I have a bit to add below...
See below.
Gerald
Hi all,
I not really developer from embeded or linux porting thing.. i come
across this some time back..
Could you please tell my basic doubts..
This is what understand about is till now.
1)Beagal board is developer board for developers to RnD.
Yes it can be used for that purpose.
2)It is low cost board for development use.
Yes.
3)This helps company to promote their hardware..
here are my few doubts..
Hardware and Software.
1)is it like open specification that can be assembled anywhere without
any legal issues..?
That is what open source hardware means.
Various open source licenses provide different legal rights. In
practice, we'll just scream about bad use of the logo. The terms
listed on the design materials page include attribution, but that
request is not enforced in practice.
2)what is one want to do the commercialization of their product
developed on beagle board..?
You can do it. How you do it and how well you do it is up to you.
-> Do we have any production board separate?
Yes you have to build it yourslef. The Beagle is not intended to be used in
commercial products, but you can build it yourself and do with it as you
wish.
Several companies are making boards that will allow you to pretty
easily migrate your BeagleBoard software to another
DM37x/AM37x/OMAP35x-based board pretty easily, if you just want to buy
an off-the-shelf board. You can also contact the contract
manufacturer directly to have them produce your own design, including
designs derived directly from the BeagleBoard design.
-> is ther any difference in production board and this developer
board..?
That is up to you. The information provided is exactly the same as the board
that is produced as the BeagleBoard. You can make chnages if you like or
build it as is, but that is your decision.
-> what is life of such board if one going to sell it as commercial
product..?
It depends on how long you choose to build it. The parts should be around
ofr 10-15 years.
-> any legal issues to be considered..?
There are licensies or restriction sto use the design. If you choose to
violate the lwas of the country and sell it to people involved in illegal
activities, there could be some legal issues there.
-> what will be the cost of such production board..?
It depnds on how many you build and what sort of deal you can make with the
people you buy the parts from, whether they be factory direct or through
distribution.
BeagleBoard.org gets a good, high-volume price on TI components and
the memories used. TI publishes component pricing for 1,000 unit
quantities that should be available through TI distributors. All TI
components are purchased through distribution today.
You won't likely get to the price of a BeagleBoard with 1,000 unit
volume pricing, unless you can work some magic removing costs outside
of the TI BOM, but we've strictly avoided selling the BeagleBoard
under any sort of TI subsidized model that might limit the longevity
of the program (if TI loses interest) or the ability for 3rd parties
to make the board at very near the same cost (what price they put on
it based on what margins they can accept are a different matter).
This is a *big* deal to me and part of what separates it from just a
marketing effort.
The existence of commercial products using a superset of the same
functionality (such as potentially costly LCD screens) at incremental
prices relative to the BeagleBoard should go a bit further to prove
this above point. There is also a very healthy market of
system-on-module/computer-on-module vendors using essentially the same
fundamental components (and in some cases extensively more features
like WiFi/BT/etc.).