El Sat, Aug 27, 2016 at 08:15:04AM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton deia:
i've been talking to mike for 2 years now. you get an intuitive feel when talking to people that they're okay. little things that come up in conversations. i'll be able to see how people react to him (and to me). i don't miss much... it can take a while for me to work things out but i get there. if there's anything "off" i'll know about it.
l.
Luke, I know you have a lot of work in front of you and it will be hard enough to pull out without additional constraints. So rest a little, take a breath and don't over strain yourself. But what Sam Pablo says is important.
You've taken some heat from people who disliked Allwinner having taken the work of people and disregarded their copyrights. In my particular worldview taking heat from companies solving worker stress by installing safety nets under worker dormitory windows (so that they can't effectively commit suicide) would feel much worse. And I'm not accusing anyone of anything (probably those "higly efficient" companies wouldn't take small orders, anyway). And I also don't know the world enough to infer that since there are companies like these, all have to be so, or even most. So it is just an extreme example, not an attempt at guessing reality in general or in what may eventually affect EOMA-68.
Just like you sometimes tell that talking to FSF or Think Penguin got you to understand issues better, even issues you already understood for long but from maybe a different angle, I think talking to Electronics Watch or some other people may help you understand not only the labour reality but the work of people working to change that reality and the potential markets you might reach and the constraints that it would require. I read that you would have loved to know Open Source Ecology before you did. Well, don't wait till the next crowdfunding effort to know more worthwhile groups.
Fullfilling some 2500 orders may possibly be done by a huge one-person effort. But your longterm plans require more infrastructure and method. Longterm you can't just go "I'll intuitively sort it out". Just as you wrote a long and detailed white paper on ecoconcious computing you'll eventually need to either write or adopt some policy on other issues (labour, conflict minerals, circular economy, programmed obsolescence if anything further than the white paper is needed, distributed/local manufacturing, tax engineering). And even if it's hard to believe that you can achieve all that right now, taking a little time to read through and reach out to those collectives might prove useful, even if you don't finally join any of their campaigns or follow any of their directives (you at least will be more able to tell why). And in as much as you find coincidences you might find complicities, and both new markets and help.
Your RYF cards got more than double the requests than your next popular non-RYF card. So you see when you get external endorsement that helps sales. There are more ethical aspects than what you have in plan to certify, so it'd be nice to at some point know whether or not a future campaign or product endorses any.
For instance a previous message in this list talked about selling to governmental institutions. Well that's what Electronics Watch is all about. The moment you are ready to sell to institutions, going to them with an Electronics Watch, RYF and conflict free minerals credentials, for instance, may open a few doors, because the political impact of turning that offer down will be highly appreciated by any opposition party aiming to cease being the opposition party. In fact institutions affiliated to Electronics Watch should only buy from certified suppliers, so if you ever get there, you may have cleared a lot of competition for some customers. And you can use labour conditions sensibility to further free software goals (that have to do with intellectual labour conditions too, but maybe are more about consumer rights).
If you have some referents to point to, people may agree with them and buy. They probably won't care for some of the criteria (as long as they're not contrary to them) and will care a lot for a few. So some people may come to you for free software, some for environmental impact, some for fair trade, etc. But if you go just "trust me, I'm a good guy, I'll do it properly" then you are requiring people to agree in basically all of your views, which is very hard to achieve for anyone. If you broaden the field to all subjects, then mostly anyone disagrees with anyone.
I know because a couple of your posts in this list did demotivate me from helping the campaign, since I've sometimes have a hard time telling whether some views where group views and decisions of the campaign or just personal views that were not necessary influential enough that backers had to share them.
So when I hear that you'll go peek in a factory and convince yourself that all is right I sincerly don't know at all if that will mean anything for me. It might or it might not. I don't know you enough and I am not so terribly interested to know you enough to tell that. I'd prefer a list of minimum conditions and a procedure for verifying them, preferently involving local people who know the place, the culture, the language and the society where the work is done. Good news is the laptop assembly for instance will be mostly done under conditions well know by the customers (their own, since most laptops were requested as disassembled kits).
And yes, I know these projects are too small yet to demand anything, and I know my only recourse is buying elsewhere from some company that will be the same or worse. So don't take it as an irrational rant demanding the moon. It's just an opinion to show some people would care for more things and would care in a similar way than for free-software issues, through trnasparency and endorsements from well-respected institutions with some years of building and applying criteria.
It doesn't mean you have to change anything, sleep badly or risk not being able to deliver what you promised because you suddenly need to raise to higher standards of purity in every conceivable subject. At this phase we know you'll do the best you can. It's ok. I'm just trying to suggest you might at your leisure, start taking a look at some websites, keeping track of some agendas and even maybe visting some events, so that you can start forming an opinion about broader issues. And maybe even letting them know about your project (anyone can do that, I guess) in ase they might be interested.
Sorry for abusing your patience, I should learn to summarise.