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On 17/05/15 15:11, Paul Menzel wrote: > Dear coreboot folks, > > > Timothy, congratulations again on making a coreboot port for the > ASUS KGPE-D16 and therefore completing your third coreboot port! > That’s really amazing! > > > Am Mittwoch, den 29.04.2015, 22:46 +0100 schrieb The Gluglug: >> You should crowd-fund the $35,000 figure, there are lots of >> people who will be interested in this. I personally will chip in, >> and I'd ask others to as well. > > I am thinking about organizing the crowdfunding campaign to raise > the money. > > If somebody else wants to do it, please speak up! > > As this is more or less a donation by the backers, the process > should be as open and transparent as possible. That’s why I am > sharing the following information publicly. > > 1. Giant Monkey Software Engineering [1], the German company I work > for, would be the organizing entity. As a company with five > employees and a GmbH it might have enough credibility so that > people would pledge/give their money to Giant Monkey compared to a > private person or company run by a single person. Giant Monkey also > has some PR/campaign knowledge, but most importantly knows a lot of > people in the marketing sector. > > 2. After receiving the money, Giant Monkey would contract Raptor > Engineering. > > 3. I’d like to have the domain campaign.coreboot.org redirect to > the campaign page at the crowdfunding platform or set up a simple > Web site there. > > 4. git-annex’ second funding was done by itself with PayPal. That > saves the 4 % fee most other crowdfunding platforms charge. > > Using a crowdfunding platform might be easier though, as they have > experience and also provide a big community of possible backers. > > Currently I’m thinking about Indiegogo, which Jolla also used to > fund the Jolla Tablet. I heard, Kickstarter is also great with a > big network. > > 5. I plan to raise 100.000 € (around $110.000) to upstream, that > includes *paid review* and running the campaign, the whole port. > (I’ll continue to use Euros.) More money would be used for stretch > goals. > > ?) 4.000 € Indiegogo fees ?) 35.000 € for Raptor Engineering for > upstreaming for basic port ?) 15.000 € for Raptor Engineering for > implementing support for S2R (S3) ?) 10.000 € for code review > (inclusively hardware) (just an estimate) ?) 2.000 € for Gluglug > to release images (I have not talked to Francis yet.) ?) 10.000 € > campaign goodies (cf. 7.) ?) 4.000 € taxes (probably a lot more, > depends if given money counts as donation) ?) 20.000 € Giant Monkey > for running the campaign (Web site, press, marketing, videos, mile > stone tasks (see below), …) > > (Stretch goal) ?) 15.000 € for Raptor Engineering for upstreaming > Family 15h support for the board > > 6. I’d start with a minimal Web site and campaign platform page and > see how big the momentum alone through the coreboot community is. > If we get 10.000 € in a week, I’d fully step in with a professional > campaign. Otherwise I’d stop the campaign. > > 7. As a thank you for backers, I think of a payload included in > the distributed coreboot based firmware image, reading a text file > from CBFS with the names of the backers and displaying it. (Or a > simple splash screen.) Of course just for those wanting it. Big > backers (25.000 €) get a board with one CPU and RAM and coreboot > preinstalled; medium backers (10.000 €) get some BLOB free laptop > for example (Rockchip Chromebook or some Lenovo board). flash ROM > chips are sent to backers donating 25 €. > > 8. Milestone tasks: At certain mile stones (probably each 10.000 > €), I’d promise some more tasks to improve coreboot or the port > (see the 5.000 € steps in the top). Possible are also SSL > certificates for coreboot infrastructure, promising to run a 32-bit > userspace build host, redesigning the Web site, implementing CBMEM > time stamp support in SeaBIOS and GRUB, supporting Google’s > verified boot, …. > > 9. Reasons for contributing > > ?) server, cluster companies; administrators Do hosting/server > companies besides coreinfo [5] with AMD based offers exist? That > means, is there a chance of getting big contributions? > > What about the Free Software Foundation (FSF), FSF Europe (FSFE), > Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)? What about governments? > > ?) free software enthusiasts I hope with the FSF, FSFE and EFF some > big organizations will be able to motivate a lot of people to > donate. ?) private “normal” people This is my main problem. > Alexandru Gagniuc uses(?)/used(?) the board as a workstation, but > the normal user will never use that expensive server board at home. > Therefore they will never hold it in their hands. In the end the > given money is a donation. Therefore, we need good arguments that > Jane User will participate. > > I have the bad feeling, that most of them won’t donate, as they do > not see the benefit as coreboot is hard to explain. This is the > biggest risk for the campaign. To get those a lot of money needs to > be invested in marketing and promotion. But will the additional > donations cover those costs and add to the original goal to support > upstreaming the board? > > In the end, coreboot developers should get paid for their work. > The Varnish Cache developer has a good write-up about this issue > [7]. > >> But software is written by people, real people with kids, cars, >> mortgages, leaky roofs, sick pets, infirm parents and all other >> kinds of perfectly normal worries of an adult human being. >> >> The best way to improve the quality of Free and Open Source >> Software, is to make it possible for these people to spend time >> on it. >> >> They need time to review submissions carefully, time to write and >> run test-cases, time to respond and fix to bug-reports, time to >> code and most of all, time to think about the code. >> >> But it would not even be close to morally defensible to ask >> these people to forego time to play with their kids, so that they >> instead develop and maintain the software that drives other >> peoples companies. >> >> The right way to go -- the moral way to go -- and by far the >> most productive way to go, is to pay the developers so they can >> make the software they love their living. > > > Questions ========= 1. Recently Roundcube, the most(?) popular > Webmail client, which is much more known than coreboot, started a > crowdfunding campaign for $80.000 [6]. In the last two weeks they > raised around $25.000. But experience shows that only in the > beginning and in the end of a campaign a lot of money is > collected. > > So, what do you think? Is the coreboot crowdfunding campaign even > realistic? > > 2. What crowdfunding platform should be used? Does Indiegogo [3] > work for everyone? Are there platforms which will get boycotted by > free software enthusiasts? > > > Thank you for reading up to this point. I am looking forward to > your comments. > > > Thanks, > > Paul > > > [1] https://www.giantmonkey.de [2] https://campaign.joeyh.name [3] > https://www.indiegogo.com [4] > https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jolla-tablet-world-s-first-crowdsourced-tablet > > [5] http://coreinfo.us > [6] https://roundcu.be/next [7] > https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/4.0/phk/dough.html > > > I think we should get the FSF to run a campaign for this. They can keep the overheads low and keep the funding amount low. They are also based in the same country as Raptor Engineering. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVXPk7AAoJEP9Ft0z50c+UbYkIAKf62vn26Agq79KFB6fz1Wtz VDdkCoZt6aGybrp6Jl7Ttt+aawLDr7bNvJ5l5wIiVGLmub+pDd7e+sYDs3zPrUh4 ZXFAXnvMWVHt/vhTvXsq+5i4SJVgc26EUZ7VYkEL8eJomp8/YWIlYe0O8inwK4SO ET6RL+NIo+WQSLj2N0rJEIMoGzTZVMyEkfodKQfuC1ZVVRiTUe9IS2E2ostBuRwJ ODrrK8umdotEP39c9+pE25IPMkASBpCWbMhcTlUxgHRGWYevgR/b+cR65852HqED JH4EGxklyZl+OsIZqwNfH4umsefKidkHqtlFFovz6iv0t+r0/lIrKOtd0o8AzkA= =e6Qt -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- coreboot mailing list: [email protected] http://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot
