[Community] [Gta04-owner] About cost and business models for community hardware

[wonderphone at posteo.de]

Hi all,

I pick up this thread because it interests me most :)

What spoils the development of the community most - I believe - the lack 
of hardware as mentioned earlier in this thread. Humans are totally 
symbol and token oriented and without hardware in our hands it is hard 
to cling to the ideas of Openphoenux.

I hope with more devices available also for users of the more end user 
type of users this community can grow still slowly but with a good 
tendency. The community has a good chance to stay a credible grassroots 
community with a flourishing pluralistic ecosystem. I cannot see how the 
community could be converted into Big Business like it happened with 
Oculus Rift. Nikolaus can never misuse the community to eventually be 
able to float the stock market with shares totaling US$ 2bn. Nikolaus, I 
am sure you never even dreamed of that ;) You would risk a rift with the 
rest of the community ;)

No seriously: with so much of the hardware being open and documented 
there is not a lot of intellectual property that can be used to force 
the community into a direction where it does not want to go. And that is 
the nice thing about the community: It belongs to us, it belongs to 
everybody! Nikolaus puts a lot of effort into the development and the 
community and will hopefully reap some results from the board sales. But 
it will always be reasonable. The rest of us who contributed code or 
money can be sure that it will benefit the community and not a single 
person or company.

This is our community and it can only be what we make it. It should be 
made clear from the beginning that it won't work if not anybody who can 
will support it. We will all be testers and contributors and those who 
want to use the devices without contributing knowhow should consider to 
pay a support fee if they can afford it. That would allow for additional 
freelancers to be paid.


A totally different thing: I like the current way the funds are raised: 
We pay an amount so that the development can start and if the devices 
are ready we can buy them. But if somebody would like to start a 
Kickstarter of fund raising on Startnext, we should consider that. These 
campaigns are often quite successful and attract a lot of awareness and 
money in combination with social media. I like the way we are doing but 
if somebody feels like starting more crowd-funding please report to this 
list.

Best regards,
Oliver