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> we foresee a delay in production until April 2019. This is the only bit I read, the rest was blah blah. The first entirely predictable delay of many, if I mi

> we foresee a delay in production until April 2019. This is the only bit I read, the rest was blah blah. The first entirely predictable delay of many, if I might add. They are on a long road to "Sorry we tried, here are some discount coupons for purism laptops". Well, it won't be that long really, unless a badly needed funding angel swoops in. Their delusion is in some sense laudable, as any startup should believe it's own bullshit. But when you know better than they do about their chances, it's still hard to watch folks put themselves through this.

lsh 8y ago
So cynical! I don't blame you, but being a cynical and pessimistic spectator is easy. Instead of slinging shit you might indulge us with just how you know better. Is it from watching many failures from the sidelines?
- grizzles 8y ago
  They are wildly undercapitalized for what they are trying to do. They asked me to invest, I said no. It will be tough for them to find investors, the phone industry is a ruthlessly competitive market. The CEO is very headstrong. That's great when you are an expert in hardware projects, but he's not. In my opinion, they are trying to do too many things, and aren't learning from their mistakes or listening to the advice of others. The best thing they could do right now to maximize their chances would be to lay off their software team and focus entirely on the hardware. Let the community supply that part of it.
  - megous 8y ago
    I'd like them to do that too. It's a chicken/egg/bootstrapping problem. You don't get a community of developers without HW, and you don't get a useful HW running OSS OS/userspace without the community. OTOH, I think they'll have trouble attracting that much of a community to sustain the project if they just throw out such an expensive initially useless hardware out there. But at least people will have something to play with. Better than promisses and sorrys.
    - petecox 8y ago
      The software needs some sort of vendor polish. Let's not repeat the mistake of OpenMoko, where its utility as a basic phone had its problems, thrown over the wall for the community to fix.
      - wryun 8y ago
        They could just ship AOSP as the default (years of polish...) as their first step.
      - megous 8y ago
        Though this works for plenty of SBCs produced by Chinese vendors, who just slap on SoC vendor kernel on some debian userspace and that's that from the software side for them. HW must be appealing though, even if by being dirt cheap and with plentiful options. But it still takes years for community to produce something useful.
  - wryun 8y ago
    Yes, I think they're crazy for not just focusing on the hardware and shipping AOSP. I think the point of having a completely open source/up-streamed kernel is that it's straightforward to run any mobile OS... that they're trying to invent their own at the same time is a little ambitious.
    - snaky 8y ago
      To have the completely open up-streamed kernel would be great and that's reasonably ambitious task they could focus on. But nothing more, there is AOSP with F-droid for that.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    I'd never even considered this. Would this hurt their marketability somehow? Wonder if anyone from there is tuned in here...
    - seba_dos1 8y ago
      As somebody who was deeply into Openmoko community back in the day, I believe that it would massively hurt their marketability. I agree that this delay was entirely predictable though. Some time ago when I heard at their Matrix channel that "we're still targeting January" I was all like "wait, what?". A plan that gives you just 2-3 months from sending out devkits to final shipping simply has to fail; I'm glad they didn't stubbornly tried to deliver and just delayed, although I'd rather have them delay to May or June already, as it's IMO still a bit risky.
flukus 8y ago
> Their delusion is in some sense laudable, as any startup should believe it's own bullshit. But when you know better than they do about their chances, it's still hard to watch folks put themselves through this. It doesn't look like they're a startup as far as I can tell, they're a laptop manufacturer with 2 products on the market for a few years, doesn't look like there's any VC money in the mix either.
- grizzles 8y ago
  When you take on a project that requires leverage of 100:1 over your current annual profit, I'd argue you are a startup again. That commitment will easily swallow the company. Note: I'm generously estimating their profit at around $1M year. ~$100M was the cost to bring up the Essential phone.

lsh 8y ago

So cynical! I don't blame you, but being a cynical and pessimistic spectator is easy. Instead of slinging shit you might indulge us with just how you know better. Is it from watching many failures from the sidelines?

grizzles 8y ago
They are wildly undercapitalized for what they are trying to do. They asked me to invest, I said no. It will be tough for them to find investors, the phone industry is a ruthlessly competitive market. The CEO is very headstrong. That's great when you are an expert in hardware projects, but he's not. In my opinion, they are trying to do too many things, and aren't learning from their mistakes or listening to the advice of others. The best thing they could do right now to maximize their chances would be to lay off their software team and focus entirely on the hardware. Let the community supply that part of it.
- megous 8y ago
  I'd like them to do that too. It's a chicken/egg/bootstrapping problem. You don't get a community of developers without HW, and you don't get a useful HW running OSS OS/userspace without the community. OTOH, I think they'll have trouble attracting that much of a community to sustain the project if they just throw out such an expensive initially useless hardware out there. But at least people will have something to play with. Better than promisses and sorrys.
  - petecox 8y ago
    The software needs some sort of vendor polish. Let's not repeat the mistake of OpenMoko, where its utility as a basic phone had its problems, thrown over the wall for the community to fix.
    - wryun 8y ago
      They could just ship AOSP as the default (years of polish...) as their first step.
    - megous 8y ago
      Though this works for plenty of SBCs produced by Chinese vendors, who just slap on SoC vendor kernel on some debian userspace and that's that from the software side for them. HW must be appealing though, even if by being dirt cheap and with plentiful options. But it still takes years for community to produce something useful.
- wryun 8y ago
  Yes, I think they're crazy for not just focusing on the hardware and shipping AOSP. I think the point of having a completely open source/up-streamed kernel is that it's straightforward to run any mobile OS... that they're trying to invent their own at the same time is a little ambitious.
  - snaky 8y ago
    To have the completely open up-streamed kernel would be great and that's reasonably ambitious task they could focus on. But nothing more, there is AOSP with F-droid for that.
- acct1771 8y ago
  I'd never even considered this. Would this hurt their marketability somehow? Wonder if anyone from there is tuned in here...
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    As somebody who was deeply into Openmoko community back in the day, I believe that it would massively hurt their marketability. I agree that this delay was entirely predictable though. Some time ago when I heard at their Matrix channel that "we're still targeting January" I was all like "wait, what?". A plan that gives you just 2-3 months from sending out devkits to final shipping simply has to fail; I'm glad they didn't stubbornly tried to deliver and just delayed, although I'd rather have them delay to May or June already, as it's IMO still a bit risky.

flukus 8y ago

> Their delusion is in some sense laudable, as any startup should believe it's own bullshit. But when you know better than they do about their chances, it's still hard to watch folks put themselves through this. It doesn't look like they're a startup as far as I can tell, they're a laptop manufacturer with 2 products on the market for a few years, doesn't look like there's any VC money in the mix either.

grizzles 8y ago
When you take on a project that requires leverage of 100:1 over your current annual profit, I'd argue you are a startup again. That commitment will easily swallow the company. Note: I'm generously estimating their profit at around $1M year. ~$100M was the cost to bring up the Essential phone.