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Change in Organization, for a better project
[meta: this post created on 2014-05-18 13:00, hacked creation date to make it post#1 in this thread]
tl;dr: please read #70 In an attempt to keep threads on a very narrow topic and to not let the main thread grow beyond a reasonable size (well, it already did), I am starting this new thread and moving all the posts from the main thread to here that are about efforts of transferring fund ownership from Golden Delicious Co to UG. To the valued reader: Some posts in this thread may sound a bit dark - this is no reason to feel pessimistic about our project, we are all still determined and willing to make the Neo900 a success story. We just need to do some organizational restructuring now so nobody feels uncomfortable with the risk (read: liability) that is involved for them by working for the project, and also to streamline our process for future work. We are always honest and fair to our customers/supporters, but we also need to be fair to ourselves: No one should fear to eventually wake up facing a situation where the Neo900 project ruined her/his life. Thus we need to do some risk management and adjust the project organization to what we want it to be. Or let's put it this way: we did some mistakes in the initial phase (sorry, our fault) and we're correcting those now, to secure and improve the project at large. Sorry for the inconvenience and noise this causes - we are trying to minimize that. Stay tuned, I will update this post#1 with latest news! Thanks for your support and patience jOERG [update #1] as promised, to save you skimming though 7 pages of thread: in 60 minutes I have a meeting with my tax adviser, to check details about how Neo900 UG can receive funds. Nikolaus is looking into ways to transfer funds directly from GDC to UG on order of customer (if customer agrees, otherwise customer receives refund). Next relevant activity you will notice: you receive a mail from GDC explaining the details to you. [update #2] please skip directly to #68 and also see my reply 2 down (#70) [update #3] yesterday (2014-05-24) we have set up an interim page with Neo900 UG account data and minimalist wording, on neo900.org. We are still very reluctant to accept any donations there since we can't check (and actually don't even know yet) about shipping situation on donor's location. So for any new donors, please be aware of this fact, we can't guarantee we can ship to your exotic (or not so exotic, just e.g. IL or RU, or AR) destination. [update #4] 2014-05-28: transfer started, stay tuned for a special newletter mail reaching you - assuming you all registered to neo900.org newsletter mailing list |
Change in Organization, for a better project
Hi all,
I have bad news to announce that Golden Delicius Computers (GDC) has declared to step down from the Neo900 project team. The reason is that unsolvable organisational problems have turned out which brake the project progress in a way that I can't any longer take responsibility for. Unsolvable because we have finally found some fundamentally different expectations about roles in the project (for financially relevant decisions). In other words: we can't find an agreement on who is deciding if we have different opinions and finding consensus takes to too much time. Since a project needs one person responsible for everything, I finally decided to end this dispute by leaving this role completely to Jörg, because he did initiate the Neo900 project. Unfortunately this means that GDC can't keep the responsibility for the funds given by all donators/preorders any more. This means we have to refund the payments. As soon as Jörg has set up and announces some new method to collect (new) funds you are strongly encouraged to spend the refund again to him so that he can continue. Directly forwarding the money to Jörg is unfortunately not possible because of some unclear tax, accounting and liability reasons. The refund amount will be reduced to compensate for the development work we have already done and prototypes built&components bought. Details about this money transfer will follow by personal/individual mails (please give us some days to sort out and calculate the details). And I will hand over everything GDC has already developed for the Ne900 project to Jörg, so that he can seamlessly continue (potentially with some other partners), but that is completely up to him to organise and to announce next steps. So I wish Jörg best luck in continuing the project and will try to positively influence as good as possible, but with no role and responsibility in the project any more. Sorry and Best Regards, Nikolaus |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
so, can someone say something encouraging before i kill myself?
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Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
Sad story, this.
Do I understand correctly this is not about the technical feasibility of Neo900, rather about some project management details? |
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DIScouraging. |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
Come on, it does not take THAT much to create a PayPal account in the name Neo900 GmbH or whatever. This is an inconvenience but not the end of the world. Let's just wait for what Jörg says, shall we?
