Paul Boddie's Free Software-related blog
Paul's activities and perspectives around Free Software
Neo900: Turning the corner
Back when I last wrote about the status of the Neo900 initiative, the fundraising had just begun and the target was a relatively modest €25000 by “crowdfunding” standards. That target was soon reached, but it was only ever the initial target: the sum of money required to prototype the device and to demonstrate that the device really could be made and could eventually be sold to interested customers. Thus, to communicate the further objectives of the project, the Neo900 site updated their funding status bar to show further funding objectives that go beyond mere demonstrations of feasibility and that also cover different levels of production.
So what happened here? Well, one of the slightly confusing things was that even though people were donating towards the project’s goals, it was not really possible to consider all of them as potential customers, so if 200 people had donated something (anything from, say, €10 right up to €5000), one could not really rely on them all coming back later to buy a finished device. People committing €100 or more might be considered as a likely purchaser, especially since donations of that size are effectively treated as pledges to buy and qualify for a rebate on a finished device, but people donating less might just be doing so to support the project. Indeed, people donating €100 or more might also only be doing so to support the project, but it is probably reasonable to expect that the more people have given, the more likely they are to want to buy something in the end. And, of course, if someone donates the entire likely cost of a device, a purchase has effectively been made already.
So even though the initiative was able to gauge a certain level of interest, it was not able to do so precisely purely by considering the amount of financial support it had been receiving. Consequently, by measuring donations of €100 or more, a more realistic impression of the scale of eventual production could be obtained. As most people are aware, producing things in sufficient quantity may be the only way that a product can get made: setup costs, minimum orders of components, and other factors mean that small runs of production are prohibitively expensive. With 200 effective pledges to buy, the initiative can move beyond the prototyping phase and at least consider the production phase – when they are ready, of course – without worrying too much that there will be a lack of customers.
Since my last report, media coverage has even extended into the technology mainstream, with Wired even doing a news article about it. Meanwhile, the project itself demonstrated mechanically compatible hardware and the modem hardware they intend to use, also summarising component availability and potential problems with the sourcing of certain components. For the most part, things are looking good indeed, with perhaps the only cloud on the horizon being a component with a 1000-unit minimum order quantity. That is why the project will not be stopping with 200 potential customers: the more people that jump on board, the greater the chances that everyone will be able to get a better configuration for the device.
If this were a mainstream “crowdfunding” effort, they might call that a “stretch goal”, but it is really a consequence of the way manufacturing is done these days, giving us economies of scale on the one hand, but raising the threshold for new entrants and independent efforts on the other. Perhaps we will eventually see innovations in small-scale manufacturing, not just in the widely-hyped 3D printing field, but for everything from electronic circuits to screens and cases, that may help eliminate some of the huge fixed costs and make it possible to design and make complicated devices relatively cheaply.
It will certainly be interesting to see how many more people choose to extend the lifespan of their N900 by signing up, or how many embrace the kind of smartphone that the “fickle market” supposedly does not want any more. Maybe as more people join in, more will be encouraged to join in as well, and so some kind of snowball effect might occur. Certainly, with the transparency shown in the project so far, people will at least be able to make an informed decision about whether they join in or not. And hopefully, we will eventually see some satisfied customers with open hardware running Free Software, good to go for another few years, emphasizing once again that the combination is an essential ingredient in a sustainable technological society.