What do people think of the 1ghz Pandas?

[EvilDragon]

Well, to be honest, I was really one of the crazy guys who doesn't care that much about making profit with the Pandora, I never cared about that at all.


I've got a shop and another job and those are making enough so that I got a roof over my head and some food to eat.


However, right now it's not even about making profit.


When I look back, I now had 4 years where I worked 4-10 hours per day on the Pandora. Not getting any money from that would be fine with me, as I like the project.


However, thanks to CC and other companies, I made about 400K EUR debts with that.


So I worked four years not for free, but paid about 100K per year to do the work.


And that's just my personal statistics. Add Craigs, Michaels and Fatihs work on top of that.


So even if we'd sell a Pandora for 2000 USD per device, it would not make us profit in the end, but help to cover the losses...

 

[erico]

About the kickstart solution mentioned some posts ago as well as the main thread on that subject (bit off topic here)...


...I would suggest extreme caution on that. I have a feeling most of the ´UAU! KICKSTART TRILLIONS' situation going on these times to be a publicity move.


I would not know exactly what kind of ´caution´, and I could be wrong/paranoid.


Just something that came on my mind...

 

[renegadechic]

See there is nothing about either if your last posts that sounds at all unreasonable and it then starts to make a lot more sense. Its more about you being able to clear previous debts than realistically ever making much of a profit. It becomes relatively easy to assume that the premiums and continued production had cleared a lot of the issues you guys had financially but if this is what it takes to undo the losses then there isn't a great deal of room to complain.


Whilst I do think it will be a bit more difficult to balance a viable volume of orders to keep finances fluid to continue, you have to do what you have to do.


I don't know about anyone else but I wonder whether encouraging micropayments (or mini payments) in the $5 to $10 range, utilising the existing userbase, would be good. I doubt there is anyone out there who wouldn't pay for things like the OS improvements. I know there is GPL issues involved and people doing work for free outside of the main hardware production, but relying solely on point of purchase profits when so many other aspects of the company costs money is, in my opinion, not taking reasonable advantage of the good will of the owners community.

 

[diligentcircle]

I doubt there is anyone out there who wouldn't pay for things like the OS improvements. I know there is GPL issues involved...

There's no issue if a free software license is used, e.g. the GNU GPL. One of the principle provisions of these licenses is that anyone can commercially or non-commercially distribute a copy. That includes OP.


I actually think it would be a very bad strategy to require a fee for OS upgrades, though. It would just make people upset and result in fewer people using the latest OS version, which can only prevent them from seeing the Pandora in the best light.

 

[Prometheus]

I don't know about anyone else but I wonder whether encouraging micropayments (or mini payments) in the $5 to $10 range, utilising the existing userbase, would be good. I doubt there is anyone out there who wouldn't pay for things like the OS improvements. I know there is GPL issues involved and people doing work for free outside of the main hardware production, but relying solely on point of purchase profits when so many other aspects of the company costs money is, in my opinion, not taking reasonable advantage of the good will of the owners community.

I would find that to be taking very unreasonable advantage, myself.


Isn't the Pandora supposed to be an alternative, of sorts, to the increasing trend of microtransactions being used to eke as much money out of customers as is possible? Was this aspect not at some point *promoted*? Am I misremembering that? (Please, please do correct me if I'm mistaken.)


I'm happy to donate to stuff I find useful (and when it's feasible to do so, I do, but unfortunately £5 here and £10 there adds up very quickly), but if it came down to being "encouraged" to make such payments, I'd have to call it quits, to be honest.

 

[diligentcircle]

Isn't the Pandora supposed to be an alternative, of sorts, to the increasing trend of microtransactions being used to eke as much money out of customers as is possible? Was this aspect not at some point *promoted*? Am I misremembering that? (Please, please do correct me if I'm mistaken.)

Craig brings it up on the boards a lot when people complain about the Pandora's price.

