About OpenInkpot

OpenInkpot is a project to develop a free-opensource firmware for E-ink-based devices. You can read the OpenInkpot Social Contract for more info.

Some people may remark that all E-ink devices on the market are already using Linux. This is correct, these devices are based on Linux, and in some cases, SDKs have been made available for these devices. However, the most interesting aspect of these devices (the book reading software and the device drivers) are typically not made public.

The drawback with this is that whilst users of these devices can ask the manufacturer for new features to be added, or for bugs to be patched, the manufacturer in some cases do not have enough time to fix certain bugs, or add new features.

Another problem is the variety of Linux distributions, GUI systems and libraries used in the different e-book devices, which makes porting applications between devices much harder than on PC.

Since this is not an ideal situation, OpenInkpot was started by several individuals, modelled on a typical free software project. We welcome anyone who wish to assist us in this endeavour.

At the moment, the core OpenInkpot team is focused on writing firmware for future (yet to be announced) devices. As you can judge, our previous work has brought attention of E-ink manufacturers.

In the short term, we hope to have more devices supported by the OpenInkpot and to improve the book reading applications, as well as the underlying system.