Samsung desperate? They open source their fw on nx300 and 200

Don't see why it's a sign of desperation. Why would it be?

The point of open sourcing firmware is the same as everything else a company does, to make money. If the idea of open firmware attracts users, then it means Samsung sells more cameras. It would not really affect the support teams, as nobody is going to support firmware you've modified yourself any more than Microsoft will support me if I make modifications to Windows.

I know there is a community around modified firmware on Canon gear, maybe Samsung want to cultivate the same thing.

I guess for a digital user it's a nice thought that if you want a feature, or a button repurposed, it's a technical issue which can be resolved. The alternative is that firmware development for a particular model is stopped to encourage the purchase of the next model.
 
thegman said:
Don't see why it's a sign of desperation. Why would it be?

The point of open sourcing firmware is the same as everything else a company does, to make money. If the idea of open firmware attracts users, then it means Samsung sells more cameras. It would not really affect the support teams, as nobody is going to support firmware you've modified yourself any more than Microsoft will support me if I make modifications to Windows.

I know there is a community around modified firmware on Canon gear, maybe Samsung want to cultivate the same thing.

I guess for a digital user it's a nice thought that if you want a feature, or a button repurposed, it's a technical issue which can be resolved. The alternative is that firmware development for a particular model is stopped to encourage the purchase of the next model.
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I have worked in the embedded sw industry for over 30 years.. The last thing u ever want to do is open source your propriety sw for the world to c. Yes the sw algo can and are patented.

The use of embedded Linux os started about maybe 8 to 10 years ago... And yes we do use open source libraries today. We will release back to open source community, those things that we have changed, but I have never heard of anyone ever releasing the complete embedded sw to open source except for situations where the company has abandoned the product..

In the normal product cycle u are going to patent a certain amount of sw algo, but there are certain ones u may decide not to.. Once the fw has been released for awhile, those items u did not patent are not allowed to..

Releasing the complete source code to open source is a support nightmare in terms of your own on-going fw updates to the camera vs what user x or y had on their specific camera. Or the additional cost for the support hotline trying to figure out what is wrong w/ the camera.

In essence there is a lot of hidden cost to this model, which is why companies would not normally do this..

The example u give, if I remember correctly was a situation where the fw was reverse engineered, very different then a company saying here is our source code.

Gary
 
Open source is a Good Thing (TM).

This move by Samsung is refreshing and progressive, especially in an age where many companies are claiming ever more propriety rights to their devices and control over the end-users' use of them.

Many companies do perceive benefits to an open source model, where they can leverage their own development efforts with those of contributors around the world. Many companies also perceive the growing demand for this philosophy among their customers, who choose products based on their freedom to use them as they choose, for 3rd party and contributor support that may not be forthcoming from the original vendor, and to avoid lock-in to proprietary technologies prone to obsolescence.

To give a personal example, I will not ever buy a Plustek scanner product, so long as they refuse to support usage on open source operating systems.
 
There are probably a least a dozen licenses in their code; probably only certain elements are truly open and there are likely restrictions, as done with (open license Linux-based) Android, a path Samsung has taken to capture 60% of the smartphone market.

A lot of the embedded market is moving to ARM chip based Android O/S. This looks like it my be a Exynos set. Pretty cool.

.
 
Some open source libraries demand that modifications to the library are published, or that
derived software built on them is made public.. It's entirely possible that this is the case for Samsung.
 
Very easy for Samsung to find out in camera if firmware has been user-modified or not; and adjust the support model accordingly. Therefore, I think opening the firmware will benefit them and allow cloning of the cameras by other vendors; it's one step towards making existing camera a standard platform.

Funny you should ask if Samsung is "desperate". Would be like asking if Intel is desperate ...

Roland.
 
pvdhaar said:
Some open source libraries demand that modifications to the library are published, or that
derived software built on them is made public.. It's entirely possible that this is the case for Samsung.
Click to expand...

Only the portion of the code base that is open source.... In this case, I believe it is the complete source code.

Gary
 
ferider said:
Very easy for Samsung to find out in camera if firmware has been user-modified or not; and adjust the support model accordingly. Therefore, I think opening the firmware will benefit them and allow cloning of the cameras by other vendors; it's one step towards making existing camera a standard platform.

Funny you should ask if Samsung is "desperate". Would be like asking if Intel is desperate ...

Roland.
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In the last two companies I worked for, our product managers and vp would never do this even if u put a gun to their heads.

When u are a customer call for something like a camera, how many customers would really admit that they have a non-supported camera fw. If the version info was never changed by the hacker, u can only depend on something like a specialized version check sum function to figure this out that I can think of off top of my head.

As I said in earlier posts, there are lot of hidden cost here..

Gary
 
Gary, with all respect, you seem to be perceiving this issue only from a company's perspective, in a paradigm where the company and customer are somehow believed to be mutually antagonistic.

