Fellowship interview with David Reyes Samblas Martinez

David Reyes Samblas Martinez is the founder of Spanish Copyleft Hardware store Tuxbrain, and attended the famous Open University of Catalunya. He’s also the subject of this month’s Fellowship interview, in which he answers questions on hardware manufacturing, e-learning and Free Software politics.

Stian Rødven Eide: For well over a year, your main activity has been Tuxbrain, a shop dedicated to open, hackable devices, and, in particular, Copyleft hardware. Initially inspired by the community success of Openmoko, your selection has since grown to include several other products as well. Could you tell us a bit about how you came to start Tuxbrain, and how the first year has been?

David Reyes Samblas Martinez
David Reyes Samblas Martinez

David Reyes Samblas Martinez: My business partner Victor Remolina and I discovered the FOSS world about 7-8 years ago. Since then, we have always been thinking about doing something together around Free Software. When the name Tuxbrain first was mentioned about 5 years ago, we immediately decided that whatever we do has to carry that name. We soon created a manifesto outlining the philosophy of Tuxbrain. The main aspects of it were that the company should be integrated inside the FOSS community, be part of it, and dedicate part of its time and resources to help initiatives that we found interesting grow. We felt that this would help us grow as well.

When we discovered Openmoko, we were fascinated by the idea of the FOSS philosophy being ported to the hardware world. While software can be replicated ad infinitum with barely no cost, physical devices carry a huge cost even in the first draft. With Openomoko there was, for the first time as far as I know, information available on the design and production that could be shared and improved by the community – the same way software was. Lacking the distribution networks of larger manufacturers, Openmoko promoted the idea of group selling, where customers would share shipping costs and get volume discounts. I began organising a Spanish purchasers’ group, which soon was joined by Portugal as well, and that was how the first Openmokos arrived to the Iberian peninsula. It felt great making all those geeky people happy, who, like me, believe that other ways of making hardware was possible. We then decided that Tuxbrain should be a Hardware distributor, a Copyleft Hardware distributor.

As such, we started out by selling the Neo FreeRunner from Openmoko, and immediately began evaluating other hardware to expand our catalogue. Some products came in and were included even though they were not really open hardware. For instance, the GP2X Wiz, a game console that has a brilliant and active community who started with the old GP32, developing games and software (a lot of them under GPL or other Free licences), as well as the Sharp Netwalker, a totally closed hardware, but of really good quality, that came with Ubuntu from the manufacturer. After focusing on these “end user” oriented products for a while, we discovered Arduino. I must admit that we started selling it simply because it was totally open hardware, and not really understood what the objective of such a board was (being a software guy myself, and Victor a designer). However, as soon as we started learning about Arduino, and getting to know the community around it, we fell completely in love with the whole concept. I read somewhere that Arduino can be regarded as the duct tape of electronics; you can join together whatever you can imagine, and then make it work. Last, but not least, the NanoNote arrived, and we fell in love again.

The first year was, as for all start-ups, not easy. We still must work on finding an equilibrium between what we want to do and what we can do right now, but, basically, what we do is learn, spread what we have learned, and grow stronger as the communities around our products grow. We help spread the Copyleft idea in events we organise, or assist in, and support other advocates as much as we can. And of course we’re selling some devices along the way, providing assessment services, and doing development around them. We are a company after all.

SRE: For the last several months, your blog has revealed a lot of work being done with the 本 (Ben) NanoNote from Qi-Hardware / Sharism. What do you find particularly exciting about this device? Do you find that awareness of Copyleft hardware is increasing among manufacturers?

DRSM: When I first learned of the specifications on 本 NanoNote, I must admit I was not really impressed. However, knowing the team behind it, most of them being part of the Openmoko community, I quickly become interested nonetheless. The philosophy behind the device was very appealing, and it already had some interesting use cases; dictionary, offline Wikipedia reader, music player, serial console, calendar, gaming device. Also, its dimensions were amazing! You don’t really know how small and light it is until you have seen one with your own eyes.

本 (Ben) in Chinese means beginning, and that’s what 本 NanoNote is: A starting point. The 本 is the first product from the Qi-Hardware community that was launched into the real world. While Openmoko Inc (the company, not the community) abandoned the Neo FreeRunner project and deviated from the idea of Copyleft hardware, a lot people who worked there still believed in those ideas and joined forces with the community to form a new company called Sharism. Along with the Qi-Hardware community, Sharism is committed to bring hardware that follows the following three principles: Copyleft hardware, Public Patents and Upstream Kernels. Any piece of hardware that fits those ideas can be part of the Qi-Hardware community.

