[Arm-netbook] Status update

[Paul Boddie]

On Tuesday, 22 November 2022 00:01:25 CET Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> On Monday, November 21, 2022, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > 
> > OK, when someone is asked by Crowd Supply to contact the creators
> > directly, you (as creator #1) are evidently too busy
> 
> no, this is wrong.  or, factually misleading.
> the 93 Cards are at *Think Penguin's premises*.

>From a message in March 2021:

"hiya Felix, yes doing well, very busy with LibreSOC tape-out is soon.

Chris received the other 90 of the Cards, for testing before the remaining
900 are done."

People asked again during 2021 and got no further replies. So, yes, we get it: 
you are busy with your other project.

> i have spent 18 months persistently attempting
> communication to recover those Cards.

Well, I am sorry that you have been persistently attempting communication, but 
probably one of the things that we have collectively learned in recent years 
is that without continuous communication with those who have supported a 
crowdfunding campaign, confidence in that campaign evaporates rapidly.

Sadly, campaigns that have suffered from insurmountable setbacks tend to 
demotivate their creators, diminish their willingness to communicate, and then 
people start to question the motivations of those creators. I can think of at 
least one other campaign in which I have had some interest where this has 
probably happened.

Most of us here do not question your motivations, but I know of at least one 
other project which I follow (but have no direct interest in) where the 
creator has suffered from numerous setbacks and yet has continually kept their 
supporters informed, even if the news has been negative. Apart from a couple 
of provocateurs, most of the people who are involved seem sympathetic to the 
creator and their situation.

I know that you do not like your actions being reviewed and questioned, so let 
these be some more general observations for posterity, for those willing to 
take something away from this effort. On such matters, more in a moment.

[...]

> > Personally, I find it all a bit perplexing. Although I know that you
> > brought Mr Waid into the effort with there apparently being some
> > particular interest from him in the laptop, I would imagine that most
> > people following this project would have expected you to bring the effort
> > to completion yourself:
> 
> fuck no, you must be absolutely kidding. you cannot possibly be serious.
> 
> if you genuinely believe that then you cannot possibly have
> been reading the updates where i specifically request assistance
> and remind everyone systematically that this is and always
> has been a COMMUNITY project where it lives and dies on what
> people help out with.

I wasn't going to bother replying to your message at all until I read this. 
After all, there is not much to say about some kind of communications failure  
between two business associates supposedly under the supervision of an online 
commerce platform (to take the most charitable interpretation and ignoring the 
exhortations to name and shame or for a manhunt to take place).

But where I take great exception is the way you address and otherwise 
communicate with other people. Six or so years ago, you launched a 
crowdfunding campaign on the basis of working prototypes of a computer card 
and depictions of products that were claimed to be in the advanced stages of 
development. This whole endeavour was framed in terms of your expertise, 
connections and abilities to go and get things made.

When appearances proved to be deceptive, as in the instance of the 
microdesktop case that had apparently been specially made to illustrate the 
product, people were told that it was their job to pitch in and design the 
actual product. So, although there was a portrayal of finished items on offer, 
when the absence of such finished items was revealed, it suddenly became the 
job of the "community" to remedy the situation.

And when somebody did offer their assistance, they inadvertently transgressed 
with respect to your personal choice of collaboration tools, and you treated 
them appallingly. I completely regret not speaking out forcefully about this 
at the time. A genuine community project should be a democracy and 
participants should be treated with respect. Instead, you seem to think that a 
community involves you deciding how things should be done and then telling 
everyone that you "need" them to do it, as if they are your employees.

> examples include writing documentation, wiki pages, developing
> linux kernel support, u-boot patches and getting OS Support
> up and running.  none of which i can possibly be expected to
> handle alone.

In fact, some of us have attempted to engage with the supposed community 
aspects of this effort. But again, if the role of the community is merely to 
channel the thoughts of the important and very busy leader into actions, then 
there are several obstacles. Firstly, people need to have concrete things to 
work with if they are to do concrete tasks, and they also need to be empowered 
to get the work done and to be able to provide input and exercise influence.

Amongst other things, I have actually looked into some of the tasks around 
documentation and kernel support. One fundamental element of the kernel 
support was the way that housings should affect the devices seen by the 
computer card. I had a long discussion with you about this in 2020 where you 
insisted that with regard to the mechanisms in the Linux kernel...

"it's all there.  the pieces are in place."

Supposedly, all the support had been introduced for Raspberry Pi "hats", but 
when I looked they didn't actually address the problem. That is another issue 
about taking direction from someone who thinks they have all the answers: 
often, those answers don't stand up to scrutiny. However, with regard to the 
Linux kernel, with its own form of unconstructive, exploitative "community" 
dynamics, I should probably give you some benefit of the doubt if you had the 
wrong impression.

All of this is pretty academic without actual hardware to use, leaving us 
treading water in the hope of something eventually showing up. At one point in 
the distant past, actual hardware was distributed to various individuals. What 
happened to that hardware and what work was actually done? Maybe those people 
treated it like another toy to play with and then found themselves distracted 
by something else. That might as well have been the backstory.

I am inclined to think that failure should be considered the default outcome 
of any crowdfunding campaign. Responsible crowdfunding should therefore 
involve conferring the ability to reproduce what was done to those who have 
supported the effort. If the campaign doesn't deliver, people should be able 
to salvage what was actually done to provide the chance of resuming that 
effort in other forms. Of course, if such a project were a genuine community 
effort, everybody would already have access to everything they might need.

For all its emphasis on open hardware, Crowd Supply should really be insisting 
on such transparency and the empowerment of actual communities, rather than 
trying to have it both ways as a kind of retail experience but without any 
guarantees of delivery, potentially leaving its customers without anything to 
show for their investments of time, effort and money.

[...]

> to ask him very simply: "where are the 93 Cards"
> 
> so that we can send a Courier round to recover them, get them
> to Portland, so that Joshua can test them.

Although the argument has been presented that all of this has been very 
frustrating and/or delicate and that much has been tried behind the scenes to 
make progress, I view the lack of transparency rather negatively. It may be 
the case that you have wanted to communicate the situation but Crowd Supply 
have been reluctant to do so, but the outcome has been to conceal the gradual 
failure of a project, making me wonder how many other campaigns are 
experiencing similar or other forms of failure that are not communicated.

In any case, you don't need me or anyone else to send messages to some guy on 
another continent to initiate whatever action is necessary. Whatever I might 
do is completely superfluous to whatever could already be done to resolve this 
matter. You would almost be better off asking Warren Buffett to intervene. At 
least he would have an opinion about funding people's projects as well as 
carrying a degree of actual influence via corporate ownership hierarchy.

Paul