I love kickstarter, I really do. There's a lot of issues with the way capital is currently generated that puts the small guy at a disadvantage.
However, I really think the kickstarter team needs to take a closer look at how things are going today. This is but one example. Out of the many kickstarters I've contributed to, only one has shipped and only one more appears to have had any progress in the past 6 months. My friends have had very similar experiences and all of us have said we probably won't be contributing as much for a while. It kind of ruins the idea if a very large percentage of the projects fail or are halted (e.g. trademark disputes).
This is why Kickstarter is doomed in its current incarnation. With no sense of accountability, backers will be abused more and more by individuals or groups just looking to spend other peoples' money. Worse, fraud is going to ramp up because it always follows the money and Kickstarter is taking a hands-off approach that will fail.
Kickstarter should promote the trust of backers in a similar fashion to the way that Ebay promotes the trust of purchasers. Kickstarter should be seeking to increase accountability in any way that it can through reputation systems, project completion metrics, background checks, and full transparency of the entire process.
Besides the sad response to the Arduino founder in this article, I would point to the backer-only forums and updates on each Kickstarter project. How are potential donors to see what's going on in that project?
>Out of the many kickstarters I've contributed to, only one has shipped and only one more appears to have had any progress in the past 6 months.
For what it's worth, I've had my own reservations [1].
Since then:
- 2/9 have shipped, one precisely on schedule.
- 1/9 is shipping now after a forgivable hurricane-related delay and just might meet the schedule.
- 1/9 has barely gotten started, but has a relatively generous schedule, veteran team and continuous updates.
- 1/9 appears to be just marching right along, unremarkable.
- 2/9 are behind schedule, but have been providing enough in the way of updates and/or early access that I remain quite confident. However, I will say that in both cases, their schedules appeared plainly unrealistic from the jump.
- 1/9 appears to be floundering and has gone a month or more without updates at times.
- 1/9 is so massive and ambitious that I can't help but expect problems even though a lack of updates has been the only issue so far.
The impressions I gather from my admittedly tiny data set:
1) If the schedule seems unrealistic, it likely is. One year is probably a good starting point for creating anything from scratch.
2) Exceeding the funding goal seems to correlate to delays.
3) Experience counts. Veterans have performed better at delivering and much better at providing updates.
I may not be a friend, but of the 7 projects I've contributed to, 5 have delivered, and two are in active development with weekly updates (software)
Some of the things I've back have been on the "sure thing" side (Amanda Palmer) and some on the "hey that's a neat idea" side (obos). But I've never contributed more than I'm willing to lose, even for Wasteland.
I've also backed a bunch of Kickstarter projects, so far none that have taken my money then failed, but two very ambitious and relatively expensive ones which have my money are running well behind schedule (The Pebble Watch and the ZPM Espresso Machine). I don't regret a cent of that money, and if both/either of the watch or the coffee machine never turn up, I'll be sad - but sad because a great project failed, not sad because I feel any overpowering entitlement to "get my thing". I view all of my Kickstarter pledges as "gifts to people with great ideas" with the understanding that if they can trun the idea into a product/business, they'll send me one.
I see _many_ complaints from people who don't view Kickstarter that way, and in one sense I feel sorry for them, because I think it's at least partly Kickstarter's fault and partly some project's fault. The recent changes to KS's hardware policy were clearly aimed at people who thought they were buying products in a shop. I think Kickstarter, and the people starting projects on Kickstarter, need to make things much more clear that it's not an "online shop" - because in spite of words/phrases like "funding platform for creative projects", "funders", "pledges", "projects", and "creators"; I see lots of people, including smart people who I respect, complaining that their "purchase" at Kickstarter isn't turning out as they expected. I think those peoples expectations were wrong, but they still had those expectations, and were still upset when they weren't met.
People need to understand there _are_ places where you can buy products online and have them shipped to you within reasonable pre-agreed timeframes. They're called "online stores", there's _heaps_ of them out there - try amazon.com for example, or ebay.com. Kickstarter is _not_ one of those. Kickstarter, and Kickstarter project creators probably need to do a better job of making sure people understand that before taking their money off them.
The two things I have funded (a laser cutter for our hackerspace, and The Temple of Juno at Burning Man this year) have both been built, and both have delivered on their prizes.