As an active participant in the Openmoko community, Tuxbrain was invited to be a part of Qi-Hardware, and here we are. Many interesting things have happened since the 本 was released. A lot of great software has been or is being ported to it (Debian was just ported by the people from pyneo.org), it has been included among the devices officially supported by OpenWrt, and it has successfully been been hooked up with the Arduino board. This is also just the tip of the iceberg. Due to the Copyleft nature of the 本, projects like the SAKC (Swiss Army Knife Card) are underway. SAKC is basically the 本 NanoNote with an FPGA added and a lot of I/O available to do hardware hacks. To put it simply; it’s like an Arduino, but a lot more powerful.

With regards to other manufacturers, I think there still is a lot of work to do in order for them to understand the benefits of Copyleft hardware compared to traditional hardware production. This is basically what the Qi-Hardware community was formed for. Anyone who is interested and wants to know more is welcome to ask.

SRE: Tuxbrain is participating in the 20+20 project, in which the EOI Business School (Escuela de Organización Industrial) is working towards a new economic model for Spain, based on sustainability, responsibility and IT. Could you explain briefly how the project works? You are representing the Open Economy sector. How would you describe your business model in that context?

DRSM: Due to the economic crisis, and in light of how the traditional mechanisms have failed to avoid it, the EOI, with the support of the EU, is searching for new business models that can prevent such a crisis from happening again, or at least have more mechanisms that can predict and mitigate against it. The 20+20 project starts out with a period of intensive research on various economic sectors, 20 in total, selecting 20 companies from each sector. Presently in its first phase, the five sectors that are being studied at the moment are Social Economy, Digital Economy, Creativity Economy, Open Economy and Green Economy. Because of our focus on being an integral part of the communities around our products, some community members have pointed out that Tuxbrain should be included as an example of an Open Company.

Despite being classified as a distributor, Tuxbrain is not content with moving boxes from one side to another. First we must be able to rely on what we are selling, so before we incorporate a product into our catalogue, we test and play with it for a while. If it convinces us, only then can we convince others to trust in it as well. Openness is the most important criteria on which we base our analysis, even more so than the commercial margins. The more open a product is, the more easily can we participate in its development and help improve it. Since we are in direct contact with our customers, we are familiar with their needs and can relay that information to the developers and hardware designers. This way we also help in guiding the product towards a wider audience. Also, when the product is open, we know a lot more about it and can provide better service to our customers. Another interesting aspect is the fact that our customers are part of a community that actively shapes our products. This community follows meritocratic rules, just like a lot of Free Software community projects, and, for us, a customer that contributes to the project with development or advocacy has just as much a say as someone who places large orders. Both contribute to the project. I believe those were the qualities that led to Tubrain’s inclusion in the 20+20 Analysis.

SRE: Several of your products are running ARM processors, providing more computing power for less electricity. While much used in smaller devices, there still aren’t many laptops running ARM. Do you think that this might change in the near future? Is ARM generally more hacker friendly than x86 processors?

DRSM: Sadly, the reason why ARM and MIPS architectures are scarce in laptops is the software, and not the hardware itself. As you said, they are more energy efficient than the x86 architecture, and thus a lot more suited for mobile solutions. This should include laptops as well, but I think large manufacturers are afraid of being rejected by the market if they do not offer the latest Redmond monster, ups.. sorry, I mean operating system, inside their boxes, and they are limited to the hardware this can support, which for me is total nonsense. Software is ductile; it’s easy to change the code, and it can be reproduced n times. Thus it’s the software that has to be adapted to the hardware, so that hardware engineers can focus on innovative design and produce the most powerful/efficient/cheap hardware possible, without thinking of limitations on the amount of software that will run there. Eventually, common sense will finally hit the head and the budget of hardware companies that want to offer better solutions to their customers.

I don’t think ARM and MIPS are more hacker friendly per se, it’s just that the operating systems running on them are; GNU/Linux, Android, Symbian, all having a strong developer community helping them to reach their goals.

SRE: You attended the Open University of Catalunya (UOC), which famously has run a Masters Programme in Free Software since 2003. Can you tell us a bit about your years there. Is the sharing culture embedded in all aspects of the curriculum?

DRSM: The UOC is a really great initiative and an example to follow in e-Learning in all aspects, from the continuous evaluation system to the ways and the quality of communication with teachers and the institution itself. In the beginning, circumstances, such as having a family and a job, forced me to miss a lot of classes and study on my own. After a year, I started regretting that I hadn’t done so before. I learned a lot more from this system than I do from attending a conventional class. During those first years, I read all of my course material on the train to work, and I also made my first contact with the GNU/Linux embedded world there. I had some C programming assignments, and I also had a HP Jornada 680. Looking for ways to match my needs, I discovered that the JLiMe project already had ported GNU/Linux there, and so I was happily editing and compiling in the bus. Since then, I have loved little devices with GNU/Linux in them.

