How does git become broken? I've used it quite a bit, and I've never seen it enter a nonfunctional state. And if it did, isn't it likely that someone in the group would still have a functional repository, since all repositories are full repositories?

Drastically reduced, i suspect. Since the specs are so poor now compared to modern hardware, and the price is high, only people who value privacy above all else in a phone will be interested. Most of the people who want to tinker with hardware will have moved to Pis. The fact that they talk about trying to get another round of funding before shipping the devices suggests detachment from reality has set in.

Firstly..
as per wiki responded..
I was not questioning the necessity of roof, food, running water and electricity for anyone.
I merely said that I doubted after paying wages for 5 years and sourcing parts and paying for overhead, that there was much ...if anything left to work with..budget wise..
And I think that Ken's last statement about the project aiming to start another round of fundraising pretty much answers the question.

As far as using archaic devices goes..
and putting or not putting the neo into that camp..
there is a difference.
When the n770, n800, n810 and n900 came out ..they were cutting edge.
The neo is not coming out of the gate anywhere close to cutting edge.
the mentioned privacy , being the best edge it has right at this moment....(at the estimated cost of almost $2000 CDN ..which could also change......)

As time passes ..
the edge it loses ..even keeps par with ...against other devices..
that chasm grows.

I enjoy using dated devices, I have many of them...but it is for the functions that they have that no other current device has ....that is what I enjoy them for ...as much as the comfy feeling of familiarity ..
and yes...decent screen real estate, resistive, and running maemo and other os's are the thing for me.

I would probably have used ...let alone currently use my n900's more..if the screen real estate were big enough...but 3.5 is pretty bloody small to enjoy in compare to the n800's or the n810's

Does anyone remember how many neo900 preorders there were before the tally page stopped working? I vaguely recall it was about 2000, but I could be way off.

No persisting git issues, all git problems got fixed in due time (like max a few days until we found help or the solution)

Metacollin contributed layout work until he went MIA first time in November. He returned for a very short time in December and is MIA since then again, alas I was also not available to deal with this until a 5 days ago, as I announced (sick leave pending since start of 2017, and temporary move out of my flat for a mandatory house improvement the landlord scheduled, left me without much connectivity or access to my workstation). I'm trying to contact Metacollin since I'm back home, no reply yet. First of all I hope he's well.

The git commits related to layout are not publicly available before shipping date since we intended to protect the project from chinese copycats - I posted screenshots provided by metacollin a few times and you can get access to project files on demand.

Hmm, no detachment from reality on my side, I explained very clearly that we need a 600 or better 800 preorders to make this project economically feasible, several times in IRC as well as in this thread. I explained that we are stuck at ~350 preorders and we NEED to somehow reach the needed count which I hoped to achieve with a kickstarter to be started when proto_v2 is ready, to show off a real physical item working. At no time in this project we had 2k preorders unless my detachment from reality is so massive that I forgot that.

I stopped all but the most important payments (for website/servers, taxes, and Metacollin now) a 10 months ago already, to keep the needed funds available for reaching that point where we can start generating the missing preorders via kickstarter. I ate up my own savings during that period so now my RL is getting tough.

This project is severely underfunded from lack of a sufficient number of preorders and particularly it's short on manpower, I'm the only one constantly pushing it since beginning, and this comes to an end now where my health and my personal economical situation forbids doing so on a fultime basis.
Finding a layouter took almost a year with many futiile negotiations and repeatedly weeks of "lessons" to explain to layout candidates what are the requirements of the project (multiple times since you don't do this with more than one candidate at once). I am sorry I can't continue to contribute on this level for now until I recovered from economical and health issues.

I completely understand the frustration and I share it, but honestly I don't see any "mistakes to admit" or how to improve. People still keep telling us that there's need for a secure phone hw platform and that our design is unique and the only one promising that.
If anybody out there is willing to help on management of this project (after all it never was meant to be a "factory makes product for customers as a business" but from very beginning been a project sparked off and driven by community request) I'd be more than grateful. It's too much for a single person

cheers
jOERG

So how can we help?

Joerg, GDC, Neo900 team, TMO,
I do not fault you and the Neo900 team when I make statements of resignation to our fate.
I would contribute to the Neo900 and did buy a GTA02 because I was part of that bleeding edge who wanted truly free hardware, I had more free cash then.
There seems to simply not be enough of us who care out there to make a real difference.
If we want gnu Linux or another FOSS and radically free hardware device we need to sell more people on the concept before we can get our stuff, or we need to find a very wealthy patron who will decide for us what we will get with a subsidy.
As long as we see real nerds falling into the arms of the walled garden and buying hardware there we wont get the devices that we and probably they truly want.

That is one way of seeing it. Another way is that I am a customer buying a product. And I expect the team building the product to approach it as a business. Not as an ideological mission.

Running a business includes setting yourself achievable goals and sticking to them. A good example is Chen and his Moto keyboard. He set himself an achievable goal, said exactly what he would deliver and resisted interference. And there you go - a result!

I believed and still believe that "an N900 with a faster CPU and more RAM", as per the poll question at the top of this page, was an achievable goal. It was all the "better infrared", "turn-off-able modem" and "rewrite the entire OS" mission creep that eventually killed the project.

Sure, by all means, build that as the next project. You cannot jump a mountain in one big leap. You climb it step by step.

While I agree with you on the point of businesses and achievable goals in general, I do not agree with you on the Neo900-specific "mission creep".

I don't care about the "better infrared" or the "rewrite the entire OS", but to me the "turn-off-able modem", respectively the underlying attitude of "privacy above all else", has always been "the product".
I would have even signed up for the Neo900 if the replacement board hadn't promised any perfomance increase at all, as long as it would have been a phone being able to run Debian.
What I would not have signed up for is a 10x faster device with the same design defect like the N900 of having a "semi-open" OS that would grind to a slow death because proprietary bits keep it from having security issues fixed. If I wanted that, then I would have already bought half a dozen android phones.

Maybe in the end that wasn't an "achievable goal", at least not with the resources that were available. But I wouldn't have known, I know nothing about business.
What I did know was, that this project included a certain risk of not being realized. Maybe I underestimated that risk, but there's nobody else I can hold responsible for my lack of judgement. I knew I had to trust the Neo900 devs on that.

As it stands, the Neo900 currently is sort of like a "technological artifact" to me. I don't actually count on ever receiving one anymore.
I'm mainly sticking to it now, because the money I invested in it doesn't hurt me, and in the unlikely case that one day it will be shipped I will have something that might not actually be useful, but it will be a rare example of the embodyment of an idea I support.
I think of it as some piece of art. You don't buy a Picasso because it's useful.

I can assure you none of all the problems we face (price, human resources, number of preorders...) is any related to "better infrared", "turn-off-able modem", and "rewrite the entire OS" was definitely exactly NOT our goal, otherwise we could have used an arbitrary newer CPU. It's one of the nicer parts of developing a hw product that improvements and smart design actualy do NOT have a huge impact to feasibility and cost of the whole device.

[edit] well probably without "turn-off-able modem" the number of preorders would actually be even lower so they are related, just the opposite way of what you insinuated.
[edit2] until I resign or die or announce bankruptcy (and actually even after any of that), it's the community who kills the project or keeps it alive. I don't see a "killed project" yet since comments like yours are the minority still. As long as a single person still ponders how to help this dream come true, the project lives - what changes is the likelihood and date of it resulting in the desired achievement, the more supporters the faster and more likely we see success.
/j