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Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
:eek::(
Common guys, the 1st of April is gone. Can't believe, that the project is going to fail because of personal disharmony. :(:confused: |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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aside from merely accepting the money, goldelico was doing the hardware development. EDIT: note that i am totally uninvolved in this project and i am merely speculating. |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
Do not let us speculate and start bad vibes.
Let's wait for joerg's statement. Nevertheless I do hope those two will find to another again! |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
@gta04/Nikolaus
Is this really final? Will knowledge of the details further harm the project or could it be used by the community to convince "community-members/corporate-stakeholders" to yield for the sake of the project... The Neo900 is not for me but this is really sad news. A hardware partner would be really hard to come by. Edit: glad to know that the details are fueling the community spirit. :) |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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Does that mean GDC won't be interested in doing some development work contracted by Neo900 UG if it raises the money on its own? I don't know yet, it depends on GDC. It's not end of the world yet. It might be if we decide so, but we haven't yet. Please wait for announcement before jumping to conclusions! The project is not canceled unless we clearly announce that, and as you probably noticed, we haven't yet. PS. Sorry it turned out this way. We already reported few times "organizational stuff being finally sorted out", and I can assure you that it was really sincere. When we were saying that we truly believed in that, but unfortunately new problems haven't stopped arriving :( |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
First of all, @Nikolaus:
Thank you for these very clear and honest words! Quote:
I hope this doesn't sound too much like "I told you..." but this situation is exactly what I was referring to some pages ago. I'm aware that this project has and (hopefully) will always be on a knife's edge until we will (maybe) hold the finished devices in our hands, but retrospectively I must say that I'm a bit disappointed in your information politics. Instead of multiple "finally sorting out"s I would have preferred some more "we don't know"s. The way it is now it's unlikely I'll believe any more sentences containiing the word "finally". That being said, I'm looking forward to any convincing(!) info anouncing the project will actually go on. Good luck - to all of us! |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
The project has stumbled but still far from dead as it seems by avove posts:) somebody told me its end of the world only when you decide. So we need to stop panicking spreading fud and step up when conditions are again favourable :) lets see what jeorg has on the table :)
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Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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That doesn't mean that we won't have soon (or later in future), but it also doesn't mean that we will. We simply don't know yet. Let's see. Right now we're all exhausted, especially Joerg, so don't expect anything big coming in next hours. Your patience is appreciated. I agree with sulu, more open "don't knows" where applicable for sure wouldn't and won't hurt. We definitely failed on that. I didn't want to look like a fool constantly changing what I say, but now I see that the way I took wasn't a perfect way to deal with it as well. Sorry once again. |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
If i understood Nikolaus correct, the main problem is, that there are/were two project leaders which are/were discordant in some relevant points. In my opinion it's always difficult to have two leaders. It's always better to have One or three. So why don't let a third person decide in such unclear situation. This can be a person which is respected by both and which have to be involved in the project. Or it can be the community. But then there has to be a lot of transparency in direction to the community, so it can understand the nuances of the points of view. That would also bring a lot of work, because every thing has to be illustrated in every detail. So in the end it would be better when it is a real person.
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Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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We are working on a solution so that Jörg can continue and complete the Neo900 project alone (or with old and new partners or however he decides). Such things happen in business. And sometimes it opens up the path to better solutions than before. |
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Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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Anyway, I'd like to thank all of you for your amazing support that we received. It's a great community (well, two of them - Maemo and Openmoko/OpenPhoenux combined) that I'm proud to be part of! But rest assured that I don't want this "thank you" to be a "good bye" one, so there's no reason to panic :) |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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Therefore I finally came to the conclusion: two is one too much. Yes, one more could have helped, but it is difficult to involve another person in the middle of a project. It might even slow down discussions and decisions because of different knowledge levels. So in summary: Jörg has now the full lead unquestioned by me. And we will sort out the financial things where I need your help. This is why I went public with this topic now. Not because the project is coming to an end. |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
Neo900 project is born with a new idea: community decides what is important for the new enginereed device and which should be the final result.
