Don't worry, we are not really short on funds, the amount raised should suffice by far, until start of production. What we'd like to see are more orders :-) We need to figure out a new convenient way for our customers-to-be to join in on the party, since obviously we don't want to do such shuffle between GDC and Neo900 UG account for new donations.

Many thanks for the awesome support despite the hassle we caused.

cheers
jOERG

so, do potential customers from Asia able to preorder now???

Are you using Paypal now?

no problem as long as project comes back to track two more things that keep people from odering are huge price and same asthetics of the device if there would have been a second diff looking device and be less costly more people could have been intrested we actually are cratering to a niche in a niche segment for instance i saw people intrested in praya but saying neo is awsome but....... dont blow up on me on this i know what this project is all about and limitations just expressing

Potential customer from asia waiting for a payment method where I can donate and actually support the project ganbatte to the neo900 team!

@Nokiabot. The "charm" of this project is the very goal of having a pimped-up N900. If we wanted something prettier, faster or different, we'd look somewhere else wouldn't we?

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.

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?
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Above, was a brief summary, as I wanted to clearly separate actual question from explanations of those question's roots/ my comment:
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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)]

I don't have much time right now, so I'll answer rather briefly, but in next days I'll try to prepare some "official FAQ" about the situation.

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

It was considered and was rejected due to it causing major troubles with VAT handling. GDC cannot simply transfer the money to a new entity. It would be easier if we had already collected full orders.

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.

I am in Europe and I already "ordered" one with the >100 € donation, but I think that opening the market to Asia could increase the amount of orders without much work (or are there any legal issues, where an expert would be needed?). I thought it was worldwide till I read the two messages in the previous page.

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.

Your post came in just as I was editing my previous one, adding the answer for that.

This was one of the earliest solutions considered by us, unfortunately totally rejected by tax advisers

So basically, we're finally going exactly the way announced in March. We just had to take a much less comfortable route than desired, cause the best one was closed by taxes...

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