Pandora Developer Fund

[renegadechic]

Or at least how silly you think it is... {tries to hammer home that point} but... no worries. Actually after a little thought I had to tone down my response. Every issue surrounding the Pandora is emotive and you''''ve as much right as I have to get , um, responsive I wouldn''''t have it any other way - if we didn''''t get emotional about the Pandora then we might as well pack up and go home, because it''''s become pointless/not worth the effort at that stage.

i agree that what i said is opinion rather than truth or fact, and i glad you look at the emotive side of everything as that factor is very present.

QUOTE
Your newer post seems to invite conversation, but I am slightly leery. I could delve further into it, but I am no great fan of stress that can be avoided and I''''m not keen to be jumped all over by someone else, then someone else, then someone else whilst trying to explain (defend?) my POV on one slight aspect... (snip)


to expand on your analogy, i view it similarly except with a few rather fundamental changes. imagine we are citizens of a new fledgling Nation with no infrastructure and a government with a good historical record of trustworthiness and transparency comes and says to us "We have the knowledge to create for you an infrastructure and society for you to live it. When it is completed you will have complete control of how you interact with this infrastructure, and you will be open to be a part of it and be involved in it. There are a few caveats. Firstly we need a one of tax payment of £200/equivalent from each of you to get this structure up and running. There will be mistakes and teething problems and though we hope to have everything ready as soon as possible, there is likely to be unavoidable delays and mishaps. However we promise that you will get this infrastructure in the end. We may create organisations and services that mean little or nothing to you, but they will be important to someone so trust us to put your money where we think it is necessary."

or something like that. OP is not a corrupt government, they are a mostly (if not entirely) transparent and trustworthy enterprise and any donation that is made looks almost guaranteed to fall back to us in the Pandora''s functionality. it makes complete sense to have properly testable units go to developers if they are working on something that will eventually come out on release. also, we have to remember that giving any money to a specific developer has to be judged on their works appeal. is every user guaranteed to play and be into every single game produced? is everyone even guaranteed to use the Pandora for predominantly games? i can understand why there would be more interest in helping developers bring emulators because from a gaming perspective that opens doors to an entire game library and when 4000 potential people will benefit from one dev getting a dev board to sort out an emulator which means people can play hundreds and hundreds of games, then i can see the appeal.

maybe a good way to solve this in future would be to have a general "do what you want with it" fund, a "for buying dev boards" fund and a software assistance fund. that way people would have a general choice over things though even then it might not go to the projects you want. since the pandora is getting closer and closer to release now though, i expect that this will become more and more moot as people will be able to just buy a pandora rather than be sent a dev board.

what would be interesting however, as an aside, is perhaps the creation of a Pandora advertising kitty. i am not exactly sure what we could pay for with advertising since tech press seems to be essentially free, but it could perhaps go towards units for review etc.

edit: guess who fails at communicating with any clarity *sigh* (me)

 

[Monk]

Don't you just love it when a stray finger loses you your entire post? I know I don't.... and someone should fix the whole multiple apostrophies issue (among others) with this board! LOL. But I digress. I may be less wordy than I was last time I edited this post...

imagine we are citizens of a new fledgling Nation with no infrastructure and a government with a good historical record of trustworthiness and transparency ...

or something like that. OP is not a corrupt government

LOL no, they're not. Nor, I suspect, are any of our devs starving people from third-world countries. Analogies aren't meant to be taken literally, they are meant as gross oversimplifications to paint a nice, bold, clear picture - as yours does. Sadly, I find my level of trust has fallen far lower than yours has

This is a goof thing for you, I suspect

any donation that is made looks almost guaranteed to fall back to us in the Pandora's functionality.

