community Digest, Vol 353, Issue 3

[Sebastian Krzyszkowiak]

On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller
<hns at goldelico.com> wrote:
>
> Am 23.08.2013 um 15:45 schrieb Bob Ham:
>
>> On 2013-08-23 11:27, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
>>> Am 23.08.2013 um 13:18 schrieb Bob Ham:
>>>
>>>> On 2013-08-23 10:56, Paul Wise wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Bob Ham wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't understand.  What is the green light with respect to the GTA04?
>>>>>
>>>>> That was already mentioned; money for components being available.
>>>>
>>>> The fact that there is *no* money was mentioned.  Here you seem to be implying some kind of transition from there being no money to money being available.  How is that transition going to happen?  What's going to cause the green light to go on?
>>>
>>> People deciding to spend some money instead of complaining that it is
>>> too expensive.
>>
>> What is going to cause people to decide that?
>
> What do you think the reason is?

I have mixed feeling about basing our "media presence" on Openmoko
project. While we know that Openmoko did amazing job pioneering with
freeing mobile phones, and personally I'm still big fan of the project
and I like how OpenPhoenux goes back to its roots, general public just
associates it with failure (provided that they know what Openmoko is
at the first place).

We know (to some extend) what was the reason (or reasons) of Openmoko
failure, they don't. They only got clear message: "open/free phone is
utopia, Openmoko tried it and failed, we have to go for something
that's free enough" and for many, Android, Ubuntu or Firefox OS phones
are "free enough". Especially when you add price into the account - it
makes them even more "enough".

People should know the difference. People should know that free phone
*is* possible. It may not be as free as RMS would like it to be, but
seeing how many people consider Android good enough, we're still at
better position. We just have to tell people what's the difference,
and do that in a way even non-techie would understand (or just give
him/her an impression of understanding ;)). They should be also aware
why price is so high and how can it be lowered. I don't think there is
some universal source we may refer people to and I'm tired of everyone
repeating the same questions again and again when I mention GTA04 in
slashdot comments or anywhere else.

If they are not aware what GTA04 can give them, they never won't pay
for it when there's such a difference in price.

Well, I know it's easy to tell "we should do this, we should do that"
and it's harder to actually start doing that, but I hope I'll be able
to show you something soon. It's high time to be useful to this
community once again! :)

-- 
Sebastian Krzyszkowiak, dos
http://dosowisko.net/