<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 07/08/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Harald Welte</b> <<a href="mailto:laforge@openmoko.org">laforge@openmoko.org</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi all!<br><br>I tried to stay out of this entire discussion (like most non-technical<br>discussions) for a long time.<br><br>But I think there is just a big misconception of how and what at least<br>certain people percieve and what is actually going on.
<br><br>First of all, OpenMoko is a very small company. We have 19 full-time<br>employees in Taipei, plus something like seven external people, mostly<br>developers, not all of them full time.<br><br>Now think about this. 19 people to do everything, from sales through
<br>software R&D, distribution, logistics, webshop, system administration,<br>handling all external inquiries, business development, and so on. This<br>does not include the hardware R&D team inside FIC Mobility, which is
<br>smaller than OpenMoko.</blockquote><div><br><br>Sounds like a herculean task - I'll continue to wait quietly. Keep up the good work.<br><br>-Pete <br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Everybody in that team works overtime, for many months - even way before<br>starting the 'phase 1' sales.<br><br>So starting to sell those developer previews is something that drains<br>every last resource that we have (and don't have).
<br><br>So please remember, this is an extremely small team, everyone doing the<br>best he can, trying to create a completely new class of mobile device.<br><br>Starting to sell those units to _interested developers_ who want to help
<br>building this device is something that puts a lot of additional load on<br>us. The community has been pressing us to release those devices as<br>early as possible, and that's what we did (after many mostly hardware
<br>R&D delays).<br><br>So if you have any kind of inquiry, remember that you are one of more<br>than 1000 other people who ordered in a very short timeframe. It's<br>almost impossible to give any reasonable response. And if every of
<br>those > 1000 people inquire on the status of their order every day, then<br>we don't get anything done (especially not processing the actual orders)<br>but to respond to those status inquiries.<br><br>I know this is a very insatisfactory situation. But please step back
<br>for a minute and think about this consumer-like attitude of complaints<br>like "oh, you don't have the business process to handle orders".<br><br>Yes, we don't have the business process. Yes, we don't have the people
<br>and/or resources. But: Yes, we're still doing it. Selling unfinished<br>products to interested developers. Developers who have an idea how<br>difficult this project is, and who want to help us moving forward with
<br>this project.<br><br>But please don't think you're dealing with a multi-billion international<br>company with a sales and customer support department. You are dealing<br>with a bunch of [mostly technical] people who have a strange idea about
<br>what kind of difference they could achieve in the world of mobile<br>devices.<br><br>We have something like > 700 of your inquiries that nobody hasn't even<br>had a time to look at yet. I'm not even talking about the > 800
<br>inquiries that are somewhere being processed and have at least received<br>one response.<br><br>Oh, and don't think that hiring more people will help. Think about how<br>long it takes for any new person to understand the process, and how much
<br>time you need to spend to teach them. The outcome would be visible at<br>a time that phase-1 for GTA01 has long been finished.<br><br>We're crazy because we're trying to do the impossible, with an<br>impossibly small amount of resources, and an impossibly small team.
<br><br>So please understand that it's also impossible for us to respond to<br>individual inquiries. You can place an order, you will get an order<br>confirmation. We charge the credit card, you will get a confirmation
<br>that the payment has received. And you will get another message as soon<br>as your shipping has been made. You can cancel at any point in time<br>before the item is shipped by mailing CANCEL on an otherwise empty line
<br>to your ticket.<br><br>But please don't try to change addresses, inquire about the status<br>(which is clear based on the last mail you received), change the product<br>quantity, credit card number, or whatever. Any such inquiry is bound to
<br>be responded in a way longer than acceptable timeframe, and will<br>probably not have a satisfactory answer anyway, plus it will delay<br>everythign else.<br><br>Yes, this is no industry standard customer care. But hell, we are
<br>selling to developers inside our own community, not to end-users !?!<br><br>Thanks for your understanding.<br><br>--<br>- Harald Welte <<a href="mailto:laforge@openmoko.org">laforge@openmoko.org</a>>
<a href="http://openmoko.org/">http://openmoko.org/</a><br>============================================================================<br>Software for the world's first truly open Free Software mobile phone<br><br>_______________________________________________
<br>OpenMoko community mailing list<br><a href="mailto:community@lists.openmoko.org">community@lists.openmoko.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community">http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
</a><br></blockquote></div><br>