OSSC Wolf Edition - Audio over HDMI

[Pasky]

Genuinely don't see the problem some people have with mailing/waiting lists, surely it's a lot fairer than just putting stuff up for sale as/when you get it and letting it be a mad rush? Taking big lumps of cash for pre orders has tax implications (I have to declare it as something on my tax return after all) which could mean it gets taxed as profit when it's not, further pushing up costs and causing issues

Sounds like personal issues. If you can't understand why consumers don't like being put on a waiting list to purchase something they want, you have issues. What you're really saying is, it's convenient for you as a small time seller making money off an open source product to make a mailing list so you don't have to dump investment into it and be left with stock that goes unsold. Which is fine, but don't dance around the, "Gee I wonder why everyone hates waiting lists."

You're just making excuses.

[Voultar]

Matt, you've got a great store and you do a lot of good for the community...but if you end up being the UK distributor of these, please, no more mailing lists. I get at LEAST 20 emails a week asking why people can't just pre-order one of these and ask why I'd so prominently feature a product on my website that no one can get. I understand why you did it for the first batch, but (as we discussed publicly on the podcast), you need to switch to a better model. I absolutely vote for you to be the UK distributor, but not the only distributor and in-stock or pre-order sales only.

Genuinely don't see the problem some people have with mailing/waiting lists, surely it's a lot fairer than just putting stuff up for sale as/when you get it and letting it be a mad rush? Taking big lumps of cash for pre orders has tax implications (I have to declare it as something on my tax return after all) which could mean it gets taxed as profit when it's not, further pushing up costs and causing issues.

If I didn't have a waiting list you'd still be getting the same ranting e-mails from people because the units would still sell out, just like Marshall gets whined at because the N64 HDMI's are sold out, Deunan gets moaned at because GDEmu is always sold out... etc etc and so on.

That's like saying "there's no point in having different types of cars". Having an open source project that people customize and make their own version is awesome. I totally understand if most people want one type though...and if that's the case, maybe do a bulk pre-order and get the price way down...but the thought of different versions the suit people's needs in different ways is very cool.

Sort of, but for the numbers of units you're talking in this kind of niche market, making dozens of variations on the same thing just doesn't make sense. If you don't want SPDIF for instance, you might save $5 in components or something, but by making a batch of 100 without SPDIF and 400 with you lose out on economies of scale. Likewise with every little variation you do you have to go through prototyping, testing etc before it's safe to order a big batch.

Well, you can call me one of the whiners. I've tried to get my hands on an OSSC from the very beginning. I had some pretty cool development ideas, but nobody's been able to help me secure one. The mailing list is a poor distribution model, that's just my opinion. And it's doing you more harm than good.

You really don't want variations of the OSSC competing with each other? Why is that? Isn't that the spirit of Open Source? I think that's bullshit. Everyone should be able to contribute with plenty of channels of distribution.

I've never seen an open source product be so gridlocked and monopolized before.

[BuckoA51]

https://www.trycelery.com/

Looks promising, it supports Stripe, 2% per transaction is acceptable (though that'll be on top of what Stripe take already). It'll no doubt need some bespoke coding and development to integrate into my current store framework though.

My priority was getting multi-currency working (for accepting Euro payments) but my current developer seems to have gone AWOL, so if anyone knows a good trustworthy and experienced Wordpress/PHP developer do let me know (wouldn't trust myself to code all the glue for that )

I will add it to my to-do list, obviously getting quite busy here again at the moment, but yes it is about time there was something that could easily handle the whole thing.

Sounds like personal issues. If you can't understand why consumers don't like being put on a waiting list to purchase something they want, you have issues. What you're really saying is, it's convenient for you as a small time seller making money off an open source product to make a mailing list so you don't have to dump investment into it and be left with stock that goes unsold. Which is fine, but don't dance around the, "Gee I wonder why everyone hates waiting lists."

You're just making excuses.

It would actually be a huge chunk of saved time and admin and even cost for me to not have a waiting list and just go "here you go everyone grab a unit now!"

I believe it to be a lot fairer if people can put their name down on an orderly list and get an invite. Batches are already as big as my life savings would allow, they're not based on expected demand.

