

From Gongkai to Open Source - kentlyons
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297

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Wogef
>The West has a “broadcast” view of IP and ownership... China has a “network”
view of IP and ownership

Probably the best way I’ve heard it described.

>You do have to read or speak Chinese to get it

This statement kind of bothers me. Mandarin is great- loads of fun to learn
and speak. My problem is that I meet a lot of highly skilled professionals who
don’t do more in China because knowledge of Chinese is often held up as an
“obvious” prerequisite. I have met countless people who move here and waste a
year with flashcards instead of making things because they are convinced that
being bilingual will make them successful in China (hint: it won’t). Investing
your time in doing things the Chinese can’t do very well will make you
successful in China- and there is no shortage of bilingual Chinese.

You can get the Mediatek MT6260 (or just about anything else) without speaking
Chinese, by using Google/Baidu/Bing Translate and relying on the spectacular
patience of Chinese people for these things. Will it be a little embarrassing?
Sure. Should you learn Chinese? Of course- but should you give up on doing
things in the amazing development environment of China just because you don’t
have a gift for languages? Certainly not.

That being said- Bunnie is the Man

~~~
siscia
What Chinese can't do very well in your opinion ?

~~~
Wogef
>What Chinese can't do very well in your opinion ?

Would be a very long post, it depends in which cities, and which age groups
(there is a huge cultural gap with far more risk-adverse older Chinese who
grew up during the Cultural Revolution) and generalizations are always a bad
idea.

That being said I’ll take a stab at it- usually Mainland Chinese are not so
great at problem solving, but they are fantastic at making the solution better
and cheaper (idea Iteration over Genesis). There’s the expression "别在孔子面前卖文章”
roughly "Don't sell your essay in front of Confucius” akin to our "Don't try
to teach your Grandma to suck eggs”. Coming up with something new- or
imagining you can carries a certain air of arrogance to it. This does not let
itself to encouraging creativity. While this attitude has obviously led to
accusations of China just cloning products, it’s also made many Chinese to be
enthusiastic proponents of Open Source (although not contributors for the
above reasons). So new solutions and creative problem solving will likely be
something they rely on foreigners and overseas educated Chinese to do for some
time.

Software, UI/UX, marketing and outsourcing are still comparatively weak.
Nearly everything is C++, Java and PHP with only a tiny sprinkling of other
languages. Programmers are held in fairly low esteem and not terribly well
paid.

Service at one point was a weak point but in the past two years has started to
pull ahead of the West significantly. Aliexpress is the tip of the spear as
far as Chinese direct sales posing a threat to Western businesses and it’s
service is not even close to what you can expect from Taobao.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
My wife is a Chinese UI/UX designer, and the circle of colleagues is small in
a big city like Beijing. Programmers are in demand and many now know C# and
even Scala; their pay has definitely gone up a lot in the last 5 years.

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userbinator
_Gongkai is more a reference to the fact that copyrighted documents, sometimes
labeled “confidential” and “proprietary”, are made known to the public and
shared overtly, but not necessarily according to the letter of the law. [...]
this sharing of documents helps to promote the sales of their chips_

That what I've always thought too about why it's often much easier to find
complete datasheets for Chinese components than Western ones - at some point,
someone leaked them to the public, but the company either doesn't know because
they're not the type to send lawyers after everyone, or knows and doesn't care
because it's a sort of implicit advertisement.

I have an unbranded Android device based on the MT6589, and the buying
decision was influenced partly because I could relatively easily find the full
datasheet for it
("MT6589_HSPA+_Smartphone_Application_Processor_Datasheet.pdf", in case you're
curious) along with lots of other very detailed information including
schematics.

The availability of a large number of different phones based on the same
SoC/reference platform has also lead to a big repair ecosystem - Bunnie has
written about this before:
[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=283](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=283)

~~~
interact2
Could you share that MT6589 Datasheet? I'm unable to find anything that's not
password protected.

I also have an mt6589 lying around and would love to start hacking on it.

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userbinator
The password should be 2505581021.

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mdaniel
The file that I found via search[0] didn't accept that password. Is there
perhaps an alternate link or an alternate password?

0 =
[http://pan.baidu.com/wap/link?uk=1647171434&shareid=240536&t...](http://pan.baidu.com/wap/link?uk=1647171434&shareid=240536&third=0)
Its md5 is

    
    
        dd9c04982c692e17e17d11cf389b1da0 MT6589_HSPA+_Smartphone_Application_Processor_Datasheet.pdf

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ChuckMcM
This is the thing that I ponder most about. Bunnie does an excellent job of
describing how massive and rapid innovation can happen when data is available.
I run into the roadblocks all the time when I try to approach western chip
manufacturers for data about their chips. If you want to hack hardware these
days you are better off knowing Chinese than you are knowing English because
the most up to date and available information on the parts you want to build
with, is in Chinese. It is frustrating for English speaking engineers.

