I have previous microprocessor programming experience with the 68k motorola (c/assembler programming, display control and kernel development) and would love to help out if my skills are needed
. I am also interested in the more organisational tasks in the project.
I think the reason for lack of support from reverse-engineering people is because, at least until now, the technical part of the alternative firmware discussion has been in german. Personally my german is a little bit rusty at the moment and even though I have read the german firmware thread with interest, the fact that it is written in german does not make it any easier to participate... I am sure that the potential developers, hardware specialist and reverse-engineers outside Germany feels the same way. So my hope is that the german discussion continues in the english forum instead and that the knowledge obtained by the german reverse-engineers is shared in english.
I guess you have already discussed or at least thought about which initiatives are necessary to get the project moving, but I'll mention what I think is needed as a basis for a succesful project start:
1.) First of all the project needs to be organized on a seperate project site... a forum thread is not a good communication channel.
2.) The official communication language needs to be english to extend the potential number of participants.
3.) A list of people involved needs to be available to make it easier for people to communicate.
4.) The project should be open for interested participants.
5.) A list of open unfinished tasks and current problems should be available for free hands.
6.) A project manager is needed to coordinate the development and a website administrator/updater/developer is needed.
7.) Obtained knowledge needs to be shared and organized on the site for easy access.
8.) The project should be made public available on i.e. sourceforge.net
9.) We should start a co-operation with the Archos (Rockbox) firmware developers who are looking for a new hardware platform to port their Arhos firmware to. It might be fruitful.
10.) Any other suggestions?
Well...
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