As those of you know who have been following Neuros, we have become open source converts over time. By witnessing the activity of the community, as well understanding the pitfalls and limitations, we have been very close to some very convincing demonstrations of its power.

Today, open source has become an important selection criteria for all our new products:

-Is the hardware suitable for open source software?
-Are there good developer tools available for free or at least reasonable prices?
-Are the embedded applications built on open source components (Linux, eCos, etc)?
-Are the partners open to releasing the source code and/or supporting open development?

Although the initial release of the recorder will yet not include source code, we believe it represents progress on the above, and a good compromise in terms of allowing us to build on much of the progress we have already made. For example, the recorder uses the TI DSC25 processor. This is a dual core processor with an Arm7 and a 54xDSP. For those of you not familiar, this means that the recorder processor can use much of the same code that our current Neuros uses. Thus, many Neuros features like the recording UI, Ogg Vorbis playback, and even the beloved Neutris, can be relatively easily ported to this device. At the same time, it adds an Arm processor with an established set of free open source developer tools that can facilitate developer contributions.

There are two reasons we chose to release the recorder product prior to its source code being available:

First, we believe that we make more progress towards our open source goals by making progress generally. Product development today is the collaborative effort of many partners whos work is deeply intertwined, including manufactures and designers to middleware providers. Releasing source code under open source licenses requires considerable negotiation and effort. We gain more leverage with all our partners by selling and promoting products than we do simply by negotiating at a standoff. The more products we sell and the more prominent we become, the more receptive an audience we have for our open source pitch. Naturally, each success builds on the previous one.

Second, open source is only one part of the broader process of open development, which includes Bugzilla, active and uncensored forums, and the release of all the technical information we can. By getting your feedback on all aspects of the product now through our pre-release Gamma program, we will start the improvement process months sooner than we otherwise would. There is no amount of market research than can substitute for the feedback of active, real-world users. This feedback translates to improvements throughout the product with each iteration and software release.

For those of you impatient for more progress, please understand that so are we. But on the other hand, we are definitely making progress, and we must be mindful of the magnitude of this undertaking. We are convincing commercial entities on multiple continents to migrate from closed, proprietary systems to open opens, and we cannot expect that change to occur overnight.