If it was a commercial product from a famous brand we should expect to see almost nothing until the delivery date. (often also photos of prototypes are partially hidden to hide the real aspect of the device. For sure (if it was a commercial phone) we could not receive any progress information or any notice of inter-company fight to decide specs and detail. Here and now we can know the progress situation, view the prototypes, ask for a specific feature or... know the difficulties that the "mens at work" engage everyday. While, from one side, we should not be sad. From the other, we should encourage Nikolaus, Joerg and Sebastian to go ahead realizing the device that represents our dream with secure certainty that, also if things are hard, this project is a new idea, a new concept that could change the perspectives that actually rule the market of technology and give us a pure piece of ..digital freedom. Thanks |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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It may even turn out that Nikolaus will continue to work on this project, just on different rules. We just came into a dead-end where refunding the money became necessary. We tried to avoid that, as it's obviously a great risk for the project, but we simply couldn't anymore. |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
So I'm waiting for the things to come.
But to be honest the situation sounds still a bit hopeless. Especially because it seems that GDC isn't willing to be part of the project anymore. Even not just as a supplier. Have to go to bed now and wish you all a good night. Keep the fingers crossed... |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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See my previous post. GDC had to step out from being an entity that holds the money and liability to customers. Due to us unable to find a feasible approach to transfer the money and customers to entity like Neo900 UG, GDC decided to refund the payments. We now have to think about the possible ways to continue. We don't have a definitive plan yet, so please be patient. |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
@Sebastian:
Please add some very clear info to the neo900 website that prevents any new donors from (vainly) trying to increase the amount of misdirected money until these things are sorted out! |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
Sorry for silence, it's not ignorance or arrogance or laziness. I simply can't state anything before thinking thoroughly about it. Stay tuned. Might take hours or even a few days. Meanwhile I think we see more options than damage in all this.
and a honest "sorry for the inconvenience!" cheers jOERG |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
If this project will really continue and the other means of collecting money will be set up, would it be possible to just give in some way GDC permission to transfer the money directly to the new fundraiser? I am lazy just want to skip my part (as this device is still my dream one and I will happily sacrifice that little money I paid to support this project even till the very dead end;)). Besides, I already lost some cash on PLN->EUR conversion, if the money comes back to me I will lose again on EUR->PLN and for the third time on PLN->EUR when donating again...
joerg_rw - I cannot help the feeling that you were putting your very best to glue the team together. You take few weeks off and this kind of catastrophe happens! I hope you will sort things out and be able to continue either with Nicolaus (he seems to be really nice guy) or with whoever is skilled enough to do the task. Good luck! |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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This is a pretty rough thought yet, but we're already pondering what can be done. Thanks for your suggestion/offer and for all the support. Details like VAT etc had to get checked by an expert. I'm not. Stay tuned please. We shouldn't do twice the same mistake to hurry things ;-) cheers jOERG |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
Problem is, you can't donate to a commercial company without them being taxed.
Unlike tax-exempted NPOs, companies will be taxed on all income. VAT should only come into play when selling the devices, any commercial company has to charge it. Probably a Förderverein might be a solution. |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
so, if i get it right, gta04 no longer involved and the organization crumbles. so that means, no more neo900? and I'm asking only
Is there any progress with GTA04b07 as well? |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
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This is just me personally....but what remains of my donation...somehow...with the least cost incurred... simply transfer it if possible to Joerg .... if it is necessary to get my consent no prob. send the e-form (or whatever guise it takes) to release the funds to him and I'll click the consent button. I don't want this incentive/ research deposit to drain away... I have no problem with throwing more money at the endeavour... tell me where to send it... I believe in it... in the sweat that has been put into it... in those who are working on it... and on the FPTF ... and in this community... I am unwavering in this view until those who are working on it say it is un-doable. It isn't time to run around screaming the sky is falling or say I told you so or point fingers or infight or pull attitude or ego... far from it... It's time to bloody well man up. |
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Many thanks for the awesome support despite the hassle we caused. cheers jOERG |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
so, do potential customers from Asia able to preorder now???