Quite likely, and there is much to commend on your outlook. I wouldn't want to try and argue you away from it at all. From my own perspective, I wasn't donating to make OP more successful however, but to reward devs who produced good software without asking to be rewarded. That was the sole aspect of Craig's posts on the matter that appealed to me - to reward devs who might usually see thousands of downloads but only a handful of comments. To retroactively thank energetic, enthusiastic, yadda yadda coders. It might be only beer money, but at least I'd hoped they would buy themselves some good beer

edit: guess who fails at communicating with any clarity *sigh* (me)

I disagree, I think you did well enough. There wasn't a whole lot that's new to me, but there's a good deal of heart and good intent there AFAICS, and I loved the ideas on funding - all I would say is that it's good to have the direction of the fund fixed before taking money. I would be tempted to post more on why the apparent 180 degree change in direction of the dev fund annoyed me (indeed last time I typed this response up I WAS!) but to be honest all I expect to come from it is OpenPandora's Rottweiler either trying to logic-chop it apart or just flame me that my opinions are not good enough... So if I may I think I'd like to try and resist clarifying why I think "providing hardware for devs to develop on, before users ahve seen the results" is so different to "rewarding devs who have produced Pandora software that the Pandora users love, retroactively" that I have been reduced heated debate )

Ta

 

[renegadechic]

ah i think my outlook is incredibly... relaxed for want of a better word. maybe its my distance from the gp32x community that i have only been involved with peripherally since i found out about the Pandora (and mostly to be some kind of pointless zentroll with poor language skills), but i do seem to be less outraged about things. of all the things going on in my life, the Pandora is one of the good, exciting things. a distraction from tormenting myself with various existentialist crisis. something to look forward to! anyway, enough of my life-story

So if I may I think I'd like to try and resist clarifying why I think "providing hardware for devs to develop on, before users ahve seen the results" is so different to "rewarding devs who have produced Pandora software that the Pandora users love, retroactively" that I have been reduced heated debate )

i think i see the difference you are detailing here, and i think i can see where your argument is coming from. essentially it boils down to "should the dev fund money go to core Pandora software devs or should it go towards projects that use the device but aren't involved in its delivery". or even "should the dev fund be a resource used to get the Pandora out there or should OP ltd sort that out on their own backs."

is that right? overall i say "hmm" and equally want to run away from it i think. having not actually donated to it myself its easy for me to just say "whatever, so long as it makes it all happen quicker" but i dont have that vested interest. looking at who has dev-boards though i think we can vouch for their rewards. i forget who has done what but between (in no particular order) Cpasjuste, DaveC, DJWillis, notaz, Pickle, and probably others who i hope i dont offend by not including, we have seen work on the kernel, work on the big OS, Pmenu, the pxml, etc which are all more delivery end jobs. however we have seen between them things more independent of the delivery of the pandora such as running the quake games, compiling and preparing various emulators and other bits and bobs. i guess i am trying to say that maybe they may be on board before we have had the chance to love what they have done, but it was virtually guaranteed that whatever they did do was going to be pretty darned amazing.

 

[Monk]

is that right?

LOL - it feels a little like talking through a bowl of rather dated blancmange. There's...some aspect, some component of what you say in how I feel but I really do feel I summed it up in a way that sounds best to me already, and am unsure I can be any clearer (I suffer from the fact that English is my first language).

From your post one could get the impression that the dev fund has already been used to provide Pickle et al with their dev boards, and despite the fact that Pickle is probably my favourite "Dev of the moment" that would, hmmm, sadden me. I had thought that OP were funding the dev boards in order to build up interest in the Pandora rather than that the customers were doing that as well as buying their own hardware.

I've just had word that I can expect my Netbook to be delivered day after tomorrow, which has helped cheer me up a bit (let's hope it's not as bad as it could be). It'll mostly be a slightly more gung-ho version of what I would have bought last September if I'd known the Pandora wasn't going to be out even now (because I've had several months of enforced abstinance from playing with a new toy to build up cash to buy more/better with). But on the Pandora dev fund it really is about the flow of time, the direction, cause and effect. {snip a load of borrocks as I think I have found an easier way}. In essence, I signed up to pay a small amount in gratitude for eggs delivered - I didn't sign up to buy a chicken that comes from a long line of good layers (but could catch bird flu, escape, or, indeed, turn out to be a rooster).

