Was it? The situation tells otherwise and odds were stacked. The “markets” bar of entry isn’t that low that you can easily get your message accross with limited amount of funding. If you crunch the numbers, public investments couldn’t be that high. Would the interest in privacy falter if you microtransaction skills? The question to ask, what is privacy worth to ppl when you’re up against a shadow stream of revenue from the marketing industry?
Those business trips… While you can argue efficacy, a necessity to expand range.
That said, i can’t say that the market is ready, rather a long way to go, woodpecking your way. Because a bunch would like this to happen, doesn’t wield it in existance.
And i’ve not even started talking about “fool proofing” software for a wider audience to be a natural extension.
I went looking through the comments on Kickstarter and StartEngine. They’re the same today as they were a year ago. And two years ago. And three years ago. It’s unbelievable.
Every time, they’re claiming they’re just about to ship. Then they don’t. Then we find out they didn’t have anything to ship. The only difference is this time, they actually shipped something to a few people. It just wasn’t what they promised and definitely not what people bought, at all.
They raised over a million dollars, according to StartEngine and Kickstarter.
So hey… where’d it all go? Some people on StartEngine dug into that and posted some info on who made off with what, but that was over a year ago.
Look at their SEC filing. They basically said this wouldn’t be possible to pull off. Excuse after excuse in there, explaining what “might” happen that would prevent them from shipping anything.
To all those who think they’ve been scammed: you need to get over it, buy a pi, download Mycroft and get to work.
If you thought you were buying something through kickstarter, you need to go back and read the kickstarter terms of service. You may also need to deepen your understanding of open source and participate more deeply than clicking on a download link and following directions.
Projects fail. This one was a partial success and others will build on it and perhaps succeed with a hardware product. It’s amazing how far Mycroft went given the small number of paying participants and paltry total of funds raised.
I’m proud to have participated in Mycroft in a small way, with a small portion of my hard earned money, some 5 years ago. I’m not thinking of this as a loss. This is open source without the free beer. I’m chalking it up to “buying a keg for the party.”
Now about that pi 4 I’ve got sitting around…. How hard can it be?
That’s the thing though–it actually didn’t go very far. Especially if you look at what they claimed to already have in the Kickstarter videos.
If they’d just come out and said, “hey, we’re starting from scratch but the upside is we’ll release some open source software when we bail”, I’d be fine with that.
As it stands, most of their open source stuff is either unusable or based on other people’s work. There’s very little original IP in there.
Look I’m super happy that the people who believed in the Mycroft vision picked up the ball, for free, but that in no way makes taking 2600+ people’s money and never delivering the product they claimed to already own, okay.
Honestly the third parties could’ve gotten there on their own. It diminishes the third parties by saying they’re there only becuase of Mycroft. Some of them were already going there. Mycroft doesn’t deserve credit for their work.
We are obviously not on the same page. Yes kickstarter is not a shop. This statement is exactly here for this kind of situation where some compagnies do not fulfil their engagements. This is really petty.
During those 5 years, we have been promising our pledge again and again, so we are right to expect what should be ours. And oh, what happened during these 5 years, almost nothing usable for the consumer. Mycroft as a software was already there, and now, the software is taken care of by someone else.
Among backers and people that order the Mark II full prices, you can find different kind of people, including hobbyist like me, that wanted to financially help a consumer ready product, and some consumers that wanted a ready out the box product.
Buying a Mark II between 150 and 300 bucks when we know the price of the parts is indeed helping open source.
Lots of people were willing to pay full cost to help. This is why I say the market was here.
You got some PI’s on the shelf, great. Speaking of that, tf the company was playing nice, instead of selling the parts that should be part of our pledge (Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 2GB - Mycroft), then they could send it to the backers.
Here’s a fun trick. Try the stuff they show “working” in their Kickstarter video, on a current Mycroft. They obviously didn’t have this working then. But they never told anyone that. Nowhere in the video does it say this is an “artist’s interpretation of the device” or anything like that. They act like this is the finished, shippable product.
I’m sure my take on this is not everyone’s, and there’s plenty about the history of the project I’m unaware of. But what can one do in a situation like this, other than express personal feelings about it, publicly or privately , give a sigh and move onto something else a bit more promising, perhaps with a bit of learned wariness.
As bulk pi orders start at 10k, they probably have a few hundred if not thousand extras, so selling those seems like a good way to generate operating income. But I’m looking forward to the salacious hypothesizing as to what rEalLy GoInG oN.
Blockquote
Speaking of that, tf the company was playing nice, instead of selling the parts that should be part of our pledge (Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 2GB - Mycroft ), then they could send it to the backers.
I have to say, at the time it happened I was completely appalled. I think that action, taken without any communication to the community for months and months and when the company had 4000+ Mark IIs promised to kickstarter backers was just the height of irresponsibility and accountability to the community that has been supporting this effort all along. It wuld have made s much mre sense to figure out a way to use them to fully or partly satisfy their moral obligation to their backers (such as at least send them the Pis).
While I’m happy the communication has finally resumed, I am devastated that Mycroft took the shameful secretive approach they did. It self-contradicts the stated values of the company. Although this is not true for me (and to be fair I was not a kickstarter backer) I can imagine many will not be able to get past these acts of self-contradiction.
I think I’ve said my piece now. The CEO has stated in no uncertain terms that they are not sending Kickstarter backers their “rewards”, and they’re shutting down. Wow.
Yes, I know how Kickstarter works. I’ve seen a few of them fail that I’ve invested in. But nothing like this. This was a serious bait and switch. The device in that video NEVER EXISTED. And they claimed it did, for YEARS.
There are alternatives, that I can run on my Pi. I’m sure others will follow too.
The owners of Mycroft.ai though, the CEO, and all of the founders, have put a blight on the face of open source artificial intelligence. It’s disgusting that they’re getting away with it. And I feel bad for employees who got saddled with the task of running interception for the scam and didn’t know it. I get the feeling Gex legit had no idea. On the upside, I’ve started calling things Mycrofty if they sound too riddled in buzzwords. At least I got a new word out of the deal.
So I’m out. Good luck everyone. I gotta call a guy about a bridge, I wonder if it’s still for sale…
In all the announcements and every time the community explicitly asked Mycroft, the backers have been explicitly reassured that they would receive their units (just after the orders). This is the first time I read any message stating a difference. Personally, I take offense to you stating “as I’ve explained previously” as this was not explained in any of the announcement nor in this new blog post.
Had you said “I’m sorry, we really wanted to but it didn’t work out” I’d have accepted that. It was the risk of backing. But I am actively irked by your statement acting as if Mycroft had separated “orders” and “rewards” like this before because again, this was not the case in any of the official communication.
I understand Mycroft didn’t want Mycroft to die either and this is not what you or anyone else intended, but us backers deserve honest and clear communication, especially at this point. Being told “as I’ve explained previously” on something not in any of the official communication ever (including this latest blog post) is offensive. Please just honestly state that you thought it would still be possible to ship to backers without acting like “rewards” were ever treated differently from “orders” by Mycroft.