DM42 is now open-source!

[Waon Shinyoe]

(04-08-2018 05:22 PM)Michael de Estrada Wrote:  For example, I bought a dozen new Victor V12 clones of the HP 12c, so that I could save wear and tear on my classic HP 12c.

However, Victor is an old American company...[source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Technology] yet they are now selling cheap Chinese OEM products. What a pity ; )

V12 is really not a good example - how many of them have you ever seen? I've never seen a single one in my whole life personally (I'm also Chinese. Live in America currently.)

There are a lot of clones of CASIO fx-82MS in both countries. They are being sold in bookstores, supermarkets, etc. That will be a good example of what people is willing to copy - those with a large market. Hundreds of thousands. As for RPN calculators... really, it's merely a history. Even ten years ago they were already dead in consumers' market. It's market share is close to none.

And it really makes little sense to talk about how opening the source of DM42 can increase the risk of being cloned - DM42 is based on STM32. Easy enough for most reverse engineering companies to crack without its source code. And it's also relatively easy to build one without reference of DM42's code - actually I believe the difficulty is about the plastic part. You need to build the plastic dies & molds. This is the expensive part, even in China.

BTW, HP's current scientific SmartCalc series are all merely clones of CASIO's...

My opinion on this event:
People are simply trying to portrait SwissMicro as a victim. However, SwissMicro is not a victim of anything.
The open-source community is the victim.
SwissMicro still does not release the source code currently. So DM42 is NOT open-source for now.

I believe SwissMicro is also benefited from cheap Chinese manufacturing. The price difference for plastic parts is really HUGE between China and developed countries.

I helped Chris Chung on his NP-41 project for finding cheap customized LCD. What Chris initially found in western cost thousands of dollars for setup and required MOQ of thousands. On Taobao, we successfully found a Chinese factory offering $600 for setup with 20 samples.