What is Community Supported Development?
Community Supported Development is the Community Supported Agriculture model applied to high-tech computer, electronics, and software development projects. We currently have two projects, the q3ube and the Brick, which are Libre-software AGPLv3 licensed designs. What you are buying when you place a Community Supported Development order for the Brick is my time and expenses to develop, fabricate, and test a first prototype. When harvest (I mean mass production) time comes, those of you who have contributed to development will be first in line to put in a pre-order for the device at the cost of production. Everyone else ordering later will have to pay full price.
Why not Kickstarter/Indiegogo/etc?
Well, I've asked for contributions, and I've contributed to a few kickstarter projects. So why not just use this stuff that's already there?
Well, the stuff that's already there takes around 10% off the top. Yes, it's flashy, fancy, pretty, social, and all around good marketing. But my farming background is showing again, and I can't stand to have someone taking 10% of your money that isn't really going to contribute to actually producing a real product, and just pays some marketing people to overanalyze click-thu ratios.
I'd rather make stuff, and if I get less money, and it takes longer, I'll be happier because with Dwolla, a grand total of $0.25 of every order goes to payment processing, and I can spend the other $0.75 that would have been nabbed by the middleman on a $10 order giving back to open source software projects.
please send comments, licensing requests, and better html/css to troy at 7el dot us
$10 Development order