In this model, the company invests time and energy and controls and policies to *prevent* customers from doing things with their products the company thinks they shouldn't want to do.

Now turn it around and try looking at this from the customer's perspective. Then: why shouldn't a company try to do everything it can to actually *help* its customers to do exactly whatever they want with their products?

Sure, it may be a challenge to the company to deliver. But after all, that is what the company is for, to deliver what the customer is paying for.

And some management does get this: the concept that delivers more value to the customer will ultimately deliver more profit to the company.
 
vitaly66 said:
And some management does get this: the concept that delivers more value to the customer will ultimately deliver more profit to the company.
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I think that's a great thought, but I'm not sure if it often works out that way, especially in the tech. industry.

Apple has reached incredible profitability by selling products which go to great lengths to limit what the user can do. The fact is most of the users don't care, they just want their tablet to play with. Those that do care probably just buy them anyway. The ones that care enough to do without that tablet represent a pretty small segment of the market I think.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with everything you're saying up until the last point, as it just does not seem to work out that way.
 
GaryLH said:
u can only depend on something like a specialized version check sum function to figure this out that I can think of off top of my head.
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That's what I was thinking about, combined with (to be hack proof) a binary comparison of the checksum code to a copy of said code on non-user accessible flash.

Roland.
 
Apple has reached incredible profitability by selling products which go to great lengths to limit what the user can do. The fact is most of the users don't care, they just want their tablet to play with. Those that do care probably just buy them anyway. The ones that care enough to do without that tablet represent a pretty small segment of the market I think.
Click to expand...

I would say the game with apple is still playing out. In particular, apple is getting beaten by the android platform in many markets. Instead of competing, they now invest in litigation. It is a sure roadmap to failure.
 
thegman said:
I think that's a great thought, but I'm not sure if it often works out that way, especially in the tech. industry.

Apple has reached incredible profitability by selling products which go to great lengths to limit what the user can do. The fact is most of the users don't care, they just want their tablet to play with. Those that do care probably just buy them anyway. The ones that care enough to do without that tablet represent a pretty small segment of the market I think.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with everything you're saying up until the last point, as it just does not seem to work out that way.
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Both ways can be work. And you can cater to the people who don't care, and the ones who do care, at the same time. Just a couple of examples:

There is a huge and thriving community around building custom firmware and all kinds of things for Android phones (like http://forum.xda-developers.com/), thanks to the open source nature of Android.

Linksys' (now Cisco) WRT54G series of wifi routers is still very popular thanks to its Linux-based firmware which allowed the creation of very sophisticated third-party firmware.

Open source camera firmware is something I've wanted for a long time. Just look at what people have been able to do with the GH2 hacks and the Magic Lantern add-on for Canon cameras, without access to the source code - and imagine the possibilities... :)
 
vitaly66 said:
I would say the game with apple is still playing out. In particular, apple is getting beaten by the android platform in many markets. Instead of competing, they now invest in litigation. It is a sure roadmap to failure.
Click to expand...

Apple is indeed getting 'beaten' by Android, but Apple has never been about market share, you'll never get a large market share when you don't appeal to the price consciousness consumer.
Apple, like all companies, is about profit, in this,they are spectacularly successful, far more so than Google with Android.
 
vitaly66 said:
I would say the game with apple is still playing out. In particular, apple is getting beaten by the android platform in many markets. Instead of competing, they now invest in litigation. It is a sure roadmap to failure.
Click to expand...

Apple makes more profit on smartphones than all other vendors combined.

Show me a company -- Samsung included -- that would not willingly trade their market position with Apple's, and I'll show you a company whose board of directors is looking for new management.
 
Speaking of being able to "do things" with the products you buy, how many Android phone models have been supported by major software updates subsequent to release? Answer: not bloody many. The vast majority of those models are abandoned rapidly by both the manufacturers and the telco carriers.
 
While I understand the reluctance at a business level, I come from an industry with a long history of releasing source for people to modify. Computer games companies started releasing code for people to 'mod' a long time ago. It led to something of a golden age for the industry; it led to new projects, new companies, it rallied people around the studios which released source, led to the development of new tools, etc. Unfortunately the industry advanced to the point where the entry barrier 'to do something interesting' became too high; instead people focus on smaller projects and markets.

I certainly understand the complexity and risk here but some company is going to do this and have it pay big dividends when people start experimenting and innovating. Its a risk but it has a shot at paying off.
 
The GPL license under which the Linux kernel that they use is licensed under requires that the source code be available. Samsung isn't desperate, the are just required to do so at least for some components, and therefore did.

Now I haven't downloaded the humongus file yet, but I'm pretty sure that what they released isn't useful to rebuild a complete firmware image that would be functional.

BTW the do that for their phone, for BRD players and other devices including TVs.
 
I agree, if it is just the stuff that is required by the gpl then it is mute issue, but if it is the complete fw source code, that is a completely different ball game.

Gary
 
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