Are you using Paypal now? |
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Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
Potential customer from asia :D waiting for a payment method where I can donate and actually support the project ;) ganbatte to the neo900 team!
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Heck, I don't even care much about Fremantle itself (it's a kind of love/hate deal). I do love the N900 hardware/form/style. |
Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
I think that "we" (potential customers, pre-order people, or just interested bystanders) should know what really happened:
1. What was the list of ideas (for solving the leadership/responsibility problem) coming from GDC (one responsible for actual hardware manufacturing, keeper of pre-order money, etc), that Joerg couldn't accept? 2. What was the list opposite ideas (the ones that Joerg came with, unnaceptable for GDC)? 3. Why GDC announced refunds *before* all parties considered options for transferring money to hyphotetical new responsible entity (agreed by every pre-orderer, separately) as suggested *later* by Joerg? --- Above, was a brief summary, as I wanted to clearly separate actual question from explanations of those question's roots/ my comment: --- I'm just curious - if there is a slightest possibility of GDC transferring funds to whatever hyphotetical new thing that may appear as responsible for Neo900 and pre-order money (with acceptance of every donor, separately), why wasn't it 100% checked and confirmed/denied *before* announcing decision to do preorder refunds? The latter wasn't sounding best for the project. In most cases (real-world ones), it mean "project is dead/frozen". Now, don't take what I'll write as any form of bad-blood creating - it is merely an opinion, something to consider not based on any confirmed informations from anyone involved: From my perspective - as someone who saw Neo900 as one of favorite FOSS projects and real "future" of our system/device - it seems that velvet-coated, (civilized, non-aggressive, but with same end results) form of rage quit happened initially, and everything later is a "damage control" attempt. C'mon, in hardware (or any, basically) project, declaration of cancelling pre-orders and refund by party responsible for hardware manufacturing isn't "inconveinence", it is a catastrophe - for morale, interest in the thing from potential customers, etc. Even the most troubled and delayed projects (first Pandora) wasn't refunding in their worst moment, it would mean their end. I'm super-glad that there still is so much love for the project, that people are *asking* of a way to let Neo900 keep their money (notice that it happened before anyone even given any hope of such possibility...). I'm happy, that dos1 haven't put a "goodbye" note. I *want* the damn, lovely thing (device, not goodbye-note ;) ) to happen. But I'm sincerely worried, that may be "soft crash". It all sound *too much* like personality conflicts, especially for someone that followed all Maemo organizational problems (Council, HiFo). Not incidentally, such stalemates/crisises happened always, if Joerg was involved in something (the "last man standing in all his projects" syndrome). Not wanting to attack or start a personal discussion - just pointing the "elephant in the room'. If there were two leaders, and the one with tools/hardare/actual devices/money collected done quits, and the one with bad history of spawning such catastrophes remains, I *am* goddamn worried. /Estel [moderator note: "bad history"? Are you serious? Don't you think you should think twice before _you_ (who has been banned for such spreading of insult and lies how often now?) start such badmouthing? Isn't it rather like all those "stalemates/crisises" happened as a direct consequence of you starting to troll the subject? (feel free to remove this edit as well as your bad style)] |
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I agree that it sounds a lot like some disagreement about "ideas", but this outcome was a result of friendly discussion about who is responsible for what, who transfers copyrights to who and who takes what risk. To sum up it in few words: Joerg wanted to be the leader, with all the leader's responsibility. While all of us are OK with that, we couldn't come up with legal way to transfer all the responsibility to him, which now was on GDC side due to some accounting going not exactly as initially intended. The situation where one person makes a decisions and another takes responsibility for them is rather unwanted :P The intent was clear from the beginning: "Neo900 project" asks GDC for help in developing and producing the phone. The situation, due to GDC being the one who collects money and due to the inability to transfer it directly to Neo900 UG, turned out to be very different: legally, GDC was asking Neo900 project to help in developing the device. This was something that none of the involved sides was happy with. The discussions lasted few months, and when we finally found something promising, it turned out later that it's either strongly discouraged by tax advisors or some details turned to be unacceptable by some side. Some solutions required some