Open Source Firmware

I just sent an email to Meizu askin wether they publish the firmware source.
I'll tell you what they answered as soon as I get the answer.

Well thanx to my very special foreseeing talent I can tell you now : the answer will be NO :D

This is mainly directed towards anyone from Meizu or working with them.

Seriously, I don't get what's so big to Meizu about releasing the source. So, what's gonna happen if they do? Usuers are going to get to help improve it and some might make their own programming for the M6. This HELPS sales because people will WANT to buy an mp3 player that has thousands of people constantly improving it and changing it, and offering a bunch of choices in how they want their OS on the player to look.

As far as other companies getting their hands on the source... other companies can't do a damn thing with their source code, so what's the problem? The only way other companies can use the source is if they make an exact copy of the M6, right down to every chip and part. The coding was made for that specific combination of parts, and nothing else, so what's wrong with releasing it?

If it helps at all, they could just specify when they release it that they don't cover defects from using firmware other than the officially released firmware, like some other companies.

There is a nice cheap gadget (hardware and software all open source) where you could increase your skills programming for StrongArm ->
www.chumby.com
Happy hacking

I agree with Dchronos, It would only bring advantages for Meizu and users, I think

We dont need total source code, only the source code for User Interface and menu system. The low level hardware for LCD and audio and video decoding is so hardware dependant and most likely optimised for speed anyway.

We Just need a more advance firmawre editor that lets you change UI and Menus.

This would be great... It opens for a lot of oppurtunities... It would only be good for meizu as you all have said... I just think that that would dive the meizu another great advatage over other players... There are so many good programmers out there that would be willing to help create the best firmware ever made...

Originally Posted by DChronos

Seriously, I don't get what's so big to Meizu about releasing the source. So, what's gonna happen if they do?

Probably they are afraid of users creating bad firmware that will brick their players and rival companies cloning their firmware.

maybe they r afraid that one of us works for some other company... :O

I'd love to see this happen.
My fear with some products is that once new ranges come out, then firmware development by the manufacturer will stop.

Or as a compromise they could release the source to the community once the Miniplayer has stopped production.
I'd say that would be fair enough.

I'm guessing audio and video codec support though is all handled in hardware (for performance and power usage reasons)... otherwise being able to add support for new audio/video formats in the future would be a cool reason.

I could see why companies wouldn't make their firmware open source, self-protection etc, but then you already see great open source stuff out there that corporations don't copy, eg linux, openoffice etc. Reason being is that the code is complex and to implement the same code for a different program would take time.

The public audience would also discriminate those who are copying. Take IE7's copy of firefox's tabbed browsing for instance. Its such a great feature that MS implements it into their own product, however, it is still not good enough to convert firefox users.

Firmware in particular is hard to copy, in that to copy it you would need an (almost) exact replication on hardware utilised by the firmware, even so it would take time and money.

But yes, as with any company, taking such large risks is simply unfeasible. To have placed hard work into a project and have it stolen would hurt... alot.

I think they can't fully open source the firmware since it's based on proprietary solution (uCOSII for the kernel)...

I got an answer today, but I guess this "ramon" misunderstood me

Dear Jonas,

Thanks for your email.

We have latest English firmware on website http://en.meizu.com/firmware.asp.

If end-users have MEIZU by Dane-elec version mini players, we suggest they
contact Dane-elec for any after-sales issue, because the distributor has
integrated service center network to handle it, which will be more
convenient and efficient for consumers.

For any question else, pls feel free to contact us.

Thanks and best regards,

Ramon

He thought i wanted to know where to get the firmware. I just sent another mail

Seems to me that Chinese are special polite. Very funny.

Originally Posted by PeterHamburg

Seems to me that Chinese are special polite. Very funny.

Nope, only Mexican-Chinese people are that polite lol

Yeah, seems he misunderstood the meaning of your mail, puffel

lol, I seriously think he/she didn't have a clue what "open" source firmware was.

total misunderstanding, sometimes these guys get so may e-mails each day that they only 'half' read it!

As I said before, other companies couldn't really use their coding unless they also copy the hardware. The only thing that they can copy are what features there are and what it looks like on the screen... but finding THAT out is as hard as buying (or getting) some other company's player, looking at what it has and what it looks like, then making the coding for their own device... which would STILL have to be coded from the ground up anyway because of hardware differences.

If they released the source code, the M6 would, literally overnight, become the single greatest mp3 player of all time... aside from the fact that if Meizu released better players (M8!) and also released the source code for the firmware for it, then those would also become the greatest players of all time.

I'll say it again, though, there's not much reason to keep things like that secret, because even if they wanted to copy the coding, it'd still have to be coded from the ground up due to hardware differences. Things this small have their code made specifically for this specific hardware. It's not like a full fledged computer, where it's built to support almost everything, so you can just copy someone else's program, paste your label on it and change a few things and call it yours.

Exactly, its really simple, different hardware, different source code

Oh! He got it. But ..

Dear Jonas,

Thanks for your email.

Sorry that we can't provide SDK. If any bugs or suggestions, pls feel free
to tell us, we'll forward to our R&D team to follow up.

Thank you and best regards,

Ramon