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An Open Source eReader that's Free of Corporate Restrictions is Exactly What I Want Right Now

posted by spiraldancing on Thursday January 30 2020, @06:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the there's-an-app-for-that dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Anonymous_Coward:

An Open Source eReader That's Free of Corporate Restrictions Is Exactly What I Want Right Now:

I get it. The Kindle and its ability to shop for and instantly buy books anywhere using wifi or Whispernet are incredibly convenient, and it’s what’s made Amazon’s hardware the obvious choice for consuming ebooks. But supporting awful companies like Amazon is getting harder and harder if you were born with a conscience, and right about now, an open source ebook reader, free of corporate restrictions, sounds like the perfect Kindle alternative.

A fully open-hardware eReader, it includes the following design specs: ARM Cortex M4 processor, 400x300 monochromatic resolution, microSD card reader, lithium-polymer rechargeable battery, audiobook-capable headphone jack, and audio-command-capable microphone.

The Open Book Project was born from a contest held by Hackaday and that encouraged hardware hackers to find innovative and practical uses for the Arduino-based Adafruit Feather development board ecosystem. The winner of that contest was the Open Book Project which has been designed and engineered from the ground up to be everything devices like the Amazon Kindle or Rakuten Kobo are not.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:28PM (1 child)

    by Freeman (732) on Thursday January 30 2020, @09:28PM (#951433) Journal

    Tor, and Baenbooks are DRM Free:

    And from there you get #1 New York Times bestselling writers like Brandon Sanderson, notably inspired by The Wheel of Time. You get communities like Tor.com, where readers have been talking non-stop about the fiction that excites them. You get authors like Jo Walton finding new fans by engaging in a substantive manner with those communities. Although we now have digital spaces to house this kind of interaction, it has always been taking place in the physical spaces of the science fiction/fantasy publishing community, Doherty argued. It is, in fact, “a connection they make naturally. Barriers, whether it’s DRM or something else, disrupt these natural connections.”

    In this context, the implications of DRM came off as a regressive step, especially when, as Doherty was quick to point out, Tor Books’ competition in the marketplace had already discarded DRM as regressive without suffering any ill effects:

            “Baen, which was a real pioneer in e-book publishing, has always been DRM-free. The language that Baen’s fans use in praising this, and in complaining about the rest of the industry, can be…bracing! And also passionate and articulate. And of course Baen is a major competitor in science fiction and fantasy. We certainly want the Tor customer to feel good about us, too.”

    https://www.tor.com/2014/05/28/tom-doherty-tor-books-book-expo-of-america-2014/ [tor.com]

    https://www.baen.com/ [baen.com]

    Also, some free books from Baen. https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2012 [baen.com]

    Then, there's the public domain titles from the likes of Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org] and Librivox https://librivox.org/ [librivox.org]

    The Internet Archive is a pretty good source, too for lots of DRM Free things. https://archive.org/ [archive.org]

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @01:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @01:58AM (#951551)

    I have a theory that SF readers are, on average, more intelligent, more ethical and more committed than the norm.
    It's a bit of the stereotype of the nerd, well paid tech job, less likely to have wife/kids. Much more disposable income. More likely to be invested in the community. These people are much more likely to support a DRM free ecosystem. They understand the concept of patronage, and feel obliged to support the authors they read. SF also tends more to series, and the Baen "First One Is Free" model works well for that. I am not sure it would work so well for a general publisher.