eeguru
Veteran Member
There's been some great work lately on retro computing projects meant to preserve and extend the life of existing retro-computing favorites as well as create some new ones. Most of the contributors have graciously open-sourced their hardware and software efforts for the betterment of the community. I'd like to thank James Pearce, Jeff Leyda, Eric Schlaepher, Scott Baker, Tomi Tilli, Sergey Malinov, John Monahan, Jon Chapman, Andrew Lynch, Michael McMaster, Alex Swedenberg, djos, and a lot of others for not getting paid for their work!
But I've noticed a steady upward trend in clone cards on eBay for a great many things. First it was mostly XT-IDE clones, Amiga Vampire clones, and floppy emu clones.. then a lot of Serdashop's closed source projects like the Dreamblaster MIDI boards.. then a lot of Sergey's retro ISA boards and SBCs. Now more and more of James's and Michael's storage boards (Lo-Tech and SCSI2SD respectively) out-side of their approved distribution partners like Texelec, iTead, and Alex Perez. Eric's Snark Barkers are popping up from Russia. Alex's Hard MPUs from Portugal. And Monotech seems to be making a business out of it too in New Zealand.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with building open-source hardware someone else designed - as long as you carry forward copyrights and attribution. Some do. Many don't. Is this trend a good or a bad thing? Does it dampen enthusiasm of potential creators? Does the lower price from SE-Asia translate into a much larger user base? Does that growth cause problems for the authors in support?
I find it a double edged sword. I don't make any money off the jrIDE boards. I resell all materials at cost and charge $20 a board to put a kit together and test it. And I had to bulk-buy a lot of the parts like the un-obtainium side-car connectors. Frankly I wish a clone maker would do it for me. However I find myself currently unemployed and while I am eager to work, I am burning through severance looking for my next opportunity. So I'm deep diving into a project that will either produce one epic result or several small ones. I intend to fully open-source it. I also intend to complete the NetPI-IDE project - an ATA & XTA drive emulator using a Pi-zero that is already open-source, and the RGBI2USB capture project. However I would like to sell a few boards to earn a little bit of that time back spent on the initial IP investment before someone sells them for me without my permission.
Curious on others' thoughts...
But I've noticed a steady upward trend in clone cards on eBay for a great many things. First it was mostly XT-IDE clones, Amiga Vampire clones, and floppy emu clones.. then a lot of Serdashop's closed source projects like the Dreamblaster MIDI boards.. then a lot of Sergey's retro ISA boards and SBCs. Now more and more of James's and Michael's storage boards (Lo-Tech and SCSI2SD respectively) out-side of their approved distribution partners like Texelec, iTead, and Alex Perez. Eric's Snark Barkers are popping up from Russia. Alex's Hard MPUs from Portugal. And Monotech seems to be making a business out of it too in New Zealand.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with building open-source hardware someone else designed - as long as you carry forward copyrights and attribution. Some do. Many don't. Is this trend a good or a bad thing? Does it dampen enthusiasm of potential creators? Does the lower price from SE-Asia translate into a much larger user base? Does that growth cause problems for the authors in support?
I find it a double edged sword. I don't make any money off the jrIDE boards. I resell all materials at cost and charge $20 a board to put a kit together and test it. And I had to bulk-buy a lot of the parts like the un-obtainium side-car connectors. Frankly I wish a clone maker would do it for me. However I find myself currently unemployed and while I am eager to work, I am burning through severance looking for my next opportunity. So I'm deep diving into a project that will either produce one epic result or several small ones. I intend to fully open-source it. I also intend to complete the NetPI-IDE project - an ATA & XTA drive emulator using a Pi-zero that is already open-source, and the RGBI2USB capture project. However I would like to sell a few boards to earn a little bit of that time back spent on the initial IP investment before someone sells them for me without my permission.
Curious on others' thoughts...