On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:27:38 +0100 Ben Thompson <b...@thompson.org.uk> wrote:
> > To finance the next phase, we are thinking about asking for donations or to > > hold an auction for the first 5 or 10 prototype units. What would you think > > of such an approach? > > I'm not keen on either (although would consider a donation). What > about a pre-order? > I'm not keen on an auction as it tends to focus on getting large amounts money from few people - those many who have modest amounts of money get excluded. I'm not very keen of straight donations either as you really need a strong accountability structure before donations are at all safe, and I don't think you want to go that way. I like pre-order, but I wonder about combining them all... Choose a maximum subscription and a minimum price. Invite people to pre-order and pay the minimum price or greater as they choose. Only take orders up to the maximum subscription. As units become available, fill orders in order of the price paid starting with those who paid the most. Publish basic statistics about orders received so far and allow people to know their position. Also allow people to top-up their orders to climb the list. That way people can "donate" and are rewarded by getting a phone sooner - but everyone still gets a phone. The maximum subscription ensures that no-one will continually be over-taken by someone new paying a little bit more. An unfortunate quirk of this method is that those who pay the most - and get the first phone - may end up with a phone that is defective as some bug may not have been found yet. (obviously people pay postage plus minimum price plus extra). Just an thought.. NeilBrown _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community