either the source code or a written offer to provide the source code.
By default, there is no right of distribution. They only way to get that right is through a license. The GPL provides an automatic license to people that comply with the terms described. Failure to comply with those terms = copyright violation and termination of license. Section 8 provides ways to restore the license, but it does not excuse a violation and does not give a grace period during which violations are acceptable.
At any rate, I don't really care much about violations. I had two points, the first being that 2112's notion that the GPL is an evil thing, strangling poor projects in their crib is nonsense, and the second that there was not, is not, and never will be, a good reason for Avalon to have failed to provide the software alongside the physical product.
This is an example of how defense of international software copyright treaties kills competition in hardware business preventing the startups from recouping the NRE costs. The biggest enemy of Bitcoin aren't banksters or whatever else powers-that-be. The enemies are the hormone-laden cholerics that simply cannot think on the horizon longer than a month or (rarely) year. Are you actually complaining about the GPL license? kjj is absolutely correct. Avalon took GPL source, modified it, and failed to offer the source. That is a violation, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if they promised to release it later. It doesn't matter if they are giving up trade secrets to release it. If they don't like the terms of the GPL, they shouldn't have used GPL source. But they did use GPL source, and they have violated the license. |
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Keep in mind Jeff actually has to ask for them to be in violation of it.
Actually, no. Unless they included the source code (they didn't), or included a written offer on how to obtain the source code (I've seen no reports of such), then they are already in violation. |
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From what I understand you actually have to have a binary... do you know anybody who has the binary? Perhaps the demand should come from that person instead.
I don't see why they have to redistribute anything, if the hardware hasn't been delivered. It might even be shipped with the unit... who knows!
Let me quote their own announcement: We shipped, website will be updated shortly.
First unit goes to Jeff Garzik in honor for the work he has done for the bitcoin codebase being the only developer who ordered from us.
Yes, they shipped binaries 20 days ago, and have yet to release the source code for it. That is in clear violation of the license. - source code will release 30 days to comply to an infringement notice from a copyright holder.
Furthermore, they are well aware that they are in violation of the license, yet they are chosing not to comply. |
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It would be so much easier if companies would just release the source when they release binaries.
Bitsyncom, post the source. Now.
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How you define "should have been done" is arbitrary. Obviously Avalon has done it the right way for them: a design with many small 110nm chips was simpler and allowed them to ship before BFL who is struggling with fewer more complex 65nm chips.
by ship, you meant you received one? If not, STFU already. Avalon has working chips, BFL doesn't. Plain and simple. working? you meant for 24hrs max? Yes thats your definition of working. Those all appear to be software-related issues. You know, the kind of issues BFL hasn't run into yet because they don't have working chips to start developing the software for yet. |
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