Of course the "I'm going to totally smash an industry with $100,000 and...and....ANDROID!" aren't going to work.
If you consider Kickstarter projects as startups, then a 10% success rate is ok. Is something like am 80% success rate for kickstarter projects desirable? They probably would have to implement much higher barriers for applicants then.
This comment is about Kickstarter in general, and not about the Smartduino project, right? Even the linked blog post doesn't imply that they're not capable of delivering their product, and looking at their collateral they appear to be very far along, far more mature than the average hardware kickstarter project.
I just want to make sure we're not blanket conflating branding concerns with ability to ship, because they're entirely different issues.
I've mostly backed creative projects (films/books) and they've all delivered or are making progress towards delivery, with one notable exception. They mostly run behind, but having worked on more than a couple low-budget film projects myself I fully expected that. It's just how it works.
One film project completely halted when a big studio started sniffing around it. Not happy about that one, honestly, but I guess it's good for the people involved. I half-expect nothing will come of the studio interest and then the guy's burned all his bridges on both ends, but I see how he got to the decision he made.
I've also backed some large game projects which haven't yet reached their scheduled delivery dates, so we'll see how they go.
I'm the author of the blog post. The objective of the post is to ask Kickstarter to provide a more direct way to report either trademark violations or lies (like this guy claiming to be a former manufacturer of Arduino) that might affect the people who fund a project.
If the point of the blog post was to get Kickstarter to change their policy then it was very poorly written. It read like a hit piece on Smartduino.
I'm a backer of the project and have been following it closely. You don't seem to want to get to the bottom of this so much as yell from a soapbox. Calling a guy and asking 'have you ever heard of this guy?' isn't really enough research for the accusation you made.
When you found out that he does have people on his team who were on the Arduino manufacturing team you still call him a liar. When he claims to have order invoices from your company and asks for your permission to make them public, he hears nothing.
There's a bit more nuance here than you presented, so how about you two get in to a substantive discussion before you hurl any more volleys over the wall at a guy who, though you disagree with, is making a quality product advancing your platform, and who has been trying to talk to you about this?
Crossposting my comment from the blog post here, because the Arduino servers are apparently under heavy load, and most people will TLDR the post and just look at the comments here.
Dimitri, the creator of the smARtDUINO project got in touch with me a few weeks ago to collaborate on creating a smARtBUS adaptor for our platform.
We’ve exchanged over 40 emails since then, and my impression is that he’s an earnest, upstanding man, who really cares a lot about the electronics community and making it easier and less expensive for people to do creative things.
We had a discussion about Kickstarter in particular, and one of the things he mentioned to me in our conversation was that he felt his campaign placed too much emphasis on the “Arduinoness” of the project, and not enough emphasis on the true innovation, which is the smARtBUS interconnect system.
We discussed the perils of successfully marketing a Kickstarter project, and said in retrospect, “If we communicate better the project, I have no idea were we can be now that it should be clear this is not just another Arduino.” (this was about a week ago, near the end of his campaign.)
I think if you can honestly blame him for anything, it’s not effectively conveying the message of the product in an concise way. If his workers were indeed manufacturing Arduino in Italy, there’s nothing wrong with claiming it. I’ll admit that the claim might look deceptively grand at first glance, but my intuition tells me this has more to do with Dimitri’s English ability, rather than a malevolent attempt at hijacking the Arduino brand.
The issue is the owner of the trademark "arduino" wants the wording changed on the project to avoid confusion. If this is a simple misunderstanding why is the project owner being unresponsive? I am sure the project owner's contact info is up to date with Kickstarter since he is expecting a +$150k wire transfer from them.
Woah, wait a minute? Someone contacts Kickstarter and alleges that a paying customer of theirs is using the Kickstarter platform to violate the law and Kickstarter's only response is to contact the customer directly? This has to be some kind of joke, right?
In the ISP space, that's pretty common. In fact, with things like the DMCA, that's codified into law.
Really, you don't want some private company acting like a judge here. We don't have the legal knowledge or interest.
Your choice here, essentially is "Shut down everyone who gets a complaint" or "try to be the judge" (e.g. only shut them down if the complaint isn't obviously bogus) or 'forward the complaint on and let them deal with it'
There are a lot of reasons why you, the customer, would want #3.
