Our story starts about two years ago when KDE Plasma developer Aaron Seigo [1] was looking for a way to earn a living. He had been employed by the Trolltech company for KDE development. Then, Trolltech went to Nokia, which in turn sold the Qt framework to Digia.

Shortly thereafter, Seigo (Figure 1) announced a new tablet design based on his and his colleague's specifications. The hardware, based on Zenithink C71 [2], was to be produced in Southeast Asia, with the developers planning heavily on components for which there were free drivers.

Figure 1: KDE Plasma developer and Vivaldi protagonist Aaron Seigo.

The tablet should run Linux in the form of the Mer [3] distribution, a derivative of Meeego, which, in turn, derived from Maemo and Moblin. The user interface should provide KDE Plasma Active [4], a joint project of KDE, OpenSLX [5] and the basysKom [6] company. Plasma Active aimed for a user-friendly interface for mobile platforms with low demands on hardware.

KDE had early on adopted the convergence train of thought but not, like Microsoft or Canonical, by subordinating everything else. As early as 2005, the plans for a common code base across devices began in earnest. Plasma Active was released for the first time in 2011 as a further development of the Plasma desktop and is currently at version 4. Rather than having apps in the foreground, the Activities – well known from KDE SC – stood front and center (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Plasma Active is based on KDE Activities.

The hardware on what became the Spark 7" tablet was supposed to be tailored just enough for Plasma Active, but not exceedingly so. The first plan included an AMLogic ARM processor with 1 GHz clock rate and a Mali 400 GPU for graphic output. The main memory was 512MB (later extended to 1GB), with 4GB internal memory. The price was to be a maximum 200 euros.

Bad Omen

Had Aaron Seigo known at that time what awaited him, he might have hesitated at that point and saved himself the stress that not only was to affect his health but also his finances. But, if he had, there would be no story to tell.

The first omen was not long in coming. The name Spark, which was supposed to symbolize an inspiration for a free tablet, was similar enough to an existing brand name that the owners contested its use. Exactly who that was remains unknown even today; however, speculation is that it was Oracle and its Sparc. The new name for the mobile device then became Vivaldi.

Developers are still working on the tablet today (Figure 3), which should have hit the market back in 2012, and a release date is still to be determined. Seigo and his colleagues meanwhile introduced an intermediary step by marketing the motherboard designed for Vivaldi as a modular development board with the name Improv [7]. For developing, planning, financing, and marketing of their products, they established the "Make Play Live Partner Network" (MPL [8]) initiative in 2012.

Figure 3: The Vivaldi tablet based on the Zenithink C71A.

GPL in China

Negotiations with a Chinese manufacturer ran according to the team's plans, and they promised open source drivers for the components. This changed almost overnight when, during a board revision, the manufacturer unexpectedly swapped components. The new parts didn't conform to the requirements, and the manufacturer now could not provide open source drivers.

Hardware manufacturers in Southeast Asia often don't really care that production results in a breached GPL. Additionally, a small project, working with smaller companies, often can't afford to have a per unit production rate below a few thousand, even at the lower limit of their production rate. That greatly reduces the influence a small project can possibly exert.

Seigo then had to look for a new manufacturer, already well on the way to his deadline. That was not easy to do – even medium-sized manufacturers preferred to produce copies of an already successful product.

Modular Design

After further failed negotiations, the project team decided that they would design the motherboard themselves to ensure that the product met their specifications. This decision meant plenty of extra work but also a significant increase in freedom. It meant that the board components would be defined by them and that the component layout of the mainboard would be freely available.

One outcome that should not be underestimated is the mainboard's modular design. In the Improv, memory and CPU sit piggybacked under the board and can thus be easily replaced. Meanwhile, Seigo, as he describes in his blog [9], also learned to ask the right questions to the manufacturers. The new mainboard design was created together with the Rhombus Tech [10] company and is manufactured by QiMod Technology [11].

After the first mainboard prototype appeared in the spring of 2013, Seigo declared that Vivaldi would be a vastly better tablet than the Spark of the previous year. The PCB design is built around the EOMA-68 [12] (Embedded Open Modular Architecture) CPU card. It measures about 8x5 centimeters, is reminiscent of the 68-pin terminal block of a PCMCIA card (Figure 4), and corresponds to its form factor in many other ways.

Figure 4: The EOMA68-68 is very similar in shape and connections to a PCMCIA card. (Photo: MPL)

Meanwhile, sitting on the EOMA-68 board as a CPU is a 1.2 GHz-clocked Allwinner A10 System on Chip (SoC). Also, the piggyback board houses the RAM, the 8G integrated storage unit, Ethernet chips and the SD card. The sole closed-source component of the CPU is the OpenGL stack – until the Lima driver [14] becomes suitable for production use.

A Step Forward

Early last summer, the team prepared a YouTube video showing the EOMA-68 card running Debian "Wheezy" [15]. At the end of November, Seigo presented the Improv motherboard that MPL was to deliver in January of this year (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Improv board with DIL connectors. (Photo: MPL)

Improv is a developer board with an Allwinner A20 SoC [16] and Mer preinstalled with a KDE Plasma desktop. The whole thing is based on the very EOMA-68 design that was supposed to form the heart of the Vivaldi tablet. The idea behind Improv is that the kit should provide a tool for the makers' scene, whereby new hardware projects could be launched and developers could be helped with professional planning, implementation, and marketing.

Improv includes, apart from the actual CPU board with a 1-GHz ARM dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 4GB internal memory and a MicroSD card reader. The CPU board sits on a motherboard that provides I/O interfaces for USB, HDMI, SATA, and VGA as well as a dual inline package (DIL) plug connector with 44 pin connectors.

Unfortunately, to date, the boards have not been delivered to first adopters; the orders were considerably fewer than anticipated, whereupon the private investments of the MPL team ran out. The KDE community is running a fundraiser [17] to recoup the costs of producing the board. A KDE webpage [18] also informs the community about the need for open hardware standards and asks for support. Donations above the needed US$ 125,000 will be invested in Improv boards for use in education.

Outlook

Aaron Seigo is an open hardware pioneer whose endurance and stamina can't be appreciated too highly – this goes for his colleagues as well. Starting a free hardware project turns out to be harder than for free software (see also the "Open Hardware" box). The open source community has the means of production in place for software, but free hardware depends on the reliability and credibility of manufacturers in the Far East.

Improv was completed against all odds and now "just" needs to be produced. Vivaldi might be postponed but certainly not dismissed. According to Seigo, it will make its appearance soon. Also, MPL already has two requests for customized Improv boards. Whether the project's rather unspectacular fundraising effort achieves its goal remains to be seen. Something along the lines of Kickstarter or Indiegogo with the motto "Be part of the good fight and tell your friends" might have been more effective.

We wish Aaron and his colleagues well and will report in detail once Improv and Vivaldi become available. You can learn more about Seigo's odyssey with free hardware in his blog. You can find videos for Improv and Vivaldi on the YouTube Make-Play-Live channel [19].