[Sketching12] Help me fix Texas Instruments

[alicia]

Here's my two cents - I've talked a fair amount with TI in the past, mostly
with the semiconductor group and the marketing group and I think they need
an attitude adjustment on open hardware. I know open hardware isn't for
everyone, and that's completely okay. But TI wants to leverage open
hardware when it's useful but then sort of quarantines it in odd ways. I
have 2 examples of this. The first is that TI takes credit for creating
Beagle as an open source product when it's convenient for them, but are
seldom completely transparent about Beagle being a separate company until
Beagle Board steps in and says no we're our own company, remember?  The
best example for this was when TI wanted Beagle Boards money to sponsor the
open hardware summit, but wanted the TI logo on the sponsor banner. Over
the past 2 years I've noticed Beagle separating themselves so maybe that's
a non-issue now, but I don't like the way TI handled it to begin with.

Second, they've been very reluctant to admit that the MSP430 Launchpad took
any inspiration from Arduino, although some engineers who worked on the
product will tell you exactly that, the company as a whole denies it and
treats Arduino as a 4 letter word. I've been told "we don't use that word
around here" when attempting to talk about Arduino / MSP430 similarities
and differences.  This doesn't do TI any favors. Credit is a form of
payment in the open hardware community, and when people don't give proper
credit it actually just dilutes what they're doing. I think TI needs to
realize that and this kind of denial makes them look dishonest and a little
bit like they're throwing a tantrum for not being the hottest
microcontroller in the field anymore.

I think if TI wants to cater to this community, they'd care more about the
usability of their products and less about ensuring nobody utters the name
of their competition.

Alicia




On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Kipp Bradford <kb at kippworks.com> wrote:

> I have an opportunity this Thursday to tell the TI senior microcontroller
> folks how to better serve our community. The 900 people in the room will
> include the Pandaboard folks, BeagleBoard folks, MSP430 team, C2000 team,
> and more.
>
> What would you like to see from TI?
> What do they do well for us? What could they do better?
>
> Send me an email and I'll incorporate your interests into my talk!
>
> Thanks,
> -Kipp
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