[Arm-netbook] Will EOMA68-A20 be sweatshop-free?

[Xavi Drudis Ferran]

El Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 08:15:04AM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton deia:
>  i've been talking to mike for 2 years now.  you get an intuitive feel
> when talking to people that they're okay.  little things that come up
> in conversations.  i'll be able to see how people react to him (and to
> me).  i don't miss much... it can take a while for me to work things
> out but i get there.  if there's anything "off" i'll know about it.
> 
> l.
> 

Luke, I know you have a lot of work in front of you and it will be
hard enough to pull out without additional constraints. So rest a
little, take a breath and don't over strain yourself. But what Sam
Pablo says is important.

You've taken some heat from people who disliked Allwinner having taken
the work of people and disregarded their copyrights. In my particular
worldview taking heat from companies solving worker stress by
installing safety nets under worker dormitory windows (so that they
can't effectively commit suicide) would feel much worse. And I'm not
accusing anyone of anything (probably those "higly efficient"
companies wouldn't take small orders, anyway). And I also don't know
the world enough to infer that since there are companies like these,
all have to be so, or even most. So it is just an extreme example, not
an attempt at guessing reality in general or in what may eventually
affect EOMA-68.

Just like you sometimes tell that talking to FSF or Think Penguin got
you to understand issues better, even issues you already understood
for long but from maybe a different angle, I think talking to
Electronics Watch or some other people may help you understand not
only the labour reality but the work of people working to change that
reality and the potential markets you might reach and the constraints
that it would require. I read that you would have loved to know Open
Source Ecology before you did. Well, don't wait till the next
crowdfunding effort to know more worthwhile groups.

Fullfilling some 2500 orders may possibly be done by a huge one-person
effort. But your longterm plans require more infrastructure and
method.  Longterm you can't just go "I'll intuitively sort it
out". Just as you wrote a long and detailed white paper on ecoconcious
computing you'll eventually need to either write or adopt some policy
on other issues (labour, conflict minerals, circular economy,
programmed obsolescence if anything further than the white paper is
needed, distributed/local manufacturing, tax engineering). And even if
it's hard to believe that you can achieve all that right now, taking a
little time to read through and reach out to those collectives might
prove useful, even if you don't finally join any of their campaigns or
follow any of their directives (you at least will be more able to tell
why). And in as much as you find coincidences you might find
complicities, and both new markets and help.

Your RYF cards got more than double the requests than your next
popular non-RYF card. So you see when you get external endorsement
that helps sales. There are more ethical aspects than what you have in
plan to certify, so it'd be nice to at some point know whether or not
a future campaign or product endorses any.

For instance a previous message in this list talked about selling to
governmental institutions. Well that's what Electronics Watch is all
about. The moment you are ready to sell to institutions, going to them
with an Electronics Watch, RYF and conflict free minerals credentials,
for instance, may open a few doors, because the political impact of
turning that offer down will be highly appreciated by any opposition
party aiming to cease being the opposition party. In fact institutions
affiliated to Electronics Watch should only buy from certified
suppliers, so if you ever get there, you may have cleared a lot of
competition for some customers. And you can use labour conditions
sensibility to further free software goals (that have to do with
intellectual labour conditions too, but maybe are more about consumer
rights).

If you have some referents to point to, people may agree with them and
buy. They probably won't care for some of the criteria (as long as
they're not contrary to them) and will care a lot for a few. So some
people may come to you for free software, some for environmental
impact, some for fair trade, etc. But if you go just "trust me, I'm a
good guy, I'll do it properly" then you are requiring people to agree
in basically all of your views, which is very hard to achieve for
anyone. If you broaden the field to all subjects, then mostly anyone
disagrees with anyone.

I know because a couple of your posts in this list did demotivate me
from helping the campaign, since I've sometimes have a hard time
telling whether some views where group views and decisions of the
campaign or just personal views that were not necessary influential 
enough that backers had to share them.

So when I hear that you'll go peek in a factory and convince yourself
that all is right I sincerly don't know at all if that will mean
anything for me. It might or it might not. I don't know you enough and
I am not so terribly interested to know you enough to tell that. I'd
prefer a list of minimum conditions and a procedure for verifying
them, preferently involving local people who know the place, the
culture, the language and the society where the work is done. Good
news is the laptop assembly for instance will be mostly done under
conditions well know by the customers (their own, since most laptops
were requested as disassembled kits).

And yes, I know these projects are too small yet to demand anything,
and I know my only recourse is buying elsewhere from some company that
will be the same or worse. So don't take it as an irrational rant
demanding the moon. It's just an opinion to show some people would
care for more things and would care in a similar way than for
free-software issues, through trnasparency and endorsements from
well-respected institutions with some years of building and applying
criteria.

It doesn't mean you have to change anything, sleep badly or risk not 
being able to deliver what you promised because you suddenly need to 
raise to higher standards of purity in every conceivable subject.
At this phase we know you'll do the best you can. It's ok.  
I'm just trying to suggest you might at your leisure, start taking 
a look at some websites, keeping track of some agendas and even maybe
visting some events, so that you can start forming an opinion about
broader issues. And maybe even letting them know about your project 
(anyone can do that, I guess) in ase they might be interested. 

Sorry for abusing your patience, I should learn to summarise.