<html><head></head><body style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On Mar 5, 2012 10:33 "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller" <a href="mailto:hns@goldelico.com"><hns@goldelico.com></a> wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">Hi Fernando,<br><br>Am 05.03.2012 um 11:01 schrieb Fernando Martins:<br><blockquote type="cite">On 03/05/2012 10:36 AM, Al Johnson wrote:<blockquote type="cite"><br>There are a few places you can 'order' a donation, but I don't know how well<br>known they are.<br><a href="http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=GTA04&referer=GTA04-Early-Adopter">http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=GTA04&referer=GTA04-Early-Adopter</a><br><a href="http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=Openmoko%3ACommunity">http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=Openmoko%3ACommunity</a><br></blockquote>The problem is that such a blind donations link is to vague and non-transparent. It's not an exciting rallying point for a community.</blockquote><br>Yes this is a problem. These donations help to cover general cost e.g. of running servers, development and have been used to reduce the price a little. But future donations should not change the price of the group tour.<br><br>But as far as I see the intention is that there are some community members who want to specifically donate. We already have some orders where someone did do a full reservation with open shipment address and there was some private mail discussions of providing more kernel developers with a device.<br><br>So please specify here what you would do in return, if you would receive such a "free" unit. Then, the donators (who are following this list) can contact you directly.<br><blockquote type="cite">Nikolaus, would there be a way to define a more concrete donation goal, eg., buying a specific batch of parts, that would help goldelico achieve the group order?</blockquote><br>Yes, that is a good idea and can be technically done.<br><br>The problem is that it is difficult to exactly track this. Let's assume someone donates 200 EUR, this would mean that we can reduce the group tour price by 200/350 EUR, i.e. 57 ct. This is quite difficult to calculate and translate into a real refund to everyone.<br><br>And I think reducing the price for new incoming orders (each donation reduces the 499 EUR by some cents) only would't be fair to those who already have ordered. Although it would be the easiest to implement scheme.<br><br></blockquote>I agree that reduction in prices is not the most interesting way to go. <br><br>Donating mobiles to developers in exchange for specific software improvement looks like a good idea.<br><br>The suggestion of targeting a specific batch of parts was not meant as a translation into price reductions. The current orders would also contribute their share to the batch. The suggestion was merely done in case there are components that must be ordered in a batch now to achieve important price reductions and other parts that could be bought on a as-needed basis.<br><br>Fernando<br><br></body></html>