Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rienko 1603 days ago
They are a small company with small revenue

Funding (1) $1.7M

Yearly Revenue (2) <$5M

How much funding can they realistic provide for those priorities? State grants from Horizon Europe projects or similar could be an alternative source for funding, probably with better recurring probabilities but it would require a champion to lead through the burocracy and in the end it's a coin toss (or lower) to get approved.

Sources: (1) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pine64 (2) https://www.zoominfo.com/c/pine64-inc/372007622
3 comments
bo1024 1603 days ago
(a) I think the article isn't asking them to provide more funding, but to consider re-allocating what they already do.

(b) I think even without actual funding, PinePhone can set the tone of priorities for the community. If they speak about this issue, people will at least listen.

link
cogman10 1603 days ago
And, to that end, there's a lot of routes they could go to get this sort of thing done.

A public bug tracker + bounty, for example, would go a LONG way in messaging what needs to be done. Even a small amount of money ($100, $200) towards whatever issues are important would be a good signal to the community that "hey, we really need someone to do this".

link
ehvatum 1603 days ago
What if I make a $1b fund and put the Krita guy and the Blender team in charge of forming the company apparatus to produce a phone that's not a god damn piece of shit? I would want to stipulate right out the gate that there should be at least 100,000 $1,000 bounties paid in the first three years.
link
ralls_ebfe 1603 days ago
Go ahead, i'd like to see the result.
link
wpietri 1603 days ago
I would turn that question around. Given the stories here of bad user experience, it sounds like there is a very limited niche for the hardware. If they made something more reliable, they might be able to provide a lot more funding.
link
bluGill 1603 days ago
It doesn't matter what they do, someone will be unhappy. They fill a niche that I'm glad someone does. They could go for a different niche, but then they leave this one unfilled.
link
s-lted 1603 days ago
They are like a Syabas subsidiary or something.
link