HUH? How many questions can it answer?
-Mike Mac
You are wrong. You can repeat yourself if you like, and accuse us of closed-mindedness, but we have been here for most of MycroftAIâs history. We do know the details. Dinkum is shiny. Thatâs all.
I hope that enough OVOS folks can be open-minded enough see this point, not fall into the ânot invented hereâ frame
Tl;dr history of OVOS: Mycroft chases away all its commercial partners and most of its community developers because our stuff was Not Invented Here.
However my experience with NeonOS (and presumably OVOS which underles it) is that itâs a great amateur effort that (please excuse me for saying so) doesnât come off as that professional, good looking or robust
Youâre literally talking to us at our fundraiser.
Indeed, having uncorked the bottle and not wishing to drag this out, Iâll put it this way: OpenVoiceOSâ position on Dinkum before they made it was that it would be the final nail in MycroftAIâs coffin.
And it was, and now its one and only satisfied customer wants us to put the OVOS logo on it. I am truly sorry that a thing you like is doomed, but it is doomed.
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Dinkum was created in 3 months or so and started by removing everything the mk2 didnât need, ovos consists of several different frameworks years in the making, multi platform support has been one of our core guiding principles since the start
Ovos depends on some of the frameworks that were removed or crippled in the making of dinkum, we also have disagreements about the new âsessionsâ feature of dinkum and donât think itâs a good idea, in fact it goes directly against some fundamental design choices of core.
I can affirm categorically that OVOS will never fork or maintain dinkum.
I do not intend to criticize dinkum in this post, but want to make clear what our stance and roadmap is, dinkum simply is not in our roadmap or something we care about
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You must not do many fundraisers. 
I also donât think the nature of the OVOS Assistant is entirely clear to the public. Certainly itâs more modular than Dinkum, so weâve failed to communicate at least one thing.
Much of this is our fault, because we havenât made very many cohesive announcements, but weâve been waiting on MycroftAI to do that. After they follow up on Michaelâs last announcement, then weâll start carrying on about the technical details, was the idea. That was a month ago.
If the perception has been spread in other channels that OVOSâ backward compatibility represents tech debt, or retention of old code, I would like to emphatically and permanently reject that characterization. Our original mandate, as a dependency for several of Mycroftâs downstream partners, was to remain code-compatible with MycroftAIâs Assistant, not with the entire history of its codebase.
We permanently diverged quite a while ago, as illustrated above. Weâve been deprecating and replacing Mycroftâs limbs, one thing at a time, for years. The guts are probably next. The difference will be that our future overhauls will take place in public, with input and help from our community and from projects that depend on our code. Backwards incompatible changes will never be a surprise.
What weâre trying to set up around ourselves is a reincarnation of the open source community that used to exist around this code.
We have two codebases to choose from as a âstartingâ point. Both are modular. One is feature-rich, easily extended or reworked, and has always been cross-platform. It also supports historical extensions, while adding a whole new world of extensions using an additional framework, and it deprecates Old Stuff slowly and gently. Its modular nature made it an easy migration for other Mycroft-based projects, and now itâs the basis for all the survivors.
The choice is clear.
I apologize if I seemed confrontational above. Itâs frustrating to be having this conversation in 2023. Dinkum and the Mk2 OS represent Mycroftâs second self-fork, and itâs been a very difficult road. Jobs and friendships have been lost over decisions which were forcefully argued, and nobody is happy to have been right. Just frustrated.
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The proof is in (the eating of) the pudding. My two cents: donât announce with words like âHey! OVOS and Neon can do thisâ. Rather, announce with videos showing the code actually doing âthisâ. Iâm hoping to do a music-playing skill video (soon, Any Day Now :})
Being on the OVOS Matrix channel https://app.element.io/#/room/#openvoiceos:matrix.org, has inspired me again. Thereâs a good vibe over there - people are helpful - and itâs like we know weâre on the cusp of something huge.
Hope this helps.
-Mike Mac
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It looks like your goal for this fundraising effort has been met. Is there another goal I can contribute funds towards?
Hi! Thanks for your support, and thanks for asking. We are extending that fundraiser, but we keep hitting our goals faster than we expect. Our full board will chat tomorrow, after which weâll announce our next target.
I can say that our next goal will most likely be for features, rather than earmarked budgeting, which is to say that the next couple thousand or so will go into our general fund, with a particular eye toward early clerical and legal services. By and large, feature pushes donât cost us money. They cost volunteer time, so this seems like a good way to balance out a couple of features against the boring likelihood of accountants, notaries, paperwork attorneys, and so forth.
That was where we left things before the weekend. What remains for us to decide is which feature weâll push for next. I have a pretty good idea what weâre leaning towards, and Iâm excited, but I donât want to tease it until I know for sure itâs what weâre doing.
If anybody would like to donate now, please feel free. The target number will go up during the week, probably by âŹ1.5-3k.
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As promised, a campaign update.
New target, new goal: Robo-Personality
We did it! Weâve hit our most recent target, meaning weâll enter our new life with a budget for a buildserver and boards. Next on the list, itâs time to show the software some love!
One of the great things about coming into our own is our newfound ability to pursue lofty development goals. Weâve rediscovered some old proposals to give the Assistant its first, rudimentary version of a configurable personality. If youâve been longing to threaten your Assistant with a reduction in its humor parameter, this is the stretch goal for you!
This first version, to set clear expectations, would not necessarily teach the Assistant to crack its own jokes on the fly, which would be a roadmapped extension. This initiative, the groundwork, would teach the Assistant how to choose between a funny response, a flippant response, a flattering response, and so forth, and how to vary these responses to reflect a nuanced personality. It will be up to skill developers and the community to equip the Assistant with things to say, but the same initiative will expand the communityâs ability to help with that.
Our next fundraising target is âŹ6500. If this is achieved, the Robo-Personality Initiative will be an early priority after incorporation.
The beginnings of the Robo-Personality Initiative - which will stay on the back burner until Someday, if this stretch goal is not reached, rather than being cancelled entirely - can be followed on GitHub, where the relevant fallback is being designed. Next would be a design period for the needed extensions to dialog files and the skill framework.
We would like to take this opportunity to once again thank our donors, our early adopters, and especially our user-devs for a touching display of confidence. The OVOS team is excited to be expanding and incorporating, even under these somber circumstances, and we take heart in the knowledge that others are interested. We hope our Assistant, once we round the edges, will support you as gracefully and generously as you have supported us.
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Minor update: our notary advises us that it would cost us several thousand Euros more to establish the Association than it would cost to create the equivalent Foundation, so weâre going to be a Foundation instead.
This should have no effect whatsoever on our actual operations.
@NeonClary could you please edit the thread title to say âFoundationâ instead of âAssociationâ? @j1nx will edit the post when he has an opportunity.
edit: Thanks, Clary!
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our current stretch goal aims to bring to completion the first Persona stable release
this has now been roadmapped in this github issue, links to current WIP also available below