There is much that anyone can say about Kickstarter.
The problem is that all this discussion started from much different topic.
Here we are talking about someone, Massimo Banzi from Team Arduino, that wrote on the public blog of Arduino, which have for sure hundreds of thousands followers, if not more, that a company doesn't exist and that another person, stated with first and last name, was claiming something that he didn't.
Reading the Kickstarter page, including the bio, the faqs, the comments and the huge quantity of updates, can see very easily that this person always made very clear he's living in China so, why publish something so unfaithful?
When then it came out that the problem was on the table since October 29th, few hours after the launch of the Kickstarter project, why wait almost one month to complain.
The registration certificate went public so, the company exists and this is proven. Nobody heard about any apologize for the false statements.
The only think Massimo Banzi tried to do, here as well, was to try to change the topic.
The question is: is it right that the owner of a so popular blog write false statements, but when become clear to everybody that he was wrong, he try to change topic, instead issue the owed apologize?
This remember me when Steve Jobs (R.I.P.) is supposed he stated: "there is nothing wrong with iPhone 4, they are holding it not properly".
Massimo Banzi is for sure member of a group of very clever peoples that created such a good thing like Arduino, but he doesn't have the right to attribute to others the false and pretend that nothing happen here.
(my comment on the Arduino blog, cross-posted here)
Massimo, you asked the Arduino community for comments, so here’s mine.
It’s obvious that Dimitri isn’t trying to do you or Arduino harm. Did he over-represent his team’s association with Arduino? Perhaps, though not to the degree that you claim, and your repeated accusations that he’s a liar go over the top.
While you’ve made it very clear you don’t like the term ‘Smartduino’ this is a slope that Arduino has navigated before, trying to find the happy medium between building an open platform and community of developers and manufacturers and protecting your own intellectual property.
Regardless of where Smartduino falls on that line it clearly doesn’t fall very far away from it. So again, whether Dimitri is right or wrong he certainly doesn’t deserve the lambasting bordering on libel that you’re dishing on him.
For someone who has such a leadership role in the Arduino community, your actions today have done a very poor job of promoting it. At the heart of the Arduino movement is the idea that hardware development doesn’t have to be about huge companies that build walls around their IP with lawyers manning the battlements.
This is how THEY solve their conflicts. This is not how WE solve our conflicts.
Got issues with how the Smartduino project represents itself? Talk to them. Work with them. Don’t try to whip us into a frenzy of torches and pitchforks because every single person in this community is trying to expand it and move it forward, a sentiment I see throughout these comments, but not in your own words, where I would most expect to see them.
While this "smARtDUINO" (lame!) copycat behaviour is indeed appalling, the alternative can be a real hassle, too. Trademarks and copyrights deserve protection, but as YouTube has shown, DCMA abuse can halt projects just as well.
Perhaps they could implement a 'Flag' system, that allows IP owners to signal illegal use/infringement, after which a review (in which both the complainer and the starter should be involved) can decide whether or not the project can proceed. This could easily sail into DCMA hell or lawyer heaven if a big corporation feels threatened, which could file complaint after complaint just to stall the competition.
Why is it lame/appalling? I've read the comments on the blog post and apparently the "duino" name isn't trademarked, and therefore they are quite within their right to use a variation of it (however lame it may appear).
Further commentary reveals that the people who have backed this guy are happy that he is the real deal, and that the problem has mostly stemmed from English being his second language, leading to a mis-communication over quite what part they had in manufacturing arduinos in Italy.
Under what countries's laws do you evaluate the claims?
Note besides the issue that there may be many countries involved, the company may also own different trademark rights in different countries.
Trademark law is only mildly harmonious and different countries definitely have very different fair use.
Who decides?
What are the rules for this decision?
etc
The problem is you are basically suggesting they set up an alternative judicial system. Outside of doing it with alternative dispute resolution methods (IE arbitration, mediation, etc), this is a really bad idea. ;)
While I understand the desire for Kickstarter to police this kind of thing, the burden ultimately sits with the owner of the trademark being infringed upon to pursue legal action or risk losing the trademark. Frankly I'm a little surprised at the response here on HN given that Kickstarter is an early stage company with limited resources. Why should they focus on something where there are already laws in place and avenues to pursue infringement? Who's to say they should be the arbiter on what constitutes infringement?