 

[ekianjo]

I actually think it would be a very bad strategy to require a fee for OS upgrades, though. It would just make people upset and result in fewer people using the latest OS version, which can only prevent them from seeing the Pandora in the best light.

Totally agree. If I wanted to pay for OS upgrades I'd spend my money on a Mac or something. What's cool about the OP is that it's open and built on non commercial software, and that everyone can contribute to it. I hate all the DLCs, microtransactions based systems, and I do not want to see this kind of thing on the Pandora.

 

[renegadechic]

I've got to say I am a little surprised... I understand it adds up to a degree but we have had what... 6 hotfixes, super zaxxon so around 7 updates when that is out of beta, at £5 a pop is still only £35 over 2-4 years. On top of that they are essentially optional updates. I guess I just see the side of taking advantage of anyone stacked highly in favour of those who have pandora units compared to the guys making it. Thats the equivalent of one months mobile subscription or one full price new retail game. For the sake of supporting a project that gives people so much and that they take great pleasure in, I really do not see why it should be seen as such a great evil. When I think of all my technology, the Pandora probably pleases me the most, but of all of them I have spent less on it post purchase than any of the others as well.


On top of that, under GPL doesn't everything have to be source available and possibly distributed? If someone wanted to get their hands on it all for free elsewhere I don't see why that should be a problem if someone else hosts or shares it, but I figure at least if however many thousand users are going to hammer into the teams bandwidth they could contribute as some good will and thanks for everything.

 

[ExquisiteCorpse]

Watch what would happen if they charged for OS updates.


The project would die overnight

 

[renegadechic]

I guess that kinda goes some way to prove the entire problem with the tech industry these days. Its only "good and honest" if its free, otherwise its big and bad and corporate and part of the system. No wonder there are so many unemployed coders out there.

 

[ExquisiteCorpse]

all you would get is users not updating and further frustration when libraries are called that have been updated - resulting in broke pnd files and more work for devs to create multiple pnds to support multiple cycles of OS.


result - devs would find the device an even less attractive system to create stuff for and users would be pissed.


plus i'm here for a totally open system - once thats gone i'll go back to PSP devving.

 

[elwing]

through putting a 5$ donnation button near the download link might be a good idea... I would sometimes donate... if I had a pandora...

 

[renegadechic]

Well no one is remotely suggesting a closed system. I just think making the pandora less attractive to new users is infinitely more damaging than asking the existing users to pay small amounts for updates. More users will attract more devs, not a device with no potential audience growth. Also, I don't think you would see multiple pnds since I think people WOULD keep up with upgrades as the benefits are almost always really significant.

 

[ekianjo]

Well nobody is preventing you to donate all your money to the project or buy 10 pandoras. Or to start a kickstarter effort to rally people to your cause. Thats how community efforts work.


Charging unilateraly for upgrades is the opposite of openness, thats why you see such kind on behavior in companies like Apple and free, seamless upgrades in the Linux world.


If you came on the pandora for the openness of the system, play along the rules and the spirit of the game.

 

[Mr_Loon]

However, thanks to CC and other companies, I made about 400K EUR debts with that.

Hope that figure includes the money from investors.

 

[diligentcircle]

On top of that, under GPL doesn't everything have to be source available and possibly distributed? If someone wanted to get their hands on it all for free elsewhere I don't see why that should be a problem if someone else hosts or shares it, but I figure at least if however many thousand users are going to hammer into the teams bandwidth they could contribute as some good will and thanks for everything.

The source code has to be either distributed with the program or available with "equal access" separately, which (if I'm not mistaken) means the source code can't cost more than the binary (it might mean that anyone with a copy must be provided the source for free, though; I'm not sure).


