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 _______________________________________________ Community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goldelico.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/community http://www.openphoenux.org