It would be nice if anyone speculating on Kickstarter's legal obligations laid out their own credentials.
Because just maybe Kickstarter has already considered the legal, logistic and ethical aspects of their own business, and possibly even consulted with lawyers and other experts.
As a corporate IP lawyer, I can say I have to agree. Kickstarter was probably told (rightly so, in fact) to stay out of the legal disputes, and tell projects/trademark owners to sort it out amongst themselves. IE follow valid court orders that tell them to do things, but otherwise, don't participate in these types of dispute.
This will likely get them sued eventually for not doing anything, but this probably won't happen until later in life (if Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc, are any benchmark). So far Google's had a good record, at least in the US, of not having liability, trademark wise.
On the other hand, if they actually start to take down projects or otherwise deal with trademark disputes, they bring all sorts of possible liability onto themselves.
Plus the hassle of trying to verify trademark claims, and effectively being asked to judge whether the usage of a given trademark is infringement. All bad ideas to be involved in.
There is literally no upside for them.
Worse, despite nice TOSen that disclaim liability for everything under the sun, you can't always remove all liability. It's like grocery store parking lots that have large signs saying "not responsible for lost or stolen possessions left in cars". This is done because in a lot of places, they are actually legally responsible, and they are just trying to get people to stop suing them all the time.
The trust and responsibility aspects are certainly a significant concern, but this has little to do with whether they should get involved in the business of disputes between projects and trademark owners.
Heck, if you wanted to encourage "authorized" projects, you could even have some nice logo display program where verified sponsorship means you get to display some logo, and it only shows up on those kinds of projects. Or you establish some sort of "trustrank" scoring or whatever where relationship with trademark holder or IP holder is a scoring factor.
Whatever the solution, there are plenty of ways to incentivize good behavior and happier trademark holders without making yourself an arbitrator.
Well, and has Kickstarter considered the impact on people not trusting the information provided? Have they considered that this may ruin their business?
Reading through some of the comments is interesting in that my experience with Kickstarter seems to have been --so far-- nearly polar opposites to that of others.
I have almost exclusively backed technology projects. Out of those, not one of them has failed to deliver. And, not one of them has delivered on time. Out of all the projects I have supported only one has ended-up in the trash can. However, that was not because the widget was not executed well or it was junk. It was simply a case of my idea of the utility of this gizmo failing to align with reality once I got it. No issues on my part. I've done that plenty other times even buying stuff from brick-and-mortar stores.
If I allow myself to presume about the reasons for my "success" I'll have to say that the only thing I can reasonably point to is that I have a lot of experience actually designing. manufacturing and, yes, shipping technology products. I am intimately familiar with the design, sourcing and manufacturing process (and issues) of most products that entail software, electronics and mechanical components using various technologies.
This, to me, means that I have a fairly decent "bullshit" filter when it applies to these kinds of projects. Not to pick on them, but my most recent "this is bullshit" call was the LIFX light bulb:
You have to rewind to when the project first posted. Their pledge goal was set to $100K. A project like that could easily burn-up half a million dollars just in engineering, NRE's and regulatory testing. Very easily. In fact, my immediate thought after reviewing the project was that the project needed somewhere in the order of two million dollars.
When I see something like that I have to ask: Are the project originators truly clueless about what it might take to get the project done? I don't like to think that fraud is involved. I am one of those saps who believe that the vast majority of people are basically good. So, no fraud. Yet, $100K?
What would have happened with LIFX had they received funding just about their requested $100K goal? Say, $150K. Well, in my world that would have meant that there was no way to complete the project. No way. At least not with anything that I'd want to plug into a lightbulb socket at my house for a myriad of safety reasons.
I avoid such projects.
As it turns out, they have raised about $1.3 million. This may or may not be enough to get this done. Keep in mind that bringing in partners isn't free. COGS must include all costs.
With regards to the ARDUINO issue. I saw that project come up and immediately went to the known Arduino sites. I saw nothing promoting the project or making this connection of having an ex-Arduino manufacturer behind the Kickstarter project. So, I stayed clear.
I see the relationship between Kickstarter and their vendors very much like that of a shopping mall owner and the stores it might house. Imagine that one of the stores decides to sell counterfeit Gucci bags or defraud people in some other way. I can't see the mall owner as being guilty of the crime being committed. If a direct nexus is established, well, then, that's a different story.