But of course, you're right that someone can easily share it for free, so this wouldn't be a problem for users at all (as long as someone does redistribute it for free). I'm not concerned at all about what the user would face, which is negligible. I'm concerned about what the reaction would be from the community. The big problem I see is the OS updates aren't usually "amazing" new features and crap like that, but bugfixes and small improvements. I think a lot of people just wouldn't bother. In particular, I'm imagining the hypothetical scenario where people might have continued to use HF4 because they didn't want to pay for HF6 or SuperZaxxon, and as a result having bulging battery problems long after it was solved. But even failing extreme scenarios like that, not having the latest OS version (i.e. using old, outdated software) might, for example, cause the user to talk about a downside that was fixed ages ago, but that he didn't get because he thought the OS update wasn't worth it.


Plus, even though $5 isn't much, I wouldn't be surprised if people started complaining about it. Imagine, "OP is so greedy, they want me to pay $5 for tiny bugfixes and stupid extra features I don't even use."

 

[bukkit]

Hey ED. I'm in Germany and I don't find that information in the 1Ghz posting, so:


- Do you (personally) also sell full units or only upgrades?


- How much in Euro?


Thanks, b.

 

[laurencevde]

The software- and firmware-development is pretty separate from the hardware, and done by different guys. It doesn't make sense to fund the hardware with the software.


There's already a donation-fund for software-development. If people think software-development is going too slow, they should donate to that fund.

 

[Prometheus]

I guess I just see the side of taking advantage of anyone stacked highly in favour of those who have pandora units compared to the guys making it. Thats the equivalent of one months mobile subscription or one full price new retail game. For the sake of supporting a project that gives people so much and that they take great pleasure in, I really do not see why it should be seen as such a great evil.

The term "taking advantage", when applied to people, which you keep using here, is part of what's making people see it negatively. No-one's seeing it as a "great evil" - the thing is that nobody wants to feel taken advantage of, and nobody at all wants to feel that they're being blatantly taken advantage of by people *openly* and brazenly talking about taking advantage of them, as that's, for want a better word, demeaning. It's viewing us as walking wallets, and that's something that people actively dislike (again, coming back to the previous comment I made about this apparently being meant as an alternative to that behaviour).


Myself, as before, when I have the funds to spare, I donate where possible. What you're suggesting sounds more like it would be mandatory. Is this not your meaning?


As an aside, I'm afraid I don't understand your analogy about "mobile subscriptions" (I assume that this is something to do with mobile telephones - I'm not sure, though), though. If it is about telephones, I don't use one, and don't want one, so have no idea about the sorts of money people are now expected to spend (it sounds like it's MUCH more expensive than the old days, though). It's needless expense. But yeah, can't understand that analogy.

 

[renegadechic]

The term "taking advantage", when applied to people, which you keep using here, is part of what's making people see it negatively. No-one's seeing it as a "great evil" - the thing is that nobody wants to feel taken advantage of, and nobody at all wants to feel that they're being blatantly taken advantage of by people *openly* and brazenly talking about taking advantage of them, as that's, for want a better word, demeaning. It's viewing us as walking wallets, and that's something that people actively dislike (again, coming back to the previous comment I made about this apparently being meant as an alternative to that behaviour).

I guess my interpretation of take advantage was meant slightly differently. The impression I get is that you figure I mean is as if the opposite is "not screw over" but I was aiming for the opposite to be closer to "not utilise". The user base of the pandora will always be its strength and there is huge potential for easing the burden of cost of the project through utilising their gratitude and passion for the Pandora.

As an aside, I'm afraid I don't understand your analogy about "mobile subscriptions" (I assume that this is something to do with mobile telephones - I'm not sure, though), though. If it is about telephones, I don't use one, and don't want one, so have no idea about the sorts of money people are now expected to spend (it sounds like it's MUCH more expensive than the old days, though). It's needless expense. But yeah, can't understand that analogy.

Ah well some mobile contracts for phones of comparitive technology have 2 year duration at between £30 and £50 a month. I also find it a needless expense, buy my phones outright and use pay as you go spending maybe £20 every 3 months at most.