Some sort of delayed charging mechanism would be the best solution if it can be integrated into the store front.

Well, you can call me one of the whiners. I've tried to get my hands on an OSSC from the very beginning.

Well what number are you on the waiting list? If you should have had an invitation but didn't get one let me know.

[RGB0b]

Woah, woah, woah...this is getting derailed quick. My fault...this should be moved to the main OSSC thread, not the Wolf Edition thread. This thread should be about the discussion of the new revision OSSC. Sorry (any admins want to move the posts?).

What you're really saying is, it's convenient for you as a small time seller making money off an open source product to make a mailing list so you don't have to dump investment into it and be left with stock that goes unsold. Which is fine, but don't dance around the, "Gee I wonder why everyone hates waiting lists."

I've never seen an open source product be so gridlocked and monopolized before.

Just to be clear, I defend Matt 100% in how he started the sale of this project - He safely and successfully got the first batch of a brand new product out to people using his own money. Not releasing the gerbers until Matt was paid back seemed fair to me; That's a TON of risk and I hope he made enough profit to make it worthwhile for him...and I hope he and ANYONE who spends their time making and supporting these open source projects is able to make a bit of profit too. My question still has not been answered though: Now that Matt's investment was saved, is this open source or not? Can someone please respond in the main OSSC thread about that?

[Harrumph]

I have a bit hard time to see the absolute advantage of pre-order over waiting list. Technically, they both fulfill the goals of 1) having an ordered queue 2) gauging demand to optimize the wholesale batch aquisition.
Sure I get that with pre-orders, there is immediate cash to finance the wholesale purchase, but in the case of OSSC, shouldn't they already be over this hump (ie cash should be there from previous sales)? What am I missing here?

But anyway, if that celery thing works out though, then great!

Also Bucko, I don't think anyone is making a case for piece-meal sales with limited window for purchase. The argument is based on unlimited pre-orders vs waiting list.

[Pasky]

Woah, woah, woah...this is getting derailed quick. My fault...this should be moved to the main OSSC thread, not the Wolf Edition thread. This thread should be about the discussion of the new revision OSSC. Sorry (any admins want to move the posts?).

Just to be clear, I defend Matt 100% in how he started the sale of this project - He safely and successfully got the first batch of a brand new product out to people using his own money. Not releasing the gerbers until Matt was paid back seemed fair to me; That's a TON of risk and I hope he made enough profit to make it worthwhile for him...and I hope he and ANYONE who spends their time making and supporting these open source projects is able to make a bit of profit too. My question still has not been answered though: Now that Matt's investment was saved, is this open source or not? Can someone please respond in the main OSSC thread about that?

I don't understand how someone investing their own money to make their own money into an open source project gives him the green flag to keep it on lock down until he's made it back. You understand how selfish that is? He approached the creator, and locked it down for his own purposes. What about someone else that perhaps could have made and sold it to the community? But that's okay because good 'ol Bucko had everyone covered with the mailing list! Let's not forget there's been several batches made by him, surely it took all of them to make his investment back.

Anyways, that's the last I'll say in this thread about that subject.

I'm looking forward to this Wolf Edition and will be watching closely. Very interested in buying or making (whichever turns out to be easier) one for myself.

[BuckoA51]

Most of my investment went back into the business and I'm still 20k in debt, but it's great to do these things for the supportive community I love

Seriously though, Markus and I do a lot of after sales support and whatnot and what we really didn't want was cheap Chinese or other clones coming along and people buying those, paying neither of us a dime and then expecting our full after sales support.

Wolf Edition is the kind of thing we both DID want to see by making the product mostly open source The gerbers and whatnot were always available if people asked for them.

Also Bucko, I don't think anyone is making a case for piece-meal sales with limited window for purchase. The argument is based on unlimited pre-orders vs waiting list.

Yeah I get that, but it's not like I can just click my fingers and make that happen, the store software and payment provider I have don't support that without something extra to add it. I can't just store your credit card on some database on my website. The service RetroRGB linked to looks promising though.