I also see the buyer as having to be responsible for the decision they make. If someone sells you a perpetual motion machine and you were not smart or informed enough to realize that this can't possibly work, well, in many ways, it's your fault. Be an informed buyer. That's the only way to protect yourself.
EDIT: I should say that I like Kickstarter very much. I don't have a problem with the service. If you know what you are doing both as either a project originator or a project backer, it's wonderful.
I too called BS on the LiFX bulbs. In part because Phillips had recently won a prize for one of their LED bulbs and it cost them $25M+ to develop. So even accounting for 'knocking down the hard problems' I couldn't see a 10x reduction in cost.
However the cool thing about it was that they saw an actual demand for programmable LED bulbs with RGB capability and came out with 'Hue.'[1] I suspect they took the Apple Store only route because it was a single partner who could conceivably move enough product to technical saavy people. It seems to have worked as they are sold out in the Bay Area, not sure how many kits or bulbs that was in the initial batch but probably a few. They also sell the bulbs for $60 each, which is another interesting number. If you take all of the money raised for LiFX and divide by the number of bulbs they are committed to shipping out as rewards it comes to $55/bulb.
[1] Full Disclosure: I bought a starter set of "Hue" lights when they were announced and did not back the kickstarter campaign for LiFX.
Nice rundown/analysis. I've got a friend running a similar project to the LIFX - and they've got some pretty believable-looking accounting showing why they need to raise $700k to get to market - any they've already got experienced product designers and electronics designers on board, and have sunk something like 50% of what LIFX asked for up front.
[+] [-] deelowe|13 years ago|reply
However, I really think the kickstarter team needs to take a closer look at how things are going today. This is but one example. Out of the many kickstarters I've contributed to, only one has shipped and only one more appears to have had any progress in the past 6 months. My friends have had very similar experiences and all of us have said we probably won't be contributing as much for a while. It kind of ruins the idea if a very large percentage of the projects fail or are halted (e.g. trademark disputes).
[+] [-] crusso|13 years ago|reply
Kickstarter should promote the trust of backers in a similar fashion to the way that Ebay promotes the trust of purchasers. Kickstarter should be seeking to increase accountability in any way that it can through reputation systems, project completion metrics, background checks, and full transparency of the entire process.
Besides the sad response to the Arduino founder in this article, I would point to the backer-only forums and updates on each Kickstarter project. How are potential donors to see what's going on in that project?
[+] [-] incision|13 years ago|reply
For what it's worth, I've had my own reservations [1].
Since then:
- 2/9 have shipped, one precisely on schedule.
- 1/9 is shipping now after a forgivable hurricane-related delay and just might meet the schedule.
- 1/9 has barely gotten started, but has a relatively generous schedule, veteran team and continuous updates.
- 1/9 appears to be just marching right along, unremarkable.
- 2/9 are behind schedule, but have been providing enough in the way of updates and/or early access that I remain quite confident. However, I will say that in both cases, their schedules appeared plainly unrealistic from the jump.
- 1/9 appears to be floundering and has gone a month or more without updates at times.
- 1/9 is so massive and ambitious that I can't help but expect problems even though a lack of updates has been the only issue so far.
The impressions I gather from my admittedly tiny data set:
1) If the schedule seems unrealistic, it likely is. One year is probably a good starting point for creating anything from scratch.
2) Exceeding the funding goal seems to correlate to delays.
3) Experience counts. Veterans have performed better at delivering and much better at providing updates.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4323835
[+] [-] thisone|13 years ago|reply
Some of the things I've back have been on the "sure thing" side (Amanda Palmer) and some on the "hey that's a neat idea" side (obos). But I've never contributed more than I'm willing to lose, even for Wasteland.
[+] [-] bigiain|13 years ago|reply
I see _many_ complaints from people who don't view Kickstarter that way, and in one sense I feel sorry for them, because I think it's at least partly Kickstarter's fault and partly some project's fault. The recent changes to KS's hardware policy were clearly aimed at people who thought they were buying products in a shop. I think Kickstarter, and the people starting projects on Kickstarter, need to make things much more clear that it's not an "online shop" - because in spite of words/phrases like "funding platform for creative projects", "funders", "pledges", "projects", and "creators"; I see lots of people, including smart people who I respect, complaining that their "purchase" at Kickstarter isn't turning out as they expected. I think those peoples expectations were wrong, but they still had those expectations, and were still upset when they weren't met.
