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Thr 2019.12.05
re: post #26
'then take money from him by supporting 'freeloaders' who would otherwise got stuff from his shop'@fanoush totally agree and have been thinking along the same lines for all the official supported boards. It is a tough call to determine that balance and has also been seen by numerous posts of frustration from Gordon. Thought of splitting the forum into two separate themes where Gordon only responds with support for the official line. But then some readers may miss when some good idea would pop up on the other.
For me, it is a bit frustrating attempting to support code snippet error requests, only to find the requestor doesn't have an official board, when the claim was there all along. One of the reasons I ferret out those suspect by requiring
procees.envbefore I expend too much of my time gratis.'I would prefer to not link too much details here'
Yes. That should be left to the heavy hitters such as @JumJum, @Gordon, @MaBe, @fanoush, etal (unintentional ommisions to make a point - done from memory as not fully aware of those in the trenches that should receive more acknowledgement)
IMO so as the Kickstarter was tremendous proving this is the next coolest thing as MaBe so creatively stated the first week of November: I promise, you gone love it! (sic American ver: You're gonna love it!) and that first run will require ~1000 users, estimating ~200 will desire near immediate forum participation, why not have a forum verification addition, such as a Bangle icon or/and the text 'Bangle' beneath where 'Patreon' shows? This would not only provide we contributors instant feedback that the poster does indeed have an official Bangle, but would also provide Google link juice, to covertly get the word out. As each Bangle has to be mailed to those that pledged, the email/forum profile would be exposed at that time. A list could be created for those of us that support/respond to posts, or the icons added while in transit. This would encourage purchasing an official device in order to get (near) immediate response. Those that want to freely tinker could have their own separate Bangle Hackers thread, but no contributions from Gordon there. Everyone should be happy, right?
Robin-
Everyone should be happy, right
Yes :-)
It is a difficult topic and it is easy to overdo it and not be aware of the barriers erected. There is a proverb in czech. Example of it can be seen in this post because when you check the top countries it is really not 'all over the world' at all, it is simply a list of top richest countries of the world, and you may really miss to see this pattern if you live in one of them. The kickstarter (or prices in the shop) makes perfect sense as a funding for UK based person who can then give full time to the project, and it shows everywhere in the attention to detail, cool features like emulator done in week, tutorials - and it makes all the difference in the world for Espruino. I can hack fitness trackers for two years in the evenings after kids go to sleep but still don't have something more polished than ugly basic watch app.
But on the other hand you don't want to be closed club. One must really appreciate the $35 raspbery pi (or $5 pi zero) because its reach to kids, hackers, students at that price level is really 'all over the world' - something first world person may not fully appreciate.
Anyway, Espruino is currently just about right in this, I've seen couple of other projects where it went too far without people noticing. To stay on topic one such project is DroidScript for me. I first found it thanks to Espruino, checked the website, installed it and it looked nice until I noticed the limitations (you can't even open some examples because there is limit on number of opened files, BLE plugin is free in google play but once you install it you notice it doesn't work until you pay (I see they updated its description in store now so it is clear). And then you notice the price is quite high monthly payment, and the you find discussion threads where even the users in the forum frown upon people who point out that they cannot afford it (exactly in the sense of the proverb linked above). One can then just politely walk away an ignore such (very good) project, which I did. Well after wasting some time with it because you don't find such details on their .org based site which initially looks open and friendly.
So please relax, the balance is OK here, just wanted to explain that by my comment above I really do not advocate moving into direction where DroidScript seems to be.
And I am in fact more happy when kid from India asks me for help with hacking his $5 fitness tracker that even he can afford to possibly destroy, then answer somebody else here who can buy official boards.
So yes, it is hard to find the balance :-)
fanoush
Well, yes. First I think it is not very nice to ask for help and support here in 'Official Espruino Boards' forum if this is just hacked watch you got from elsewhere.
Also making it too easy for people to just save money without any real effort (at the expense of others - Gordon, kickstarter supporters) is not great either. So I would prefer to not link too much details here on the forum. I am not sure myself where is the line. For me it would be pointless to send Gordon donation and then take money from him by supporting 'freeloaders' who would otherwise got stuff from his shop. OTOH anyone can get the watch from wherever they want and if they contribute to the community then (like making apps for Bangle) it is good for us too. So I don't know how to balance this in best way.