qi-hardware is a startup (announced 20th of July on linux.com) which set itself the target of manufacturing and deploying hardware under the idea of “Open Source Hardware” (for details you might want to read the mentioned article on linux.com or on qi-hardware.com itself).
This idea might call some analogies to Openmoko and – indeed – not just the ideas, also the people are almost the same 🙂
Same idea? Same targets? Same people? Let’s face it: same mistakes? At least qi is saying: “no!” as described in their post “Lessons learned”
Based on the saying “back to the roots” aka “the more basics the fewer problems” they announced their first device:
the “Ben NanoNote”, which (at least for now) comes with no RF-hardware at all.
Nevertheless the project looks very interesting and promising – even more when I was told that OpenWrt is going to be used as default operating system.
Shortly after I was asked whether I’m interested in helping getting OpenWrt running on it – I agreed, got one and am now hacking on it 🙂
Let’s see how things will do…