People need to understand there _are_ places where you can buy products online and have them shipped to you within reasonable pre-agreed timeframes. They're called "online stores", there's _heaps_ of them out there - try amazon.com for example, or ebay.com. Kickstarter is _not_ one of those. Kickstarter, and Kickstarter project creators probably need to do a better job of making sure people understand that before taking their money off them.
[+] [-] blhack|13 years ago|reply
The two things I have funded (a laser cutter for our hackerspace, and The Temple of Juno at Burning Man this year) have both been built, and both have delivered on their prizes.
Of course the "I'm going to totally smash an industry with $100,000 and...and....ANDROID!" aren't going to work.
[+] [-] qznc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kfury|13 years ago|reply
I just want to make sure we're not blanket conflating branding concerns with ability to ship, because they're entirely different issues.
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|13 years ago|reply
One film project completely halted when a big studio started sniffing around it. Not happy about that one, honestly, but I guess it's good for the people involved. I half-expect nothing will come of the studio interest and then the guy's burned all his bridges on both ends, but I see how he got to the decision he made.
I've also backed some large game projects which haven't yet reached their scheduled delivery dates, so we'll see how they go.
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|13 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqZ65pUQxyQ
[+] [-] shloime|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbanzi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kfury|13 years ago|reply
I'm a backer of the project and have been following it closely. You don't seem to want to get to the bottom of this so much as yell from a soapbox. Calling a guy and asking 'have you ever heard of this guy?' isn't really enough research for the accusation you made.
When you found out that he does have people on his team who were on the Arduino manufacturing team you still call him a liar. When he claims to have order invoices from your company and asks for your permission to make them public, he hears nothing.
There's a bit more nuance here than you presented, so how about you two get in to a substantive discussion before you hurl any more volleys over the wall at a guy who, though you disagree with, is making a quality product advancing your platform, and who has been trying to talk to you about this?
[+] [-] barabba|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmole|13 years ago|reply
======
Hi All,
I recently launched a Kickstarter project as well, that ended about a month and a half ago: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/18182218/freesoc-and-fre...
Dimitri, the creator of the smARtDUINO project got in touch with me a few weeks ago to collaborate on creating a smARtBUS adaptor for our platform.
We’ve exchanged over 40 emails since then, and my impression is that he’s an earnest, upstanding man, who really cares a lot about the electronics community and making it easier and less expensive for people to do creative things.
We had a discussion about Kickstarter in particular, and one of the things he mentioned to me in our conversation was that he felt his campaign placed too much emphasis on the “Arduinoness” of the project, and not enough emphasis on the true innovation, which is the smARtBUS interconnect system.
We discussed the perils of successfully marketing a Kickstarter project, and said in retrospect, “If we communicate better the project, I have no idea were we can be now that it should be clear this is not just another Arduino.” (this was about a week ago, near the end of his campaign.)
I think if you can honestly blame him for anything, it’s not effectively conveying the message of the product in an concise way. If his workers were indeed manufacturing Arduino in Italy, there’s nothing wrong with claiming it. I’ll admit that the claim might look deceptively grand at first glance, but my intuition tells me this has more to do with Dimitri’s English ability, rather than a malevolent attempt at hijacking the Arduino brand.
[+] [-] asmithmd1|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yock|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsc|13 years ago|reply
Really, you don't want some private company acting like a judge here. We don't have the legal knowledge or interest.
Your choice here, essentially is "Shut down everyone who gets a complaint" or "try to be the judge" (e.g. only shut them down if the complaint isn't obviously bogus) or 'forward the complaint on and let them deal with it'
There are a lot of reasons why you, the customer, would want #3.
[+] [-] sschueller|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makomk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dimitrialbino|13 years ago|reply
The problem is that all this discussion started from much different topic.
Here we are talking about someone, Massimo Banzi from Team Arduino, that wrote on the public blog of Arduino, which have for sure hundreds of thousands followers, if not more, that a company doesn't exist and that another person, stated with first and last name, was claiming something that he didn't.