I was really amazed with how the whole Free Software world works. All kinds of people collaborate together, and we are extremely self organised. Some projects rise and some fall, but everything is reused for the benefit of the community. I really think the Free Software ecosystem is the largest technical collaborative effort ever made, and I’m very passionate about the whole idea.

SRE: Free Software has also been heavily politicized in several of Spain’s autonomous regions. What is your impression of the politcial climate for Free Software in Spain? Is it all handled regionally? Are there certain competitive aspects between the regions that have affected adoption of Free Software?

DRSM: Yes, there is a very diverse institutional support for Free Software in Spain, depending on the region. The central government, I think, has really missed the point of it, and lost a golden opportunity with a One Child – One Laptop program they tried to start some time ago, which would have included only Free Software, saving money and teach kids about diversity of software. The curious thing is that the same politicians often have differing views in different political formations. For example, Extremadura is one of the public institutions that is strongest on Free Software integration, but its politicians are mostly the same who run the government! I believe the problem basically is a lack of information, and strong pressure from proprietary software lobbyists. But it’s not that bad, really. There are quite a few dedicated organisations, both governmental, like CENATIC, and NGO’s like ASOLIF, who, together with the Spanish Free Software community, are fighting to be heard.

Our warmest thanks to David for answering our questions. You can follow his progress on the Tuxbrain blog.

Fellowship interview with Timo Jyrinki

The smallest unit of freedom: a Fellow

(Interview by Stian Rødven Eide)

In addition to being the friendly media face of Wikipedia Finland, the team contact for Ubuntu Finland and founder of local advocacy project Vapaa Suomi (Libre Finland), Timo Jyrinki has been involved as an active developer and translator for a wide range of Free Software organisations such as FSFE, Debian, GNOME and Openmoko. He has worked on computer graphics for much of his life, with a particular interest in human-computer interaction, and spends a lot of his current time making improvements to embedded systems. I had a lovely interview with Timo, in which he shared his thoughts on user interfaces, the Free Software situation in Finland and how businesses should let the community lead.

Stian Rødven Eide: Your involvement with GNU/Linux started while you were active in the demoscene, which was rather huge in Finland during the nineties. Were you already familiar with the philosophy of Free Software at that time? Was the culture of studying, sharing and improving each other’s code relevant to the demoscene?

Timo Jyrinki
Timo Jyrinki

Timo Jyrinki: I don’t think I was really familiar with the Free Software philosophy at all at that time, and not even for some time after starting to use GNU/Linux. The demoscene did have an atmosphere of improving on other’s ideas, but actually seeing code was mostly totally out of the question, except for maybe some snippets. My real introduction to Free Software came from my involvement with Wikipedia.

SRE: Several of your projects have revolved around computer graphics. This is an area where Free Software traditionally has suffered from poor compatibility, due to a lack of support from hardware vendors and the complexity of creating new graphics drivers. With Intel and AMD finally working with the community to create Free Software drivers, things have started to change however. How do you view the current situation for Free Software graphics? Is the liberation process going well? What can be done to convince the remaining vendors to open their specifications?

Timo Jyrinki: I think the graphics liberation process is now going in a good direction, with shader support also included in the Intel DRI driver (and with Mesa 7.4.1 it actually works), which is very important to finally evolve beyond the fixed pipeline. It’s a slow, but also broad development process, as is usual with Free Software. What I do see as a problem, however, is that the whole embedded / mobile sector seems to have mainly one vendor, which is completely proprietary so far, despite some small bits of information which have said otherwise. For example, over a year ago, Ubuntu Mobile mentioned that “soon” there would be a Free kernel DRM driver and DDX drivers, together with a closed DRI driver (which I guess could be reverse-engineered to an extent). Nothing has actually appeared as code as far as I know.

I think the best way to convince the rest would be to basically point to Intel/AMD/Via, and explain the real benefits that Free drivers bring. For example, developers would not be hindered by having to use the specific kernel or X server versions with which the binary drivers (available to some partners in a limited way) happen to work.

SRE: You have a Masters degree in Communications Engineering, with Cognitive Technology as your major subject. What are your thoughts about today’s paradigm of computer user interfaces, and to what extent do you see Free Software taking the lead in this regard?

Timo Jyrinki: Touch and haptics are, in my opinion, the keywords that best describe where we are going at the moment. The non-touch interfaces continue to be used but they are, of course, already quite well investigated. I believe Multi-Pointer X & co. will lay out a good groundwork to rapidly innovate with Free Software, and haptics is relatively easy to add when it’s needed. But to actually get something to innovate with, we would need, in addition to future touch/haptic laptop displays, more devices like Neo FreeRunner, which is still unique despite the emergence of phones running Android and similar systems. I’d also like to see more than just a little effort to think about redesigning GNOME/KDE application development environments to include support for small screens and big items that are manipulated by e.g. gestures. And finally, I wouldn’t forget about using stylus for finer touch input – what are the differences between using a stylus and a mouse regarding how applications are designed?

