When is the next and more powerful openmoko releasing

[Neil Brown]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:27:38 +0100
Ben Thompson <ben at thompson.org.uk> wrote:


> > To finance the next phase, we are thinking about asking for donations or to hold an auction for the first 5 or 10 prototype units. What would you think of such an approach?
> 
> I'm not keen on either (although would consider a donation). What
> about a pre-order?
> 

I'm not keen on an auction as it tends to focus on getting large amounts
money from few people - those many who have modest amounts of money get
excluded.
I'm not very keen of straight donations either as you really need a strong
accountability structure before donations are at all safe, and I don't think
you want to go that way.

I like pre-order, but I wonder about combining them all...

Choose a maximum subscription and a minimum price.
Invite people to pre-order and pay the minimum price or greater as they
choose.  Only take orders up to the maximum subscription.
As units become available, fill orders in order of the price paid starting
with those who paid the most.

Publish basic statistics about orders received so far and allow people to
know their position.  Also allow people to top-up their orders to climb the
list.

That way people can "donate" and are rewarded by getting a phone sooner - but
everyone still gets a phone.
The maximum subscription ensures that no-one will continually be over-taken
by someone new paying a little bit more.

An unfortunate quirk of this method is that those who pay the most - and get
the first phone - may end up with a phone that is defective as some bug may
not have been found yet.

(obviously people pay postage plus minimum price plus extra).

Just an thought..

NeilBrown