Reading the Kickstarter page, including the bio, the faqs, the comments and the huge quantity of updates, can see very easily that this person always made very clear he's living in China so, why publish something so unfaithful?
When then it came out that the problem was on the table since October 29th, few hours after the launch of the Kickstarter project, why wait almost one month to complain.
The registration certificate went public so, the company exists and this is proven. Nobody heard about any apologize for the false statements.
The only think Massimo Banzi tried to do, here as well, was to try to change the topic.
The question is: is it right that the owner of a so popular blog write false statements, but when become clear to everybody that he was wrong, he try to change topic, instead issue the owed apologize?
This remember me when Steve Jobs (R.I.P.) is supposed he stated: "there is nothing wrong with iPhone 4, they are holding it not properly".
Massimo Banzi is for sure member of a group of very clever peoples that created such a good thing like Arduino, but he doesn't have the right to attribute to others the false and pretend that nothing happen here.
[+] [-] kfury|13 years ago|reply
Massimo, you asked the Arduino community for comments, so here’s mine.
It’s obvious that Dimitri isn’t trying to do you or Arduino harm. Did he over-represent his team’s association with Arduino? Perhaps, though not to the degree that you claim, and your repeated accusations that he’s a liar go over the top.
While you’ve made it very clear you don’t like the term ‘Smartduino’ this is a slope that Arduino has navigated before, trying to find the happy medium between building an open platform and community of developers and manufacturers and protecting your own intellectual property.
Regardless of where Smartduino falls on that line it clearly doesn’t fall very far away from it. So again, whether Dimitri is right or wrong he certainly doesn’t deserve the lambasting bordering on libel that you’re dishing on him.
For someone who has such a leadership role in the Arduino community, your actions today have done a very poor job of promoting it. At the heart of the Arduino movement is the idea that hardware development doesn’t have to be about huge companies that build walls around their IP with lawyers manning the battlements.
This is how THEY solve their conflicts. This is not how WE solve our conflicts.
Got issues with how the Smartduino project represents itself? Talk to them. Work with them. Don’t try to whip us into a frenzy of torches and pitchforks because every single person in this community is trying to expand it and move it forward, a sentiment I see throughout these comments, but not in your own words, where I would most expect to see them.
[+] [-] belgianguy|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps they could implement a 'Flag' system, that allows IP owners to signal illegal use/infringement, after which a review (in which both the complainer and the starter should be involved) can decide whether or not the project can proceed. This could easily sail into DCMA hell or lawyer heaven if a big corporation feels threatened, which could file complaint after complaint just to stall the competition.
But where do you draw the line?
[+] [-] tobydownton|13 years ago|reply
Further commentary reveals that the people who have backed this guy are happy that he is the real deal, and that the problem has mostly stemmed from English being his second language, leading to a mis-communication over quite what part they had in manufacturing arduinos in Italy.
[+] [-] DannyBee|13 years ago|reply
Note besides the issue that there may be many countries involved, the company may also own different trademark rights in different countries.
Trademark law is only mildly harmonious and different countries definitely have very different fair use.
Who decides?
What are the rules for this decision?
etc
The problem is you are basically suggesting they set up an alternative judicial system. Outside of doing it with alternative dispute resolution methods (IE arbitration, mediation, etc), this is a really bad idea. ;)
[+] [-] scottymac|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shardling|13 years ago|reply
Because just maybe Kickstarter has already considered the legal, logistic and ethical aspects of their own business, and possibly even consulted with lawyers and other experts.
[+] [-] DannyBee|13 years ago|reply
This will likely get them sued eventually for not doing anything, but this probably won't happen until later in life (if Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc, are any benchmark). So far Google's had a good record, at least in the US, of not having liability, trademark wise.
On the other hand, if they actually start to take down projects or otherwise deal with trademark disputes, they bring all sorts of possible liability onto themselves. Plus the hassle of trying to verify trademark claims, and effectively being asked to judge whether the usage of a given trademark is infringement. All bad ideas to be involved in. There is literally no upside for them.
Worse, despite nice TOSen that disclaim liability for everything under the sun, you can't always remove all liability. It's like grocery store parking lots that have large signs saying "not responsible for lost or stolen possessions left in cars". This is done because in a lot of places, they are actually legally responsible, and they are just trying to get people to stop suing them all the time.