[Pasky]

Most of my investment went back into the business and I'm still 20k in debt, but it's great to do these things for the supportive community I love

Seriously though, Markus and I do a lot of after sales support and whatnot and what we really didn't want was cheap Chinese or other clones coming along and people buying those, paying neither of us a dime and then expecting our full after sales support.

Wolf Edition is the kind of thing we both DID want to see by making the product mostly open source

"cheap Chinese"

Where did you have your PCB's made mate?

[BuckoA51]

They're made in China mate, but not on the uber cheap. I also hand test (almost) each one before dispatching them.

[Xyga]

Zomg people, I totally see why this is frustrating for those who have been waiting a very long time, but I can easily guess the OSSC isn't yet even close to be a business of a size that woud allow a small store manager to stock enough of the product in advance so the orders would be fulfilled continuously without much delay if any.
If I was loaded I would totally finance that sort of stuff to kick it forward (asking only for a microscopic percentage :p), but I'm the poorest business angel in the world lol. ><

[RGB0b]

Matt, I'm not going to let this go, so you might as well just address the "open source" comments. In my opinion, I think it would be completely okay if you and Markus both posted here and said: "It's closed source. We're changing the name to 'MSC' for Markus Scan Converter and people are welcome to the code for the firmware, but that's it". It was you guys' time and money, so you should do whatever you'd like with it...

...but calling it the open source scan converter and then letting one person work on it but not another is NOT open source. I'm genuinely excited about the Wolf edition and I will definitely buy one...but if you're not going to allow other people to open branches and sell their own, it's NOT OPEN SOURCE. Period.

Worried about support? Require an order number before responding to emails. If they can't provide it, send them to the shmups thread and let the open source community support the open source hardware. Worried about Chinese clones? You might lose a bit of sales from that, but most people would rather buy locally and support members of the community. Plus if there's major issues with the clones, you get to post a big ol' "I told you so".

I'm sorry to talk about this here, but I've spent the past year defending you and Markus' decision to not open up the hardware...and now it's open, but only to one person. What gives?

[BuckoA51]

There was some (unconfirmed) sales figures that suggested the Framemeister did about 7k units worldwide, so that's what we based our estimations on, but yeah being a small business in a niche like this you do tend to get constrained by available cashflow.

and now it's open, but only to one person. What gives?

I thought I explained this on your podcast, if people get in touch with Markus they can get the gerbers and other files if they just explain what they want to do with them. That's always been the case, there was no exclusivity period for me or anyone else. How open it is is up to Markus at the end of the day.

[citrus3000psi]

Matt, I'm not going to let this go, so you might as well just address the "open source" comments. In my opinion, I think it would be completely okay if you and Markus both posted here and said: "It's closed source. We're changing the name to 'MSC' for Markus Scan Converter and people are welcome to the code for the firmware, but that's it". It was you guys' time and money, so you should do whatever you'd like with it...

...but calling it the open source scan converter and then letting one person work on it but not another is NOT open source. I'm genuinely excited about the Wolf edition and I will definitely buy one...but if you're not going to allow other people to open branches and sell their own, it's NOT OPEN SOURCE. Period.

Worried about support? Require an order number before responding to emails. If they can't provide it, send them to the shmups thread and let the open source community support the open source hardware. Worried about Chinese clones? You might lose a bit of sales from that, but most people would rather buy locally and support members of the community. Plus if there's major issues with the clones, you get to post a big ol' "I told you so".

I'm sorry to talk about this here, but I've spent the past year defending you and Markus' decision to not open up the hardware...and now it's open, but only to one person. What gives?

Here are the 1.5 schematics.

https://www.niksula.hut.fi/~mhiienka/os ... ematic.pdf

[Voultar]

There was some (unconfirmed) sales figures that suggested the Framemeister did about 7k units worldwide, so that's what we based our estimations on, but yeah being a small business in a niche like this you do tend to get constrained by available cashflow.

and now it's open, but only to one person. What gives?

I thought I explained this on your podcast, if people get in touch with Markus they can get the gerbers and other files if they just explain what they want to do with them. That's always been the case, there was no exclusivity period for me or anyone else. How open it is is up to Markus at the end of the day.

I've never heard of an open source license that allows you to discriminate against who gets to play, and who doesn't.