SRE: Your studies have to a certain degree centred around telecommunications technology, culminating in your Master’s thesis on the perception of vibration characteristics. Since then, you have been involved both professionally and as a community member in GNU/Linux smartphone projects like Maemo and Openmoko. Considering the increasing amount of embedded systems being based on Free Software, what do you see as the main obstacles to a fully free ecosystem for smartphones and similar devices?

Timo Jyrinki: With Neo FreeRunner available, I don’t see, as a user, any major obstacles beyond Openmoko Inc’s ability to manage itself and stay in business. I hope there will be more companies like Om Inc, and that people understand that what’s being done around the Openmoko project (including FreeSmartphone.Org, Debian’s FSO group, etc.) is benefiting every Free Software user once we start to have more (phone) devices that can be used purely by installing, for example Debian, on it. But, in reality, I think the amount of NDA’s Openmoko has needed to sign has exceeded 50, which is kind of a lot, and therefore it would be good to have some documentation available on how to enter the hardware market with a Free device. And anything to do with radio frequencies or GSM is of course even harder. But for the software part, people can just start developing.

SRE: You now work for a Free Software company, Nomovok, which describes itself as a distributed organisation, modelled after community development methods. The company also tries to engage and give back to the community through projects such as mdeb. Do you feel that your community efforts have been successful for both parties? How should other technology companies proceed towards involving the community?

Timo Jyrinki: It is indeed the distributed organization that makes Nomovok stand out from the crowd. We don’t have real offices for example, so people are free to work from anywhere. Regarding community efforts, Nomovok is not “there” yet despite former mdeb.org efforts, etcetera, which are in a need of better focus. It has proven hard to sell “contributing back” to customers as additional project work, as all work we do usually consists of projects for customers, so there is not much we do on our “own time”. But it is improving, and some customers even demand it already. The biggest contributions have been made via our customers, who are taking the credit, which is perfectly fine and, I think, a way to also sell the contributions to the customer.

Companies should approach communities with a willingness to serve, and only to lead if no one else wants to do that. Sometimes it is hard to be allowed to say what one is doing, in which case it is also hard to get feedback if what’s being done, and offered as a contribution, is a sensible thing to do in the project. We have a life cycle model that is presented to customers so that they would understand why contributing back is a key part of a major involvement in any Free Software project.

SRE: As an active Finnish translator and community member for FSFE, Ubuntu, GNOME and other projects, do you find that Free Software has a strong base in Finland, for instance in schools and libraries? Is the general awareness of Free Software noticeably present in local and national media?

Timo Jyrinki: I wouldn’t say strong, we’re too rich and clueless to actually benefit from the “country where Linux was developed” fame. It’s not very bad either, but we have a very thick network of proprietary deals and people involved in a relatively small market, to the extent that I wouldn’t currently bet on Finland leading in utilising Free Software. In recent news, there were plans to give a computer to every pupil in Finland, guess with which OS… not the one the country is known for.

On the brighter side, we have institutions like COSS (The Finnish Centre for Open Source Solutions) with 140+ company members, which bring Free Software to the business world as well as to the grass roots level. And on the grass roots level, Ubuntu is rocking harder in Finland than in many countries. Still, the masses need to be reached, and currently, it looks like attempts are being made to strike massive deals that that would prevent Free Software usage in schools and elsewhere. There are, however, many pioneering schools as well, who are doing huge cost savings, computer availability and teaching improvements using LTSP systems and such. But the scary thing is that it seems possible to do country-wide deals that undermine all these projects in Finland. We would need more politically active people. The common view among ourselves is that Finnish people quietly accept whatever is thrown at them.

SRE: In addition to your involvement in a range of Free Software projects, you also serve as the media contact for the Finnish Wikipedia. While involvement in Free Culture issues is a natural step for many Free Software advocates, it is not as often that it happens the other way around. How can we best help Free Software adoption among the millions of Wikipedia users?

Timo Jyrinki: By offering more Ogg Theora / Vorbis content on Wikimedia projects once Firefox 3.5 is released :). I think Wikipedia is already doing a lot to help Free Software adoption, simply because the ideals it’s founded on are that of Free Software. The people who are active in Wikipedia will eventually find out about the benefits of these ideals, which also are the reason why Wikipedia is a lasting effort, and will make more informed choices because of that information.

Regarding casual readers, I don’t think they learn much about Free Software from Wikipedia, but then again, even if only 0.1% of readers learn something, it’s a huge amount in the case of Wikipedia. The biggest problem is the fact that English lacks the word libre, and I guess it’s too non-common a word to actually use in the English Wikipedia as a loan word for the title of the site.

Many thanks to Timo for taking the time for this interview. More of his projects can be found on his homepage along with his CV and a nice collection of interesting links.