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posted by janrinok on Monday August 01 2016, @05:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the over-to-you! dept.

The goal of the EOMA (Embedded Open Modular Architecture) project is to introduce the idea of being ethically responsible about both the ecological and the financial resources required to design, manufacture, acquire and maintain our personal computing devices. The EOMA68 standard is a freely-accessible, royalty-free, unencumbered hardware standard formulated and tested over the last five years around the ultra-simple philosophy of "just plug it in: it will work".

With devices built following this standard, one can upgrade the CPU-card (consisting of CPU, RAM and some local storage) of a device while keeping the same housing (e.g. laptop). One can also use the CPU-card in different devices (e.g. unplug CPU-card from laptop, plug into desktop); or use a replaced/discarded CPU-card from a laptop for NAS storage or a micro-server. There are housings currently available for a laptop (can be 3D-printed in full, or in part to replace parts that break) and a micro-desktop; and there are plans for others like routers or tablets in the future.

There are multiple articles talking about this project and analyzing the hardware, for example from ThinkPenguin, CNXSoft or EngadgetNG. There is also a recent live-streamed video introducing the project.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @08:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @08:02PM (#382788)

    They think there's a chance since they'll be avoiding the MALI drivers entirely, or not even wring the pins or something. They're explanation was that they should get the endorsement if it's not even possible for users to accidentally use the offending component.

  • (Score: 1) by lkcl on Tuesday August 02 2016, @07:44PM

    by lkcl (6308) on Tuesday August 02 2016, @07:44PM (#383283)

    They think there's a chance since they'll be avoiding the MALI drivers entirely, or not even wring the pins or something. They're explanation was that they should get the endorsement if it's not even possible for users to accidentally use the offending component.

    that's a very close approximation, yes, which needs very little additional clarification to be an accurate summary. substitute "The *FSF's* position" for the word "They", "Their" for the words "They are" which were shortened to "They're" ... remove the 2nd use of the word "even", and you need to substitute "average completely non-technical point-and-click-only end-user" for the word "users"... a few other things and you're good to go. so let's do that:

    The FSF's position is that there's a chance since they'll be leaving out the MALI kernel drivers entirely, such that the memory-mapped MALI hardware is totally undetectable from userspace. Their explanation was that they should get the endorsement if it's not possible for average completely non-technical point-and-click-only end-users to accidentally use the offending component, or even be able to tell that it exists.

    further clarification is that as far as the FSF is concerned, technically-minded end-users can look after themselves, and can make well-informed decisions. technically-minded end-users are capable of discerning the difference between "free" and "non-free". it's *everyone else* that the FSF's position takes care of.