[Arm-netbook] EOMA68 / Libre RISC-V team financing

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Thu, Dec 28, 2017 at 11:03 PM, Bill Kontos <vkontogpls at gmail.com> wrote:

> I got to be honest here, running out of funds in a crowdfunding
> campaign and looking to make it up via bitcoin does not make me feel
> very confident.

 luckily, aside from cashflow (which someone's offered to help with),
as of yesterday that's gone, $200/day.  first commission came in at
3am this morning, TW time.

 nit-picking: it's not bitcoin, it's bitcoin mining *commissions* that
make up the vaaaast bulk here, and those are issued in USD not BTC.

> I don't mean to rub it in your face and I'm sure
> you've explored this thoroughly, but you also did that with the
> campaign and yet you did run out of money because shit happens

 that, and because i knew that there was quite a lot of technical
issues to be resolved (linux kernel stuff etc) the absolute last thing
needed is to go "mainstream user", hence why i am very happy that the
numbers are *only* 2500 backers, *only* 900 cards, *only* 450
microdesktop housings and *only* 120 PFY/PIY laptop housings.


> and
> crypto is too messed up right now. Besides the problem with bitcoin is
> that as of right now there are 200k pending transactions.

 that's valuable information that i will need to know so as to be able
to plan ahead, thank you.  if you hear anything like that please do
tell me straight away ok?

> An idea of mine: this project is exactly what the government funding
> shakti hope for. Maybe ask madhu about potential government/uni funds.

 yes... i will get a chance to talk to him about that in about a
month's time when the team isn't focussing 100% on tape-out.

> Pitch the crowdfunding campaign as the proving ground of the standard
> and hope for the best. Education is a good example. If it goes through
> you will probably get more money that you'd know what to do with in
> the context of the campaign, plus a nice trip to India.

 :)

 madhu did explain that getting money out of india's bureaucratic
government system is.... sloooooow in the extreme.  their reaction
time should, basically, not be relied on in any meaningful way.

 one of the things that i will need to do is think through with madhu
*exactly* what kind of SoC the indian education sector would actually
need.  there's a professor who did a report (18 months ago?) he
recommended 2gb RAM Intel Celeron laptops as being perfectly capable
of running LibreOffice, Firefox etc. etc.

 so the EOMA68 laptop Housing with an EOMA68-RISCV64 processor with
say 4GB of dual 32-bit LPDDR3 RAM ICs would be *perfect*.

 but... getting the indian *government* to pay that funding?  yes.....
but 18 months late.

 hence the focus on getting - FAST - the funds IN PLACE so that we
don't HAVE to wait around.

l.