On 2/6/2014 5:59 PM, Andrew Lynch wrote:
Hi Jim! Thanks! Well you know we’ve discussed this before. I am not
anti-business by any stretch. Please try not to take this as an
insult but just my honest reaction.
Honestly, last time, when I asked for gerbers, I just received a
"thanks, but no". All of the following is good information, but it's
news to me.
The only thing less appealing to me than starting my own business or a
non-profit organization is to be the involuntary unpaid support staff
for someone else’s business.
To clarify, you're stating that if a commercial entity sells a board at
the same cost as you were charging, that's unacceptable?
That is the root reason why I cringe at any sort of attempt to
commercialize or organize a formal N8VEM home brew computer club
organization.
Think back in history to the original home brew computer club.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_Computer_Club
Did they file paperwork to become a 501C3 non-profit organization or
open a storefront?
They have counterparts in today's world, and those groups are sometimes
both. It was a different time, then. A storefront would have been a
real one, need to be manned, and cost a lot of money. Filing a 501c3
would have been a much more arduous process pre-Internet, and no
information (or little) would have been available. I posit that the HCW
would have set up a store today, and would accept bitcoin :-)
They were the incubator for the great founders of Silicon Valley
because they were basically one step away from anarchy the whole time.
Yes, yes they were. But, I see them as visionaries as well. They saw
the value of putting technology into the hands of as many people as
possible. Also, remember that many of them played prominent roles in
the Internet culture we use today, a culture that allows online stores
and this forum.
It is also why I am philosophically opposed to kitting and assembled
boards. Home brew computing is supposed to be hard and difficult. It
is not a toaster!
Hmmm, does the community agree? I admire your personal conviction, but
the median age of someone who cares about Z80s and CP/M is not 20, and
many folks who find value in these endeavors are physically handicapped
or unable to solder. Would Woz have told a person wanting a
pre-assembled Apple I "no"? That the person needs to learn how to
solder, learn how to debug data busses, learn digital logic? I doubt
it. If the person said, "Woz, I'll pay for the privilege of having you
fully assemble my kit", he'd have done it, because he wanted the
computer in peoples' hands. In any case, before folks say "it's OK,
Jim, those of us on the list can assemble one for Jim P., who's hands
shake enough he needs to give up soldering", let me note that these
folks will not ask, because they are humiliated and embarrassed that
they could at one point do these things, and now cannot, or that they
never could and are now too old to learn them (in their mind). They
just suffer in silence, or move onto something else.
You become fully invested in your creation when you stay up all night
for days on end only to watch it burst into flames when you power it up.
I think you can be fully invested in something in many ways. But, I
agree that bringing a system up from nothing is rewarding.
However I fear we will lose something essential if it becomes just
another commercial enterprise.
I think that minimizes the effort. Even a "commercial enterprise" such
as mine is more than "just a". I buy old parts for stock to help
hobbyists, since I can afford to sit on the stock for years. I buy new
parts in bulk, because you can't, for example, buy C64 IEC cables new
anywhere anymore. I fund development activities, and send boards out to
people who want to write SW, but are low on cash. I participate on
forums, not just to answer questions on my stuff, but to answer
questions in general. I try to bring back older HW that has been
orphaned. All of that takes time and money, and the proceeds from the
sales fund those things. If the "commercial enterprise" breaks even or
shows a bit of a profit at the end of the year, it's a great year, but
it's not expected.
I'll be honest. I cringe at the emails that state "we have a great new
PCB design. I need 20 people to sign up to start this process" not
because of the email, but because of the uncertainty. If it's a great
new design, it needs to be made, and now! 20 people will eventually
show up. I cringe at the flurry of emails "Put me down for one",
because I know someone has to manually manage all of that, and the
payment, and the coordination, and the reminders, etc. I cringe at
someone hand cranking out mailing labels, hand figuring overseas
shipping costs. I cringe at that someone doing all of these things when
this someone (or someones) should be sitting at a desk with a soldering
iron, or writing some great new snippet of Z80 code (or 6502 of 386
code) to bring this new board to life. I cringe at the lone enthusiast,
struggling to source all of the parts from 20 different places, and then
just giving up. I cringe a bit (no offense to folks in this thread) at
the responses to this forum: "Well, maybe we could adopt some boards",
"are you sure we can't just start doing payment another way", "what
about this or that". All of that brain activity, devoted to stepping
around the truth that the group should be playing with their new
machines and letting automation take care of the dirty jobs.
I realize my ideals and community ideals might be at odds, and that's
OK. I just wanted to suggest that there is a class of commercial
interest I think should be called "community commercial", that serves to
help address issues just like this. And, some of them are educational
in nature. The orders here, at least, are filled by my 9 year old
daughter, who asks every night "are there orders tonight?" She gets
paid for her efforts, has to ensure orders are correct, and handles
making sure things get done.
All that said, it seems Jack Rubin has made a nice offer, so maybe that
would work out.
Jim
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