 

[gp2.eXe]

"Did you know you can donate one or all of your vital organs to the Aperture Science Self-Esteem Fund for Girls? It's True!"

Don't you just love it when a stray finger loses you your entire post? I know I don't.... and someone should fix the whole multiple apostrophies issue (among others) with this board! LOL. But I digress. I may be less wordy than I was last time I edited this post...

...

Ta

Time to read my sig

 

[Monk]

Time to read my sig

I read it but I have a similar attitude to pretty much everything as Craigix expresses toward Pandora hardware - like the nubs. Sure, you can cludge it - but it's better to do it PROPERLY. I am watching just how well the community is treated by the board with some wry amusement at times, irritation at others.

 

[gp2.eXe]

Time to read my sig

I read it but I have a similar attitude to pretty much everything as Craigix expresses toward Pandora hardware - like the nubs. Sure, you can cludge it - but it's better to do it PROPERLY. I am watching just how well the community is treated by the board with some wry amusement at times, irritation at others.

LOL, alright, not everyone has to use the Board's Rich Text Editor that my sig links to if they don't want to... but it would make reading your posts easier.

 

[u9i]

The point that Monk and u9i continue to miss is that we're not just handing out Pandoras to new or potential devs.

A perfect example of why I am leery to continue is this thread. I cannot speak for u9i, but for myself your statement is completely untrue. I have not missed that aspect. At all. I am cognisant of it. I comprehend.


+1

It seems to be difficult for Chip to comprehend that other people might have different opinions to himself.

I was aware that the fund was very "abstract" at the time of ordering (and it still is,) so what ever happens to it happens to it. I am not going to bitch and moan about it. But it is my opinion that the fund should be kept as separate from the company as possible, (for reasons i have difficulty expressing succinctly.)

Other then that, I pretty much agree with Monk. I get the impression that the fund made a 180. That said, i would rather the money went into OpenPandora Ltd. then it went "tits up."

 

[lulzfish]

The Rich Text Editor slows down my typing because it lags.
Firefox for Ubuntu is a piece of shit. Fuck it.

 

[DavidBowman]

I donated to the fund because I trust Craig, etc. to do the right thing to make Pandora a success. However they want to.
I have stated my ideas of what I'd like, but finally it's their call.

This is why I gave to it. Don't know about everyone else.

The Rich Text Editor slows down my typing because it lags.
Firefox for Ubuntu is a piece of shit. Fuck it.

There are tweaks you can apply to speed it up. It helps, trust me.

I started reading this thread and I just gave up after a couple pages. I don't know how damn near every discussion turns into a bitch fest on these forums.

Where's the love, people? Where'd it go?

 

[Monk]

LOL, alright, not everyone has to use the Board's Rich Text Editor that my sig links to if they don't want to... but it would make reading your posts easier.


The problem with that is that it assumes I may write something worth reading. A dangerous assumption. Since it doesn't invovle installing any code at this end though, I'll give it a whilr

...other people might have different opinions to himself.

It's something I've noticed here and there, some people seem to lack empathy to such a degree that they just cannot see any point of view that isn't closely alighned with themselves. It's like a form of colour blindness or something, but they honestly just don't "get it"

Where's the love, people? Where'd it go?

IMHO (and I am no expert) that's exactly the kind of question that drags up all the ugly "because he said/she said" arguments all over again! For me, the moment anyone starts looking like they are "renegotiating" a deal with me without discussing it with me, I'll get upset. The moment anyone starts telling people what I think (incorrectly) for his own reasons, or insulting me I will tend to lose my normally sunny disposition. That doesn't mean the Pandora is any less a device than the specification suggests, but when I start worrying about Pandora like I worry about sending bad food back at a restaurant in case I get back a new plate with hidden cat snot in it, I know things have gone bad