Moderator’s note: Thanks to LuYu for sharing personal views. Speak up, whether you agree or not! Meanwhile let’s remember the Open Inkpot project, from which I’ll repo the image below. As for formats, keep in mind ePub, already readable on recent Sony Readers. – D.R.
A while back, I wrote a TeleRead post about ideal e-book hardware. I was surprised to find that most of the responses seemed to say that the hardware was pretty much already available. So, if the hardware is already where it is supposed to be, and e-book readers are not where they are supposed to be, then it naturally follows that the problem is with software or e-book availability.
Obviously, e-books are available from many places in many formats. There are even still books available for dead and gone hardware models. What there is not is a system that allows one to read all e-book formats on a single device. We have seen waves upon waves of proprietary failures. The greed of the businessmen is, very clearly, 100% destructive to the market. It keeps devices expensive and e-books segregated and, paradoxically, profits low (funny how greed does that).
Virtually all of these devices run Linux. In fact, it would be hard to find an e-book reader which does not run Linux. These are all, paradoxically again, proprietary systems implemented in Free Software. If they are not violations of the letter of the GPL, they are certainly violations of the spirit of the GPL.
Ordinarily, most devices get flashed within 24 or 48 hours of appearing on the market. Even powerful DRM systems like SDMI and AACS have been cracked very quickly allowing tinkerers to modify the respective devices. Given this, one would think there were many efforts to change the software on e-book readers, but to date, I have not seen a peep about a single one. Maybe no tinkerers can justify the expense for such limited hardware. Maybe most people pining for E-Ink are just Luddites waiting for paper to be reincarnated in another form. Maybe these devices are not worth anyone’s time. Whatever the cause, I think a way to transform multiple devices into a standardized and easy to use e-book reader would be useful to a lot of people. I know I would consider the expense of an E-Ink device if (and only if) I could have a DRM free one that supported every format.
So, we have a number of hardware e-book devices that have totally bad software, and we have a guaranteed right, ala GPL, to alter them, but we have no e-book distro to put on them, and no effort has been made to my knowledge to replace the software on these devices. The only way forward, for the sake of the e-book market as well as for Freedom, appears to be the creation of an e-book Linux distribution and the dissemination of information about how to flash these devices (which is also the right of any purchaser because of the GPL).
I am not enlightened enough to come up with my own disto, but I would bet that some TeleRead followers likely are. I think TeleRead could be an effective starting point for a slimmed down Linux distro aimed at e-book reading and devices. This distro should be able to be flashed onto any of the popular devices (Kindle, Sony eReader, what have you), and perhaps could be expanded to use on old phones or PDAs (many people have quite a few lying around, and the screens and batteries are still good even if the software is not).
I’m sure I’ve said it before, but here it is again. I WILL NOT buy any drmed eReader or eBook, EVER. It’s just too stupid. There are over a million free eBooks on Internet Archive and more all the time. I’d LOVE to read modern novels but paying top dollar to effectively rent a book for one reading (by the time I’ll want to read it again the format will have changed, firm gone bust, drm no longer supported etc) is just not on.
OpenInkPot is the prime example of opensource replacement software for e-readers and seems to be progressing quite well; it is usable on the Hanlin V3 based devices and looks like it is making progress on the Sony readers.
In addition, for Hanlin devices there are modified original firmware, for example Lunohod modified the lBook software to include FBReader.
The emphasis on both these approaches is that they will generally only support DRM free formats, which is fine by me. There is no intention to work around DRMed content.
There is little reason to hold back from buying a reader at present; while not really inspired in terms of design or features, they are good enough for DRM free content already.
Also note that several ereader devices are based on WinCE, not Linux.
Wry?
Seriusly wry does we need something like that.
Im beginning to think that whats really stopping progress is all of those ivory towers of perfect solutions thats not making real economic sense.
The reason you dont sea a lot of cracking efford is that most of the information locked down on those gizmos are floating on the pirate network and can be downloaded to the gizmo’s anyway, so theres no real point in circumventing the DRM, unless your to moral to go download things of the darknet.