R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

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Fred
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R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

Post by Fred »

When I purchased this domain, I did so in good faith believing that it was the same domain as previously used by diy-efi.org, ie, I did not notice the fact that they had a hyphen and I did not. Soon afterwards I realised and felt bad about accidentally domain name squatting.

Around February 2010 the domain and control of the old site passed hands from the original owner, Steve Ravet, to the much-less-well-meaning B&G. In February of this year, 2011, I had an exchange with Bruce Bowling on the diy-efi.org main mailing list. He "called my bluff" and in response I posted videos and other evidence of the success of the FreeEMS project.

The discussion, and all evidence of it, was deleted from the archives!

A few days ago I sent an email to the list with the following contents:

Title: "FreeEMS XGATE Powered Sequential On LT1 V8!"
Sean has been hard at work creating ASM XGATE firmware for FreeEMS in order to expand our pin count from 6 up to something like 36 and allow sequential staged injection and coil on plug in large cylinder count engines. This video is assembled from a bunch of clips that he sent me yesterday. I'm not sure why he sent that last clip, when I got to that point of confidence in FreeEMS I sold my MS2 for 400nzd, this seems wasteful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9OEEOmsVHk

This was made possible by Sean's XGATE binutils package which was developed more or less in parallel with James Murray's XGATE binutils, because James would not release his changes for a long long time. Full credit to Sean for this achievement (both the tools and the firmware)! I take my hat off to him :-)

Enjoy!

Fred.
I just resent it, no luck, yet again.

EDIT: This time it did work, which is strange. Also, the older one shows in the archives, but was not sent to various people who are on the list. Just dropped. Weird. We'll see how long it lasts in the archives, I guess. This aside, the other discussion was and still is removed, which was definitely censorship, yuck.

The original time was in close proximity to another thread sent by another member, indicating that the server was up and functional. These facts lead me to believe that either my email or the word FreeEMS has been filtered from this list.

The overall effect of this is that the list is now being censored. I will put that in large type below, because the rest of the site clearly indicates Free (Libre and Gratis) Open Source sentiments!

"A word about projects: A new policy has been adopted regarding projects, licenses, and the DIY_EFI list. New projects from this point forward that are discussed on list will either be released under the GNU GPL or LGPL, or will fall into the category of "commercial products". Projects that are stored on the DIY_EFI server must be released under a GNU license."

From: http://diy-efi.org/diy_efi/ as at 8 September 2011.

It's also worth noting that the site still suggests that Steve is running it. This has not been true for over a year, as noted above. Unlike the removal of discussions on FreeEMS and filtering of emails, I doubt this is malicious, just a lack of time put into it.
Maintained by Steve Ravet, sravet@diy-efi.org
So, in bold large type for all to read:

WARNING: diy-efi.org (with the hyphen) is CENSORED and can NO LONGER be trusted!!!

This forum is now your only source of free technical discussion on general diy efi projects. Sad but true.

Image

Fred.
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Re: R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

Post by ToxicGumbo »

I understand a little bit about the bad blood, but the whole picture's a little fuzzy. The diyefi history page reads impartially from what I can determine, yet it looks like the moment MS took a wrong turn (my words) is when a lot of peoples' efforts became a marketable item and money was to be made. At that point it seems like it was less about innovation and imagination than about protecting a source of income at the expense of others. I'm going to make a guess that as a viable product, MS gained the attention of less skilled talent--that is, casual interest by web lurkers who want to install one--and consequently the noise led to people leaving and others getting frustrated. Following that, repeated power plays led to more division and drama, ie. what's posted above. And now it looks like a few people are trying to legally gain total control over everything that's been done. Am I far off?

-Jeff
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Re: R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

Post by Fred »

You're a bit off. MS was _never_ free. The original pages in the wayback machine have stuff like "can you copy the pcb? only if you want our lawyers on your back", this is from around the date of the very first 1.0 ms board which was pretty much completely shit. IE, it was always a for-profit organisation. The trouble was that from a layman's point of view it was always very difficult to see that. Which is why there were always conflicts and fights with people trying to share PCB designs and DIYers asking for gerbers to print their own and so on. On msefi posts like those get instantly vapourised and the user account they are from vanishes too. Try it! :-) These days it's more clear, however it's still not 100% clear, and maybe it's impossible to shake that internet image that it has. What they've done is "use" people to develop their system for them and then locked those same people out. I started this site when I realised all of this due to a final straw action by Bruce which screwed both a long time supporter of MS and a bunch of users, including myself. It was the best thing that had ever happened, looking back, now. :-)
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
FreeEMS.org - the open source engine management system
FreeEMS dev diary and its comments thread and my turbo truck!
n00bs, do NOT PM or email tech questions! Use the forum!
The ever growing list of FreeEMS success stories!
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Re: R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

Post by ToxicGumbo »

What was the original goal of diy-efi.org if it's owned by BG Soflex, a commercial company? Was it mostly to bring bright people together to test, extend, and offer bug fixes for the MS code & hardware or did it only eventually become a commercial haven (or get swallowed by those with commercial intent)?

