samborambo (OP)
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March 27, 2013, 08:37:57 AM |
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Just read the interview with Yifu Guo. He's seems like an idealist - a true fighter for the bitcoin movement. He emphasises that their goal was to ensure no one entity ended up with a majority of mining power.
So why, then, aren't they making the chip design open source or license free so that market forces can drive higher mining power and more security?
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"I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume." -- Satoshi
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sounds
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March 27, 2013, 08:54:19 AM |
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Avalon doesn't want to become a "central mining hardware authority."
They are disappointed that BFL is such a failure. They want to have competitors.
They could help competitors by publishing their designs, but that actually tends to push competing designs out of the market, because it's cheaper to just copy Avalon.
Oh, and by the way, they claim they will open source their software. (It hasn't happened yet, though.) Why don't you ask them to make good on what they already promised?
Avalon has grown really tired of this forum's behavior (troll, off-topic, reading comprehension fail).
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samborambo (OP)
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March 27, 2013, 09:48:59 AM |
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Avalon doesn't want to become a "central mining hardware authority."
They are disappointed that BFL is such a failure. They want to have competitors.
They could help competitors by publishing their designs, but that actually tends to push competing designs out of the market, because it's cheaper to just copy Avalon.
Oh, and by the way, they claim they will open source their software. (It hasn't happened yet, though.) Why don't you ask them to make good on what they already promised?
Avalon has grown really tired of this forum's behavior (troll, off-topic, reading comprehension fail).
Avalon wouldn't be an authority if the hardware is open source for the same reason Bitcoin software is not an oligarchy. EG: If the majority of bitcoin users don't like the changes in a point release, they can choose not to upgrade but fork the project instead. If you want to create competition quickly, business savvy start-ups with limited engeering resources could bring clones to market easily. If competing designs get pushed out of the market, the designs weren't good enough. That's the free market at work. It doesn't matter whether the competitor is a clone or an original design. It just needs to perform as required or desired. |
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sounds
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March 27, 2013, 03:44:58 PM |
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Ok, if that's true then you should have no trouble getting a patch accepted into the Android Open Source Project, OpenStack, or another Open Hardware initiative.
But it doesn't work that way, unfortunately. (And that irritates me a lot!) I'd really like to take this discussion deeper and talk about why things are that way, but I'd rather get an answer to this first:
Why don't you, samborambo, ask Avalon to make good on what they already promised?
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Tyger
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March 27, 2013, 08:33:01 PM |
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Oh, and by the way, they claim they will open source their software. (It hasn't happened yet, though.) Why don't you ask them to make good on what they already promised?
What do you mean? all software is open source and available here: https://github.com/BitSyncom/ |
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sounds
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March 27, 2013, 11:24:13 PM |
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I missed that announcement, thanks.
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Tyger
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March 28, 2013, 03:29:59 PM |
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and the hardware part is not that complicated either. and if they sell the chips (posted at the bottom of the Avalon website) there will be a datasheet on how those work too so.
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samborambo (OP)
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March 28, 2013, 11:29:57 PM |
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and the hardware part is not that complicated either. and if they sell the chips (posted at the bottom of the Avalon website) there will be a datasheet on how those work too so.
Would it help if I changed the topic to have HARDWARE in caps? Would that avoid several posts about open sourcing the software? Datasheets are just the tip of the iceberg. For an analogy, it'd be like having to clone software by reading the end user manual. |
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Qoheleth
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Spurn wild goose chases. Seek that which endures.
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March 28, 2013, 11:43:54 PM |
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My impression was that ASIC designs are foundry-specific. How do you open-source that? Even if you published the Verilog, what good would it do?
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If there is something that will make Bitcoin succeed, it is growth of utility - greater quantity and variety of goods and services offered for BTC. If there is something that will make Bitcoin fail, it is the prevalence of users convinced that BTC is a magic box that will turn them into millionaires, and of the con-artists who have followed them here to devour them.
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samborambo (OP)
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March 30, 2013, 06:59:25 AM |
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My impression was that ASIC designs are foundry-specific. How do you open-source that? Even if you published the Verilog, what good would it do?
ASIC designs are technology specific but not tied to any machine calibration. They should open source the functional verilog as well as the full mask and specification - a turn key design. |
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loshia
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March 30, 2013, 07:07:48 AM |
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My impression was that ASIC designs are foundry-specific. How do you open-source that? Even if you published the Verilog, what good would it do?
ASIC designs are technology specific but not tied to any machine calibration. They should open source the functional verilog as well as the full mask and specification - a turn key design. Dude, Let us focus with simple things first. They have announce that they will sell chips in bulk. If they publish the PCB designs (Asic Board+Controller +PDU + Components list), It will be more than enough. I do not se a reason why they shall not to do it as long this design is related with their chip. If They do that I am about to buy bulk chips and build my own units and most of us can do. I will bevery happy to do that personaly What about that Ngzhang, Bitsync - I have mailed you a couple of times and no response still |
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samborambo (OP)
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March 30, 2013, 07:35:47 AM |
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My impression was that ASIC designs are foundry-specific. How do you open-source that? Even if you published the Verilog, what good would it do?
ASIC designs are technology specific but not tied to any machine calibration. They should open source the functional verilog as well as the full mask and specification - a turn key design. Dude, Let us focus with simple things first. They have announce that they will sell chips in bulk. If they publish the PCB designs (Asic Board+Controller +PDU + Components list), It will be more than enough. I do not se a reason why they shall not to do it as long this design is related with their chip. If They do that I am about to buy bulk chips and build my own units and most of us can do. I will bevery happy to do that personaly What about that Ngzhang, Bitsync - I have mailed you a couple of times and no response still That may be good enough for you but still misses the ethos of open source. While they scramble to get their avalons out the door, others could be doing large production runs of the same design or working on extending the original design. This is the whole point of open source hardware. Yifu says he wants decentralised mining competition, I call his bluff. If he doesnt open source it, he was in it for the money all along. |
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