Hi
Just saw the last tech talk and just want to know if there is already a date for the availability of those nice goodies
[ucm development board, ucm breakboard, displays and … fez ?]
…mouser…?
Sorry, those are all teasers for now 
They are very cool though, aren’t they?
Get me a couple cases of beer and a few bucks and I could kick out a short run of G30 / G80 compatible SODIMM for you, if GHI is too busy on the paradigm shift they’re causing and doesn’t mind. (Matching G400 pinout since I assume that’s the standard moving forward) 
Now that the standard is getting established I’ll probably end up doing this anyway this week to get some prototypes on the way. That way I can consolidate my compute module boards on to the UCM principal, and use up the G30’s and G80’s I stocked this week.
Pretty soon there are going to be all sorts of nifty designs getting stuffed in to a SODIMM socket.
Geez Gus look at what you’ve started. Standardize something and makes it easy for folks to do stuff. 
You guys are OK with third parties jumping on this UCM bandwagon aren’t you?
Absolutely! We are inviting the world to join in and use the standard. We do not want anything in return…but some beer will be good too.
Just imagine if every single SoM on the market had already followed this standard. Oh how easy it would be for everyone!
Well I certainly don’t want to compete against GHI, nor do I want GHI competing against commercial builders. The way you are going about this is great. Support rapid prototyping and provide easy to use systems and software. That’s the most time consuming part of developing a complete system for field use; prototyping and testing.
Long term it would be nice if you offered some sort of license to open the TinyCLR source up to subscribers, with a support model. Telerik, and many other .NET component suites have gone that route and it works very well. With source it allows a developer to tweak or optimize something specific to their implementation which isn’t supported by the general framework (or, in your case, may not want to be included in the general framework due to size considerations; you don’t want a bloated embedded framework!).
That would provide a recurring revenue model at some point, which would help ensure that the architecture can be staffed and developed appropriately, budgets can be set, and so on. Hardware sales alone are difficult to budget on. You never know what someone is going to build, need, or how much they’re going to need and when.
I think that’s where Microsoft’s model ultimately went south. No revenue to speak of on their end. No motivation (for the Powers that Be) to staff it and build out on it like it needed. For sustainable organic growth, there needs to be something there which is recurring.
I’m not in favor of a royalty model, that stifles development and makes “free” and open source platforms more appealing. But at the same time closed source, even if free, can dissuade some folks from using a platform; it’s proprietary, and if you build a system off of a proprietary platform, you are at the mercy of the company providing that proprietary platform.
I know you are pushing industry trust as a priority and your track record is good. I just see an opportunity to take that to the next level. Commercial source subscriptions might be a way to bridge that gap, to obtain and build out on a development budget (programmers do require food and pay, although folks tend to think we can survive in a basement like mushrooms off of dirt and bat guano).
Just a suggestion!
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(The short version; commercial developers want to see their providers succeed because that is a cornerstone of their production. My customers want to see me succeed, I want to see my providers succeed, and so on. There’s something you can offer that could build recurring revenue, and keep it “opt in”. You also get more intimate feedback and peer review of the platform, as a side benefit.)
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Well, I am not a commercial nor a maker. Just an hobbyist interested in IoT and C# (developing logs analyser for a large american company).
So ghi will not make big profit out of me but they get one supporter
Having a board like the breakboard with the possibility
To have some click boards would be nice.
I had the material in the past to make my own pcb but not anymore.
And having boards linked together by a lot of wires doesn’t look very neat.
I don’t know if GHI plan to have such a things in the future (I hope) or if they will let other manufacturers taking care of this
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