sides to give up more than they were willing to. And yesterday Nikolaus decided that there's no hope anymore for sorting it out in satisfactory and legal way. Hence his announcement. Not really a "rage quit", more like "I don't see it going anywhere this way" quit. However, his announcement was a bit rushed and unintentionally sounded a bit too dark, fooling even us (Joerg and me) into darker thoughts than they should be. It indeed sounded like "GDC doesn't want to have anything with common in this project anymore", but now we know that it wasn't supposed to sound like that. As it was cleared up, our tone in this thread also lightened - hence the "damage control" impression, I suppose. Feel free to ask any questions. I have some work to do today and not much of free time tomorrow, but after that I'll be available to clear up any of your doubts. In mean time maybe Joerg will also answer some of them ;) Quote:
Therefore, refunds are inevitable. Hypothetical new entity will be Neo900 UG, which already exists. Joerg proposition "hacks the system" a bit - so when technically GDC would be sending a refund, a donor could specify Neo900 UG account as a place where to send the funds to shorten the path and avoid multiple fees. Or not - it's up to him. But it's yet to evaluate if this is something feasible. |
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The 1000 orders step is still far and I doubt it will be realistic before any prototype is clearly demonstrated with some preliminary software. Just seeing responsiveness compared to a Maemo N900 would do a lot. It may be too early, especially now with the organizational issues to be sorted out first, but that may help when one prototype is ready for the show. If the 1000 orders step was reached and the expected price per device was consequently lowered, then I would consider ordering an extra Neo900, and probably some new customers would come in because of the lowered price. Positive feedback effect, but very impredictable and dependent on how many customers the near-final product will convince. The price/number of customers dynamic variable is also a very difficult constraint, as a lot of people would be interested but cannot afford the Neo900 in its curent price. Anyway, about the refunds: we all took the Nikolaus' announcement as a very bad news. Be it a bad news or not, that is how we got it, and wanted to kill ourselves after imagining the Neo900 project could die prematurely. For this reason, I think it would not be wise to add to that feeling an email stating that all backers will be refunded and will have to back again the project if they want to. Even in perfectly optimistic conditions, the conversion rate would be lower than 100% given the reasons Estel explained better than me. Here, it would likely be much lower because people started to really worry about the feasibility of the project. From a psychological point of view, offering transfer of the donation to Joerg upon approval of the customer (otherwise the customer will be refunded) would most likely yield a better conversion rate, at least in my opinion. People would still be free to decline and get the refund, but the message is not the same, and all they have to do is click a button rather than rethink about the project in a temporarily-negative context. Also, I liked the idea of three leaders, or one leader and two advisers. Since Nikolaus seemed not to be opposed to the idea (except that it will be hard to find the third one), and since it has been stated that the split was not a rage quit, would it not be possible to think about it? Among the people involved in the project, perhaps there is someone involved enough (and since long enough) to be part of the leading team? Anyway, I really, really hope some appropriate solution will be found. This project is feakingly awesome and promising, the final product would just be the legend the N900 deserves! It will be a niche product, but it will be a reference. It needs to be achieved, especially given the sweat that has already been put into it. I just charged up my N900 a few days ago and remembered how much the N900 is fantastic, even with totally broken software on my device that basically keeps me from doing anything with it. I can't wait to put my hands on a Neo900. Sorry for bad English and typos, I had to type this wall of text in a hurry. |
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This was one of the earliest solutions considered by us, unfortunately totally rejected by tax advisers :( Quote:
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Re: Neo900 - finally a successor of N900
Thanks a lot for your fast and (as usual) friendly answer, dos1. I'll hapilly wait for your FAQ, so doesn't feel "obliged" or anything to answer now, but the one logical question comes to my mind:
If it was problem about leadership vs. responsibility, and it was the GDC that collected money, have (or have access to) hardware required to manufacture device, and expertise in already making one, why wasn't it solved by GDC becoming both leader of project and one responsible for it? They didn't wanted such obvious solution, or was it Joerg who opposed? /Estel |
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