Clarity, at a glance.

I just wanted to shout out TRMNL.

They have an interesting product, and they’re trying to build a business that includes a lot of open source aspects.

The device that they sell is proprietary, but it’s also just an ESP32, screen, enclosure, and battery, with a custom PCB for convenience. They plan to add instructions to build your own device, and their firmware is open source under a GPLv3 license.

By default, their device connects to their servers, and they have a slick web configuration tool for people who don’t care about having smart devices call home, but you can easily modify the firmware to connect to your own self-hosted server instead. As of this evening, both the Phoenix and Sinatra server implementations are open source under an MIT license after I pointed out that they had no license in an issue, and they pretty much immediately updated the repositories.

There are two other repositories that they have not added a license to, but given their swift response, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, and I would expect them to be updated shortly.

They have not shared all of the plugins that are available on their hosted service for use on a self-hosted instance, but a few are available for use and there are many plugins made by others available as well!

As soon as they update those last two repositories, I plan to pre-order one (unlike the conceptually cool VU Dials who’s creators still have not added a license even after being called out by the co-creator of Rocky Linux).

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
    3·
    23 hours ago

    1. You can compile whatever you want into the firmware and load it on the device.

    2. The server is configurable, by loading new firmware. It’s just like flashing an ESP32, which you could also build your own TRMNL out of.

    In other words, those are not real issues.

    • irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      18 hours ago

      But i have no desire to compile and maintain a fork of software just to set a URL and auth token. And again, this is a license to modify the firmware, so they could at some point decide to revoke the license to modify the firmware or stop publishing security updates on their git repo to allow for merging into the fork I have to maintain. Probably won’t if they are reputable and don’t get acquired, but still a risk. It’s just not worth it for me for any open product I purchase.

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
        2·
        18 hours ago

        You should probably stop complaining about FOSS if you don’t understand how it works.

        i have no desire to

        So? Then don’t, but don’t claim the $20 is your issue. Firmware is easy, you just don’t want to learn it.

        they could at some point decide to revoke the license

        Nope. They need approval from all contributors to change, and even if they got that, anyone could fork from the time of the current license. This is how FOSS works. Lemmy itself could do the same thing.

        It’s just not worth it for me for any open product I purchase.

        What open products are you purchasing that you think don’t follow this pattern?

        • irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          1·
          17 hours ago

          I said from the beginning it’s a deal breaker for me. You’re the one trying to convince me it’s not the issue I think it is.

          And I’m not talking about the license to modify the firmware software itself. I’m talking about the EULA of the device itself. Pretty much any device you own that has any kind of software on it is not owned by you outright to modify as you wish. This website doesn’t show the agreement, but if it has a paid feature to unlock, it has to have one somewhere.