Facebook "Open Compute Project" nothing but hot air

Harald Welte

2011-04-09

There has been a lot of fuzz about facebook's Open Compute Project, and it seems to originate mostly from journalists without much technical skill.

Did anyone actually bother to check what they released? You can find mechanical designs and simple specification data sheets. More or less every vendor is publishing that kind of information, or at least there are common form factors that are specified (like ATX, eATX, mini-ITX, ...)

It is sad to hear that they are 'openwashing' themselves (like BP is greenwashing itself). Specifically, the following portions are not "open":

Any type of electrical schematics (mainboards, power supply, ...)
Any type of detailed data sheets or programming manuals on the electronic components used
Gerber files of the PCBs

So what this really is all about is: Facebook advertising this is our new mechanical form factor, now we want all of you to adopt it, so we can buy cheaper hardware.

Go home, facebook. Come back if you have something _really_ open.