Android has the major barrier of extra complexity. It's refreshing to see a simple computer with a beginner-friendly development environment. It reminds me of drawing things pixel-by-pixel in QBasic when I was starting out. It's that kind of thing that really attracted me to programming in the first place.
For $49 you could get the much more capable PocketCHIP and for ease of use use PICO-8 until you're ready to use something else. You'd get color, a key pad, wireless connectivity, and a Debian-like userspace. Of course, it's ARM and not Arduino and it isn't the size of a credit card.
I'd also be getting something with an Allwinner chip in it. I try not to reward companies that violate copyright law.
If they'd built it around another company's SOC, I might have bought one already...but maybe not, because the inputs look like they'd be a pain to actually use.
I haven't followed the GPL concerns closely but I've been aware of them. I've not done the digging to confirm it for myself, but I keep hearing they're improving.
Here's some articles and forum posts about Allwinner and lemaker and their efforts to fix their violations.:
I'm not running out to buy all the Allwinner kit I can afford, but I do collect small computers. I have a Pine64 and will probably buy the 11" Pinetop. I have a CHIP and a PocketCHIP (including the CHIP that came in that). I also have an Onion2 on the way. These things go nicely with my HP LX95, LX100, LX200, Omnigo 100 ; Atari Portfolio ; Psion Series 2, Series 3, Series 3a, Series 5, Series 5MX; Casio Cassiopeia; Toshiba Libretto; Dialog Flybook; etc.
I was under the impression I was helping the Kickstarter for Next Thing Co. much more than rewarding Allwinner for what appeared to be past violations of the GPL that they seem to be addressing. Do you have some information for me about fresh violations or ongoing reticence about the older ones?
> I was under the impression I was helping the Kickstarter for Next Thing Co. much more than rewarding Allwinner
I feel like it's impossible to do one without doing the other. Maybe the reason that you'd support the KS is to help out Next Thing, but I can't escape the thought that ultimately some of my money would be going to Allwinner as well.
> Do you have some information for me about fresh violations or ongoing reticence about the older ones?
I haven't taken the time to actually audit their releases or anything, so I'm basing my opinion on the older issues, like the CedarX stuff in early 2015. They claimed to have fixed the code, but there was good evidence that they just renamed the offending functions and recompiled to hide what they'd done. Not to mention the "rootmydevice" issue from earlier this year. Even if I attribute those to sloppiness rather than maliciousness, I wouldn't want anything designed by them to be part of any kit I actually rely on for something.
Everyone has their own reasons for buying or not buying things. It sounds like some Allwinner-based equipment makes a nice addition to your collection, and I don't begrudge you that (not that it would matter if I did). I'm not a dedicated hardware collector, and I'm not severely constrained by the price of a more expensive processor, so I can afford to be ideologically picky. Other people are in different situations.
Well, I've got a couple Raspberry Pi devices, too. Those are kind of the darling of the small Linux device market, but Broadcom has had its run-ins with the FSF as well.
There's Mediatek in this market segment but I've heard they're worse than Allwinner by quite a bit (both technically and about the GPL, plus being tight-lipped with tech specs for developers unless you're buying tens of thousands of units).
Intel, Oracle, VMWare, Aldi, Best Buy, Samsung, Sony, Western Digital (so the 65C816 or 65C02 or... in all those NES and Atari clones at the drug store), AmLogic, and others have been involved in some alleged violations. Apple, AMD, and nVidia have not always been great friends of the GPL. Rockchip and Mediatek are both very closed about their chip specs and may not have any better record with the GPL either.
So do I buy Broadcom, Intel, Oracle, AMD, nVidia, Samsung, Apple's A8, Rockchip, Mediatek, or WDC processors? Freescale is now part of NXP, so maybe them? TI's retired OMAP line? And then I can build my own PCBs and put up a Kickstarter to hopefully recover the cost of the prototyping... and then get vilified about something or other.
I hope Allwinner is actually getting better about this. They're not making much money on my few units. Until I can get OpenRISC, RISC-V, or something from OpenCores on an SBC at a decent price I'm afraid the options are a bit limited. I guess I could buy IBM Power or Fujitsu SPARC-64 for larger things, but for the most part the desktop, workstation, and server markets are clouded with bad behavior, too.
