RaspberryPi ordering fund

I’ve emailled a request about becoming a developer.

[…] I mentioned to Rik that I can put you guys at the head of the queue for production devices later in the year […]

As Nokia have "negotiated with [R-Pi] to guarantee to sell them 400 beta boards when [R-Pi] start to ship.", maybe ROOL could try a related tactic… but we’ll have to be quick.

Somone please correct me if I’m wrong, but a number of RO developers are probably itching to get their hands on one of these boards. Advance ordering and distribution via ROOL could guarantee boards to developers but would also be an administrative headache. This proposed bounty could therefore operate as follows:

1. People donate to the R-Pi ordering fund (with the clear understanding that this is not a personal preorder, but a donation to the project)
2. ROOL infom R-Pi of the fund (early on, i.e. 1st week in Dec or sooner, even if only a few donations at that point) and interest in placing a bulk order
3. Bulk order negotiated (even if that’s pessimistically just half a dozen), justified by the wish to ensure that key developers don’t miss out – see also possible outcome in 6, below
4. Boards received
5. At ROOL’s discretion, boards could be sold (at cost + double-handling P&P?) to any key developers who miss out in placing personal orders
6. Surplus boards could be sold to punters in person at Wakefield 2012 – this should probably be made clear to R-Pi as a possible eventuality, although it’s not the reason for the fund
7. The board sales should cover the purchase cost (admin excluded), with the remaining bounty being distributed evenly between all other open bounties

What do you think? (Orders may be open within the next week or two.)

How about a bit of a different approach? Given that the Raspberry Pi is likely to be very cheap, what about some sort of “buy one, give one free” which would work like this:

Any “non-developers” interested in getting their grubby mitts on one makes a donation to ROOL, which covers the cost of one Rasberry Pi board for themselves and one which ROOL donate to a developer. This obviously creates some headaches and administration for ROOL, but gets boards into the hands of both end-users and developers, with any end-users taking part agreeing to act as limited beta-testers for the developers.

Obviously leaves some issues outstanding:

1. Who picks up the administration?
2. Who decides the worthiness of developers to receive a donated R-Pi (maybe this could be based on code or software submitted to the ROM or the Disk Image)? I guess we mainly know the main protagonists, but the peripheral ones might be more difficult to determine
3. How are P&P and handling charges paid

It does double the likely orders though, making it more appealing to R-Pi and may generate some more contributions to the overall development of the OS and software in a real and tangible way…

That’s an interesting twist, with the potential doubling of numbers and reaching more developers being important. A key question relevant to the “non-developers” (especially with the looming holiday period and Christmas post) is

• Will delivery of my board be delayed if I do this?

If R-Pi would agree to ship half the boards to ROOL and the other half directly to individual addresses, it’d be great.

If R-Pi are amenable to us (ie ROOL) placing a bulk order, then we should encourage developers and users alike to order through ROOL, hence increasing our bulk ordering power…?

I’ll gladly direct some money towards any scheme that ensures key developers get boards as early as possible.

It’d be nice if R-Pi would despatch to multiple addresses, but, as a “non-developer” I wouldn’t want it to be the deal-breaker. For me, having an R-Pi a few days earlier and risking it not running the sort of RISC OS that it ultimately needs (in the longer term) to have to appeal to others would be a bit selfish. I’m happy to stump up and wait with eager anticipation for a few extra days. A bit like Christmas as a kid – how many more sleeps?!

For me, having an R-Pi a few days earlier and risking it not running the sort of RISC OS that it ultimately needs (in the longer term) to have to appeal to others would be a bit selfish.

When put like that, I kind of see what you mean! However, we could still order individually and also donate to a fund for getting boards to developers. Aside from the unknowns of negotiating the bulk order and whether ROOL are willing/able to cope with the admin¹, your wording is preferable.² Therefore I’m with you if this can be sorted before the boards go on sale to the public from the main site.

¹ To be weighed up against that time being spent helping with other stuff desired for the R-Pi release.

² I did actually start with a post about the pros/cons of ROOL ordering on behalf of others. But the more I read it, the more it sounded like a lot of trouble for little gain – which is why the suggestion ultimately morphed into that above!

Point 1 aside (it being counterproductive to what I was going to suggest next), I wondered if we could exploit it in a similar (but smaller!) way to Nokia – we publicise the fact that we want to buy a largish number and we’re giving them to key developers and, er, “willing beta-testers” in order to further refine RISC OS for use on the R-Pi by others, including any schools that buy into it.

But the drain on ROOL time in administering it when they could be focused on the disc image and getting a good implementation of the R-Pi worries me. Having the administrative skills of a not-very-organised-box-of-frogs myself, I wouldn’t be anyone’s best bet here, but I wondered if this could be outsourced to some kind of better-organised willing volunteer or RISC OS-related company? After all, if RISC OS really takes off on the R-Pi, we all benefit, including those who trade in RISC OS software and hardware.

It does run the risk of us turning (more) into some kind of community though… that’d be a shame, now, wouldn’t it?!

Does anyone want to step up to the plate? And how do you feel about this, ROOL? And what about you, the Community?

To add my pennyworth, I would support a scheme to get R-Pis to developers and would buy one for myself knowing that it would not immediately run RISC OS.
I too would like to know ROOL’s opinion. If ROOL feel unable to do the admin, then perhaps one of the RISC OS firms could do it.

drain on ROOL time in administering it

Not to mention the drain on ROOL time catching up on this forum thread. Oops!

Question: how many people would be up for doing some development if you had a board? Do you have any particular projects in mind? Just wondering what the likely takeup might be.

If R-Pi are amenable to us (ie ROOL) placing a bulk order, then we should encourage developers and users alike to order through ROOL, hence increasing our bulk ordering power…?

Wouldn’t the RISC OS user groups be best placed to arrange this? I dare say thay you would only need a 50% markup with the number of people who would participate. (i.e. two purchases also fund one Dev board.)

The groups would order what they want plus 50%.

The extra 50% would be fulfilled first and sent to ROOL, the other orders would go to the clubs, to distribute.

Question: how many people would be up for doing some development if you had a board? Do you have any particular projects in mind? Just wondering what the likely takeup might be.

I’m not currently intending to do any Pi-specific work, but I’m going to get a board in order to make sure I have a way of testing that any changes I make don’t break anything on the Pi. Getting one at launch would be nice, but I’m also going to be away for a few weeks over Christmas, so to avoid it being sent back because I’m not at home to accept delivery I was probably going to put off ordering one until the new year.

Wouldn’t the RISC OS user groups be best placed to arrange this?

That’s a neat idea. Depending on ROOL opinions on this, we’d need a newsgroups posting/other notifications pretty quick, assuming ordering from the R-Pi site will be possible soon.