On 2016-09-10 at 20:38:34 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
you're also aware that with the sole exception of the olimex laptop's PCBs the only thing that they provide is auto-generated PDFs *from* the schematics source code... not the actual schematics and certainly not the PCB design files?
That's false: for the boards marked with the OSHW logo (which include the olinuxino boards and a number of microcontroller based ones, but not the SOM ones) schematics are provided, either as a zip file in the product page or in a github repository:
https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO
It is true that most of those schematics are in Eagle format, and thus can't be opened with Free Software (which is the reason I didn't actually open them), and they are only moving on to using Kicad for the later boards, but that's definitely not the same as not providing schematics at all.
[...] you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, from shipping GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back around 2011/2012? [...] now, whilst tsevtan is making money selling you hardware that requires non-free components to operate basic functions, i've put my foot down and said NO, i will NOT sell GPL-violating product.
While it's true that you are not violating the GPL yourself (thankfully!) by not using Allwinner-provided code, if (and that's a HUGE if) violating a civil law (copyright) turns a company into a criminal cartel then you are working with a criminal cartel yourself, since Allwinner is still violating the GPL with their new processors.