The trust and responsibility aspects are certainly a significant concern, but this has little to do with whether they should get involved in the business of disputes between projects and trademark owners. Heck, if you wanted to encourage "authorized" projects, you could even have some nice logo display program where verified sponsorship means you get to display some logo, and it only shows up on those kinds of projects. Or you establish some sort of "trustrank" scoring or whatever where relationship with trademark holder or IP holder is a scoring factor.
Whatever the solution, there are plenty of ways to incentivize good behavior and happier trademark holders without making yourself an arbitrator.
[+] [-] CrLf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robomartin|13 years ago|reply
I have almost exclusively backed technology projects. Out of those, not one of them has failed to deliver. And, not one of them has delivered on time. Out of all the projects I have supported only one has ended-up in the trash can. However, that was not because the widget was not executed well or it was junk. It was simply a case of my idea of the utility of this gizmo failing to align with reality once I got it. No issues on my part. I've done that plenty other times even buying stuff from brick-and-mortar stores.
If I allow myself to presume about the reasons for my "success" I'll have to say that the only thing I can reasonably point to is that I have a lot of experience actually designing. manufacturing and, yes, shipping technology products. I am intimately familiar with the design, sourcing and manufacturing process (and issues) of most products that entail software, electronics and mechanical components using various technologies.
This, to me, means that I have a fairly decent "bullshit" filter when it applies to these kinds of projects. Not to pick on them, but my most recent "this is bullshit" call was the LIFX light bulb:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light...
Why did I call this BS?
You have to rewind to when the project first posted. Their pledge goal was set to $100K. A project like that could easily burn-up half a million dollars just in engineering, NRE's and regulatory testing. Very easily. In fact, my immediate thought after reviewing the project was that the project needed somewhere in the order of two million dollars.
When I see something like that I have to ask: Are the project originators truly clueless about what it might take to get the project done? I don't like to think that fraud is involved. I am one of those saps who believe that the vast majority of people are basically good. So, no fraud. Yet, $100K?
What would have happened with LIFX had they received funding just about their requested $100K goal? Say, $150K. Well, in my world that would have meant that there was no way to complete the project. No way. At least not with anything that I'd want to plug into a lightbulb socket at my house for a myriad of safety reasons.
I avoid such projects.
As it turns out, they have raised about $1.3 million. This may or may not be enough to get this done. Keep in mind that bringing in partners isn't free. COGS must include all costs.
With regards to the ARDUINO issue. I saw that project come up and immediately went to the known Arduino sites. I saw nothing promoting the project or making this connection of having an ex-Arduino manufacturer behind the Kickstarter project. So, I stayed clear.
I see the relationship between Kickstarter and their vendors very much like that of a shopping mall owner and the stores it might house. Imagine that one of the stores decides to sell counterfeit Gucci bags or defraud people in some other way. I can't see the mall owner as being guilty of the crime being committed. If a direct nexus is established, well, then, that's a different story.
I also see the buyer as having to be responsible for the decision they make. If someone sells you a perpetual motion machine and you were not smart or informed enough to realize that this can't possibly work, well, in many ways, it's your fault. Be an informed buyer. That's the only way to protect yourself.
EDIT: I should say that I like Kickstarter very much. I don't have a problem with the service. If you know what you are doing both as either a project originator or a project backer, it's wonderful.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
However the cool thing about it was that they saw an actual demand for programmable LED bulbs with RGB capability and came out with 'Hue.'[1] I suspect they took the Apple Store only route because it was a single partner who could conceivably move enough product to technical saavy people. It seems to have worked as they are sold out in the Bay Area, not sure how many kits or bulbs that was in the initial batch but probably a few. They also sell the bulbs for $60 each, which is another interesting number. If you take all of the money raised for LiFX and divide by the number of bulbs they are committed to shipping out as rewards it comes to $55/bulb.
[1] Full Disclosure: I bought a starter set of "Hue" lights when they were announced and did not back the kickstarter campaign for LiFX.
[+] [-] bigiain|13 years ago|reply
(If anyone's interested, check it out here - "A Lamp with a LAMP stack" should be aimed exactly at most HN readers demographic: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cloudlight/light-1 )
[+] [-] Ekki_Cau|13 years ago|reply
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