I was once working on a Newton MessagePad project to add (entirely incompatible) iPod peripheral support when two guys on a list befriended me, took the ideas, then introduced a crappy commercial product to the list that inelegantly did most of what I was trying to do and offered me no credit. It was offensive enough to see all the praise they got that I dropped off the list and gave up on reversing/documenting the MessagePad hardware. I have a soft spot for people being taken advantage of for their hard work and efforts even if the MS situation's different.

What drew me to the DIYEFI.org/FreeEMS community is that its philosophy's spelled out so plainly and in such a dignifying way that I have no doubt about its future or the nature of those working to bring it about.

-Jeff
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Re: R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

Post by Fred »

It got bought and taken over by B&G over a year ago, and largely still functions as it did before that, a quiet near dead list of enthusiasts talking tales about cars. The exception to that was when Bruce and I had an exchange and it didn't go well for him. The material disappeared from the archive to hide it, however I have the pages cached and the emails cached too. Back in the OLD days it was a thriving mailing list with much discussion - it's the roots of the MS founders, and where they found their initial market. Hopefully the minor changes coming over the next few months won't put you off FreeEMS, though this isn't the place to discuss them.
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
FreeEMS.org - the open source engine management system
FreeEMS dev diary and its comments thread and my turbo truck!
n00bs, do NOT PM or email tech questions! Use the forum!
The ever growing list of FreeEMS success stories!
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Re: R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

Post by brianko »

Hi all...I realize I'm replying to a 2-year old post, but I wanted to just pop in and clear the air about a few things and maybe even solicit some assistance in making things right.

I'm the current maintainer for the diy-efi archives, website, and mailing list (and I also maintain a mirror of Ludis Langens' now defunct but excellent OBD-1 resources). I just want to state up front that I am not affiliated with B&G, nor have I been given any mandates by Bruce or anyone else as to what is or isn't allowed on the lists or in the archives. My sole reason for stepping up to the plate and taking this on is to preserve the archives and continue to make them available to those who find a need to access them. I also realize that forums such as this and gearhead-efi.com have pretty much replaced the role that diy-efi.org once played in supporting EFI for the DIY folks. Again, I'm interested more in preserving the information than anything else.

To put it bluntly, diy-efi.org fell into serious disrepair over the past few years. All archives prior to 2005 were lost in some sort of incident (I wasn't around then), and I've attempted to track down and repair a lot of broken links on the site. One of my goals is to track down anyone who might have a pre-2005 archive of the diy-efi mailing lists, which is how I ended up here.

I've not been given any directive as to what is or isn't allowed on the mailing list, and quite frankly, if that were the case, I'd just walk away from all this. I don't know what might have happened prior to my time, but in the interests of historical accuracy, if anyone has archival material that they would be willing to share with me, I'd be happy to restore them to the archives.

--Brian
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Re: R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

Post by Fred »

Hey Brian!

Although the material did disappear, and it was highly suspicious at the time, it may have reappeared, and it could have been a genuine coincidence of timing and database corruption. Or they may have been restored intentionally...

Somewhere in the deep past I may have a backup of my ancient email account. If I run across it one day, maybe you can publish what's in there?

I'd like nothing better than to see diy-efi.org revived in it's original form <3 I actually bought this domain thinking it was that one, not realising there was a hyphen missing! Although I don't blame anyone for thinking it was intentional domain squatting - that's exactly how it looked/looks. It wasn't, though. :-/ Woops.

This site had, and still has, many goals, and one of them was/is "keeping the bastards honest" which is what this section fulfills. I've taken a lot of shit for my inability to give a fuck about how hard I kick people in the nuts. But that's the way it has to be :-)

I commend your efforts on the list, even if you're a bit Nazi about it at times! Thanks!

Fred.
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
FreeEMS.org - the open source engine management system
FreeEMS dev diary and its comments thread and my turbo truck!
n00bs, do NOT PM or email tech questions! Use the forum!
The ever growing list of FreeEMS success stories!
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Re: R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

Post by brianko »

Somewhere in the deep past I may have a backup of my ancient email account. If I run across it one day, maybe you can publish what's in there?

Absolutely, I would love to see what you have and get it back into the archives! Text format is best, if possible.

I commend your efforts on the list, even if you're a bit Nazi about it at times! Thanks!

Haha! I'm trying to be more laid back about things, although people that know me will tell you I'm about as laid back as laid back can be. I just hate conversations that stray...

Update
On another note: I believe I have found the mailing list archives all the way back to 1995...working to restore them, will let you know if I was successful.

Update 2
I've restored what I believe are the old diy-efi.org mailing lists in their entirety. Access to the two list archives (one for diy_efi, the other for gmecm) can be found using these links:

http://lists.diy-efi.org/pipermail/diy_efi/
http://lists.diy-efi.org/pipermail/gmecm/

--Brian
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Re: R.I.P. diy-efi.org - now CENSORED! :-(

Post by Fred »

Awesome work on the search and find of the old archives! :-) Some gold in those, that's for sure.

Here's the full set, for the first time in years! http://lists.diy-efi.org/pipermail/diy_efi/
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
FreeEMS.org - the open source engine management system
FreeEMS dev diary and its comments thread and my turbo truck!
n00bs, do NOT PM or email tech questions! Use the forum!
The ever growing list of FreeEMS success stories!
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