What license is the OSSC under, specifically? There's a very simple answer to that question.

[kel]

Matt, I'm not going to let this go, so you might as well just address the "open source" comments. In my opinion, I think it would be completely okay if you and Markus both posted here and said: "It's closed source. We're changing the name to 'MSC' for Markus Scan Converter and people are welcome to the code for the firmware, but that's it". It was you guys' time and money, so you should do whatever you'd like with it...

...but calling it the open source scan converter and then letting one person work on it but not another is NOT open source. I'm genuinely excited about the Wolf edition and I will definitely buy one...but if you're not going to allow other people to open branches and sell their own, it's NOT OPEN SOURCE. Period.

Worried about support? Require an order number before responding to emails. If they can't provide it, send them to the shmups thread and let the open source community support the open source hardware. Worried about Chinese clones? You might lose a bit of sales from that, but most people would rather buy locally and support members of the community. Plus if there's major issues with the clones, you get to post a big ol' "I told you so".

I'm sorry to talk about this here, but I've spent the past year defending you and Markus' decision to not open up the hardware...and now it's open, but only to one person. What gives?

Everything is there that you need to design your own. As citrus3000psi just pointed out the schematics are available to everyone. The only thing that has been kept back as far as I can see is the Gerbers for Markus's original PCB layout and as Matt pointed out if anyone wants them then they can ask Markus directly for them.

[BuckoA51]

I've never heard of an open source license that allows you to discriminate against who gets to play, and who doesn't.

Then you've not read many open source license agreements There are plenty of clauses in most open source licenses, some forbid commercial re-use entirely without a prior agreement. See Retron 5 case for an example, they took an open source emulator and used it in a commercial project. Just because it's open source doesn't mean people can do whatever they damn well please with it. You can't change a couple of lines in Ubuntu and (legally) resell it as your own OS, for example. That doesn't stop it being open source in the slightest.

I think Markus has been more than generous with what he has made available to people and the whole "ask nicely and you shall receive" is absolutely fine. It's his work he's entitled to do that.

What license is the OSSC under, specifically? There's a very simple answer to that question.

I don't know to be honest, the Wiki is down at the moment it (may?) have been on there?

[DiegoPonga]

Hi! This is a very interesting device, actually! This is quite thrilling, since OSSC is open source. I hope we have news on both this Wolf and other iterations!

I don't know if maybe the thread is going to another direction, but I would love to ask one question about the future development of

If there is eventually implementation for HDMI 2.1 and/or DisplayPort for OSSC, would it be possible to use some adaptive sync technologies? Would it require just some tweaks on firmware or would it take lots of hours of development?

I recently opened a thread around here and I realized it would be incredible if I can get a VRR display connected to an adaptive-sync version of OSSC. That would mean GameBoy Advance games (its display used to work at 59.73Hz) would no longer suffer some graphical flaws. For instance, Street Fighter III used to run at 59.58fps, which made some problems if emulated in MAME because on modern LCDs could mean some lag and/or some stutter as some people reported over Shoryuken, which is unacceptable for such a competitive game.

I know this is not a must for almost anybody and I understand VRR is far from being a priority for many people I also know that VRR is not that massified... Really, I'm aware.

On the other hand, if the goal of OSSC is versatility for old games, and replacing CRTs by modern displays, I would love to see something like this.

[Voultar]

I've never heard of an open source license that allows you to discriminate against who gets to play, and who doesn't.

Then you've not read many open source license agreements There are plenty of clauses in most open source licenses, some forbid commercial re-use entirely without a prior agreement. See Retron 5 case for an example, they took an open source emulator and used it in a commercial project. Just because it's open source doesn't mean people can do whatever they damn well please with it. You can't change a couple of lines in Ubuntu and (legally) resell it as your own OS, for example. That doesn't stop it being open source in the slightest.

I think Markus has been more than generous with what he has made available to people and the whole "ask nicely and you shall receive" is absolutely fine. It's his work he's entitled to do that.

What license is the OSSC under, specifically? There's a very simple answer to that question.

I don't know to be honest, the Wiki is down at the moment it (may?) have been on there?