~~~
jmnicolas
Guess what : the rest of the world has had to learn English for decades to be
able to access interesting knowledge.

I'm French and these days I came to the point that I don't even bother to
Google anything related to programming in French. I just Google it in English
and now I find useful answers (thank you Stackoverflow).

I guess the wheel is turning and soon we will have to learn a bit of Chinese
to access fresh knowledge. The barrier of entry is higher though (it doesn't
even involve the same parts of the brain than other languages).

~~~
akiselev
Chuck isn't complaining about the language, he's complaining about the
hostility of big IC manufacturers to sharing their data. For all but the most
popular/trivial chips, you have to sign an NDA with the manufacturer which
means you have to first get them to give you the time of day, which isn't
possible if you don't have large volumes and plans to purchase tons of chips
from them.

Except for companies like Alwinner (which isn't "western" by any means), most
of the documentation _is_ in English but getting it is so hard we usually have
to fallback to Chinese versions, which are shared more easily due to legal and
cultural norms.

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asb
If you're at 31C3 and interested in an open-to-the-RTL platform, which (yes,
I'm biased) seems the logical next step, bunnie is leading a discussion on
lowRISC tomorrow (Monday) at 2pm.

[https://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/wiki/Session:LowRISC_Dis...](https://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/wiki/Session:LowRISC_Discussion)

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Renaud
I've done minor reverse-engineering in the past but this is really taking it
to a level of dedication that I find awe-inspiring.

The whole GongKai ecosystem is fascinating. In pure Chinese pragmatism, it's
messy, relies on the power of guanxi (the force that lubricates
relationships), ignores outside-imposed rules, and is terribly effective.

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fest
Keeping latest-generation ICs out of reach for hobbyists and small startups is
quite usual practice from many of manufacturers geared towards chips going
into consumer devices.

Another example is gigabit ethernet- it has been around for 15 years, yet I
still can't buy a gigabit-capable switch IC on Digikey. The part I need does
exist but manufacturers either want $10k pre-payment before even giving at
least partial documentation or the sales cycle is several weeks at best.

~~~
userbinator
I wonder if Broadcom had anything to do with that...

Realtek made the RTL8366/RTL8369 which have plenty of info available and you
can get from Aliexpress for ~$20 each.

~~~
fest
I didn't even bother trying to contact Broadcom.

We were aiming for 3-port (2 PHYs, 1 MII) switches, and both Realtek and
Marvel do make them (Realtek part is also available on aliexpress).

Designing commercial devices (even for small production runs) based on key
part available only in grey market seems to be a slippery road. Unless you
live in China and can talk to vendors about previous and potential future
availability of the chips ;(

~~~
akiselev
If you can get someone experienced to handle logistics, it isn't that bad. I
know a few companies that routinely turn to grey market parts when s __t hits
the fan for their mass manufactured product supply chains.

In my experience, Marvell is one of the worst to work with but their
fabricators make a lot of grey market copies of Marvel's chips during off
hours. If you can find a reliable source (fabricator who makes chips for
Marvell during the day and grey market copies during the graveyard shift), it
will usually be pretty reliable.

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CamperBob2

       Thus empowered by our fair use rights, we decided to 
       embark on a journey to reverse engineer the Mediatek 
       MT6260. It’s a 364 MHz, ARM7EJ-S, backed by 8MiB of RAM 
       and dozens of peripherals, from the routine I2C, SPI, 
       PWM and UART to tantalizing extras like an LCD + 
       touchscreen controller, audio codec with speaker 
       amplifier, battery charger, USB, Bluetooth, and of 
       course, GSM. The gray market prices it around $3/unit in 
       single quantities. You do have to read or speak Chinese 
       to get it, and supply has been a bit spotty lately due 
       to high Q4 demand, but we’re hoping the market will open 
       up a bit as things slow down for Chinese New Year.
    

No shortage of them on aliexpress.com, and I don't see any requirement for
Chinese literacy...

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rektide
Reminds of me the recent, thread on "why open source hardware is hard", whose
article was written from the point of a view of a (Western) company having a
hard time finding value in making it's work open source. He's looking- as an
individual entity- for return for his sharing.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8770732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8770732)

Bunnie crystallizes terms where we can begin to see a response- while the "why
hard" author contemplated the traditional Western unidirection flow, Bunnie
characterizes a loose network not of product co-development and impacts to
bottom-line, but comprised largely of support and availability. The Gongkai
model makes available means and platform, rather than providing the
conventional expected of open source: development.

Thanks as ever Bunnie not just for the hard work and amazing worklogs, but
also for helping pull together good framing to help answer "why oshw is hard"
with.

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helper
Here's the raw 31C3 video that goes along with this (it starts about 16
minutes in):
[http://streaming.media.ccc.de/relive/6156/](http://streaming.media.ccc.de/relive/6156/)

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notthetup
Damn I missed it!

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ash
Video of 31c3 talk:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=msrTR3hNDQM](https://youtube.com/watch?v=msrTR3hNDQM)

