2011 GeeXboX / OpenBricks Project Status
Benjamin
As every year's end, it's time to draw some conclusions
and ligthen up some statistics over the past year.
One important thing to remember is that ... GeeXboX 2.0 has been released !!
I can't count back how much attempts we made to release out this version.
The project was in a bad shape and this release came just about time.
The use of XBMC as default MediaCenter was not easy but it was worth the effort.
I'm also pretty pleased to say that GeeXboX 3.0 is just a few weeks ahead of us,
with XBMC 11.0 (codename Eden) support and LiveTV/DVB/PVR support.
OpenBricks, on the other end (while being the whole GeeXboX build framework),
hasn't seen any release but in the end, I'm not even sure doing one would
actually make any sense at all. It however has been improved quite a lot,
as to always bring more up-to-date components and to support more and more
embedded architecture. This year has seen made good enhancements around
TI OMAP4 support and welcomed Freescale i.MX5 and i.MX6 SoC support.
The few next months to come should also bring Marvell Dove SoC in the play.
I'm also very proud to say that we have welcomed a new regular contributor
who helped us a lot this year (and mostly handles our new forum by himself), so
big thanks to Thomas Genty.
On the downside note is the status with OpenELEC project.
Cleary being a fork from GeeXboX sources (2+ years ago), the project always
refused to mention its legitimate legacy history and claim having been written
from scratch. Today, the two projects mostly share the same goals, to the only
difference being GeeXboX based on OpenBricks framework and supporting and much
broader range of targets (i.e. ARM SoCs). Not much to worry about though, and
each projects happen to pull some changesets from one to the other from
time to time. Recent events however lead to the non-sense situation where
OpenELEC people even asked us to acknowledge their work in our project.
Well ... we don't really care much about that until they'd have cleaned up
their own mess.
Overview of some 2011 very positive points:
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- GeeXboX team was invited and project was demonstrated at major Linux embedded
events such as Linaro Developer Summit (LDS) in May at Budapest and Embedded
Linux Conference Europe (ELC-E) in October at Prague. This was very good
project advertisement and we were able to straigthen some very nice contacts
over there.
- The OpenBricks was presented in a 1h-talk at FOSDEM in February at Brussels.
- We've been running out of disk space (and slow CPU for our Web server) and
thanks to Colocation America we now have a new much more powerful server
at disposal.
- Once again, we've have been sponsored (or managed to buy) A LOT of hardware
and devices ... It's barely imaginable for such a small team. Donations and
Google AdSense fundings also allowed buying ourself some very nice toys.
Let's see a few financial statistics now:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Google AdSense: 868461 ads were displayed and 4881 were clicked,
providing 719.15€ (1.97 €/day).
- Paypal Donations: 26.3€ were donated by 3 generous people.
- Our bank account is (including upcoming AdSense/Paypal payments): +1130.97€
Now, regarding hardware donations and sponsoring ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We received a LOT of devices from various vendors and manufacturers:
- Efika MX Cloud Computer (Ben) from Genesi USA.
- Samsung Galaxy Tab (Davide) from Linaro.
- ST-Ericsson Snowball (Davide) from Linaro.
And bought ourself a few more:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- XBMC Official Remote (Davide).
- Boxee Remote (Ben).
- DisplayPort to HDMI Converter (Ben).
- Motorola Nyxboard Hybrid (Tom).
- USB/CEC Adapter (Tom).
I insist on the facts that we have money savings so if you're
interested in some goods, project's sponsoring is a possibility.
All you need to do is shout (and of course, support the hardware after
that, as much as possible)
So, what to conclude:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This was a somehow good year for the project. Things didn't went as good and
fast as I expected but still we made some good progress and GeeXboX 2.0 was
released. With this release the project somehow got a second life and
I'm really looking forward for the months to come.
And again, huge thanks to all project contributors !!
'Wish you the best for 2012 ;-)
Ben