I have read plenty. And yet, you haven't answered my question.. If you knew what I was asking, you could have spared yourself a paragraph of explanation.

[RGB0b]

Ugh...this is exhausting.

Everything is there that you need to design your own. As citrus3000psi just pointed out the schematics are available to everyone. The only thing that has been kept back as far as I can see is the Gerbers for Markus's original PCB layout and as Matt pointed out if anyone wants them then they can ask Markus directly for them.

I think Markus has been more than generous with what he has made available to people and the whole "ask nicely and you shall receive" is absolutely fine. It's his work he's entitled to do that.

I'm not disagreeing with either of you. Sending people the necessary files to make your own and sending people the files needed to EDIT the project is not the same thing though. He was always willing to send the gerbers to anyone who wanted to make their own, but wouldn't send the verilog or kicad files.

So...it's a closed source project that Markus and Matt are nice enough to share with most people who want to build their own and only some that want to edit. Closed source. End of discussion.

I don't have a problem with that, but stop misleading people.

[BuckoA51]

He was always willing to send the gerbers to anyone who wanted to make their own, but wouldn't send the verilog or kicad files.

I genuinely don't know anything about that, that would be his decision alone. To say it's not open source because not every scrap of design file is available is a bit much I think though, but whatever, I don't want to argue and nit pick semantics.

[Voultar]

He was always willing to send the gerbers to anyone who wanted to make their own, but wouldn't send the verilog or kicad files.

I genuinely don't know anything about that, that would be his decision alone. To say it's not open source because not every scrap of design file is available is a bit much I think though, but whatever, I don't want to argue and nit pick semantics.

That's not nitpicking or semantics, that's reality.

[kel]

The sad part is that all this fighting over whether or not it is open source because Markus hasn't given his Kicad files to anyone is only going to help discourage him from releasing anything in the future. Just be happy with what's available.

[BuckoA51]

Yes I quite agree, it seems absurd to have to be defending someone like him on here, considering everything he's done to make such an awesome product.

[Pasky]

Yes I quite agree, it seems absurd to have to be defending someone like him on here, considering everything he's done to make such an awesome product.

You're deflecting, no one is attacking Marqs.

[BuckoA51]

Well, I didn't name the device, nor do I even have possession of these supposedly missing Kicad files or whatever it is people say isn't out there, let alone decide who gets them or doesn't. You're welcome to attack or criticise me I don't mind.

[orange808]

Yes I quite agree, it seems absurd to have to be defending someone like him on here, considering everything he's done to make such an awesome product.

You've both done awesome things. The OSSC is remarkable.

We all agree on that.

[db-electronics]

The sad part is that all this fighting over whether or not it is open source because Markus hasn't given his Kicad files to anyone is only going to help discourage him from releasing anything in the future. Just be happy with what's available.

Actually it does matter quite a bit exactly which license it is because some licenses are very specific in stating that you MUST provide source and cannot prevent others from being able to modify said source. It's a bit of a grey area in terms of hardware in defining exactly what constitutes source - but to me it's clear that gerbers and schematics are output files generated from the source. Providing schematics or gerbers is akin to providing binaries - sure one could work backwards from there but that is not source and in fact getting much closer to reverse engineering than open source philosophy.

Why does this matter? Well, I for one, before approaching this project, would greatly appreciate what the exact licensing is for both hardware and firmware. Firmware is clear, it's on Github. But there's been alot of speculation from people on here as to what the license is. Unfortunately, no answer has been provided. This discourages me 100% from attempting to approach or contribute to the project.

Whatever the terms are, and I do hope we get a clear answer, I just wish they were written directly on the schematics and gerbers. There is ALOT of talent in our community, this project has the potential to have many branches / contributors. I sure hope it becomes that.

[Voultar]

Just to be clear, I don't think anyone is attacking Marqs in any respect. Criticisms over a faux open source license (or lack thereof) isn't baseless and without warrant. I'm certainly not trying to disparage anyone. Let's not take things out of context.

[kel]

It's not out of context, it's reality

[Voultar]

Sigh.. My point exactly.. At any rate, this offshoot of the OSSC looks really good. A lot of nice features and additions that people will most enjoy.