[sdiy] Secrets [Was: Discrete OTA]

[Paul Maddox]

Neil,
> As I said earlier, I think you missed the start of this thread so
> missed out the context.  For "libre software" the startup costs can be
> zero.
You're right I did miss the start, but I'm sorry, "libre software" may 
be free to download, but lerning how to build it, use it, install it and 
maintain it takes time. If you're running a business, that time costs money.
The thing is the flips side, 'paid' software usually comes with a 
reasonable level of support, 'libre' software comes with next to nothing 
(oh the number of empty/useless READM.TXT files I've read).
it's a choice, but either way costs money :)

>   For embedded firmware there are real costs due to the physical
> nature of the task.
I agree, but these days the lines between firmware and software are 
getting more and more blurry :)

>
> Done right I would put firmware development costs at about even with
> purely hardware development costs.  By the time you've accounted for
> JTAG boxes, programmers, logic analysers, protocol analysers, maybe an
> ICE (do companies still make proper ICEs with bondout chips these
> days?) ) if you need to get that deep, and so on.

yup, good points, I'd forgotten about those things!

>
>> Where software does score is that to reproduce it requires almost zero
>> cost.
> Indeed, although in an embedded product it might be sitting inside an
> EPROM or FLASH.
which you can protect easier than a download as most EEPROM/FLASH memory 
these days have 'locking' or 'encryption' features. ok that doesn't make 
it impossible to copy, but it does make it a lot harder :)

Paul