Preorder Donation Funds


edgex004

Advanced Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2008
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1,219
Hi Everyone,

I know the developer fund didn't seem to work out all too well for the Pandora. That money did just seem to evaporate. At least I don't think it was made clear the developers who received free units and ended up contributing or what else the money was spent on (A WiFi driver was started maybe?). I'm sure there were at least a few chosen developers who have made great things for us but never bragged about receiving a gratis unit.

Since ED currently has the donation system set up to be highly transparent, I was thinking it could be a good idea to have two donation options set up with the Pyra preorders:

1. Donate to a new developer fund, but this time it would be tracked just like with the competition donations. Everyone could then watch as this money was spent on OS development, sending the first units to various developers, and competitions. There could perhaps be a comment line where pre orderers could suggest who or what they think the money should be spent on. Of course the final say of how it is spent would come down to whoever was collecting it (ED).

If sending free Pandoras to developers wound up wasting a few units on some folks who never truly appreciated the device (I do believe Craig mentioned this), perhaps the fund could discount the first 10-50 Pyras and have them offered to those who have made such large contributions to the community as a thank you for their hard work. We could even set up a blind vote before preorders begin to select a group of board members who should receive the honored first units.

Thinking even beyond a fund or giving discounted units, perhaps simply the first units to be delivered could be nominated at order time. When you preorder, you could perhaps write in 3 board user names of developers working on projects you care about and want to see continued on Pyra. Any dev who receives 5 nominations would automatically have their preorder moved to the top of the list.

2. Of course the continued donation fund to send Pyras to folks still left from Craigs list. We seem to be getting closer and closer to finishing it off. I'm sure the day the slate is wiped clean will be a proud moment for all Pandora/Pyra owners, as I believe that will truly mark the success of an extremely difficult project.
 
We don't know who Craig sent units to, so it's hard to postmortem that process, but I'd hope it's clearer now which developers are worth having on board in the early days.  Maybe the community suggesting names might be a good idea, but I'd be against publishing the devs who do get free units - we know which devs can really probe a device and have the motivation to complete projects, and don't need to add any extra pressure of everyone knowing what they should be doing.

Regarding the donation queue, I think there are still more people on it than there are parts to make Pandoras, unless more parts are found cheaply.  The rest of them will be able to get a Pyra cheaply of course.
 
We don't know who Craig sent units to, so it's hard to postmortem that process, but I'd hope it's clearer now which developers are worth having on board in the early days.  Maybe the community suggesting names might be a good idea, but I'd be against publishing the devs who do get free units - we know which devs can really probe a device and have the motivation to complete projects, and don't need to add any extra pressure of everyone knowing what they should be doing.
Yes I agree completely. In terms of spending money especially I don't think it should go beyond " XXX Euro spent to supply developer boards." Adding specific names would add unnecessary pressure.

During the early production process, would some money be able to be funneled to dev boards that could be passed amongst the community developers? Perhaps while the production process is still being worked out, a prototype could spend a month with one dev before being passed to another. Users could perhaps even apply to spend time with a prototype, and ED could choose an order by lottery while also taking community history into account.

Regarding the donation queue, I think there are still more people on it than there are parts to make Pandoras, unless more parts are found cheaply.  The rest of them will be able to get a Pyra cheaply of course.
Certainly, and I believe ED has stated the donations could continue to send those users Pyras after Pandoras are gone.
 
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A month seems quite a short time, and I'd say in the main that any dev boards sent out shouldn't have an expiry date on them. But perhaps making it clear that unused boards can be sent back to ED to be sent to other system devs, in case any dev applies with good intentions but quickly realises they're unable to contribute for whatever reason.
 
_aegis_ ie lunixbochs is remotely using my devboard(bought myself). He prob would love to have one of his own.
 
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I would rather have ED or ED+Forum_Staff pick the people who receive dev units (if any). A community vote would probably favor developers who are particularly visible on the boards, forgetting those who did the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
 
donating bev boards to devs outside the core team, let's say 6 months before Pyras hit the market might be a waste of money, in opposite of using that money to offer Pyra discounts to more devs (and maybe attracting more devs). Its a matter of how polished you want your Pyra to be on day x.

People expect finished and polished products. Apple is a good example (god, I hate Apple). There is no way to release a fully styled poduct in that short amount of time without a huge workforce and money. (Which is fine for me, by the way). So my suggestion is (like convention with software) to simply name the first batch "the 0.5 batch", or something like "the pre-release batch" in order to avoid premature and superficial reviews?
 
Yes, doing a first batch labelling thing might be a good idea for that reason, and to tie back to the GP2X too. For the most part I think most review sites would hope to be loaned a unit to review, so those can be held back until the main issues are solved, but there's no stopping youtube reviewers. Perhaps only the lack of general availability stopped that with the Pandora, though the lack of availability also perhaps stopped getting more hands on deck to solve issues in the first place - it was a bit of a long slog.


I'm hopeful that a lot of the OS hacks and scripts that were used on Pandora can be used on the Pyra, so they're not in practice starting quite from scratch like they were with the Pandora - plus OSes like armhf Debian are much more refined and reliable these days. But there's still a lot of work to be done, don't get me wrong.
 
So ED chalks up a list of devs and makes that the next funding bar, sounds like a plan.

Edit: Any reviewer worth his salt would notice the project is or isnt in an early stage. Worry about fixing things, not explaining how it might be broken.
 
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