Back Once Again With A Second Kickstarter...

 ... asking for less cash, still with loadsa questions. (Apologies to Fatboy Slim).

Screenshot from Kickstarter.com

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again is the motto here and after the failure to reach a lofty €50,000 goal back in January, Stefan Frohling is back again with his second attempt at improving RISC OS. No longer called Cloverleaf, the new Kickstarter is now simply RISC OS and has a rather lower goal of €6,000. So what has changed since the first attempt?

At first perusal, lots!

There are a total of 20 rewards now, from your basic €1 pledge to the massive €1,000 tier that gets you... nothing. Nice if you have access to that sort of cash to throw around. In between, things have been arranged differently from last time, and this arrangement has caused more than a few questions to be asked about the campaign and whether or not this should actually be on Kickstarter.

The campaign rewards are as follows:

€1 - to show you care.

€19 - support enhancements to the RPCEmu emulator (but you don't actually receive anything). For the same amount of money, you can also pledge for a Cloverleaf RISC OS t-shirt.

€39 - offers you a download of the Cloverleaf RISC OS Pi distro or the Cloverleaf Distro for emulators. Whether this is good value or not, well, that's up to you, but since you can get free distro's of RISC OS from RISC OS Open here and RISC OS Direct here, that's a pretty penny to pay for an OS, the core of which is free. There are some extra's included with the Cloverleaf Distro and you will be supporting additional development, but as always, it's up to you what you consider worth your money. 

€49 - lots of different options, but basically this amount can be put to one of the following: WiFi driver development, Desktop Improvements, the ArtCube photo editor, 2D/3D GPU support, RISC OS Filer improvements or a driver for NVMe storage. That's quite a list. You can amend the pledge afterwards to support multiple goals in this (and other) tiers. Of note, the three options involving the ChatCube application have all been removed since the project launched - they had a combined development cost of about €5,000. However, pledging does not guarantee that particular tier will be developed. Depending on which tiers receive the most funding, if your pledged tier is not chosen for initial development, you will be asked to amend it to a tier that will be developed or you can request a refund. I feel this is just plain wrong - the pledge tiers are not a customer survey, they are there to be delivered if overall project funding is successful. As it stands, as of time of writing, only the GPU support has received a pledge so makes it a bit of a moot point, but still, this is NOT how Kickstarter campaigns should be used.

€55 - you can pledge for an SD card containing the Cloverleaf Distro for Pi-based hardware.

€69 - creation of a Programming IDE called CodeCube.

€85 - the Cloverleaf distro plus (containing additional software including !Fireworkz Pro, !Messenger Pro and more) on SD card.

€199 - the Cloverleaf distro with ArtCube, !Artworks and !Fireworkz Pro included. Not bad considering the current list price of the latest version of !Artworks is €190. The KS page does not state what version you are getting though and, more importantly, this is the re-selling of an existing package. Kickstarter guidelines prohibit re-selling. After all, it's meant to support creators. For the same amount, €199 you can also pledge for the RISC OS distro for the RK3399 chip which powers the Puma desktop. I'll get to that in a bit, as well as the Pinebook Pro that is referenced in the KS but isn't a pledge item.

€215 - the Cloverleaf distro with !Artworks etc on an SD card. 

€299 - the Kitten Pi desktop. This includes the Cloverleaf distro plus, one year of software support and a case that mirrors the already available 4te from R-Comp. In fact, that machine is about a tenner cheaper and comes supplied with a ton of included software. The Cloverleaf machine will also come with a t-shirt if that's your kind of thing. A note on re-selling. Whilst this is a Raspberry Pi 4 based machine (so re-reselling the Pi), you receive a computer Cloverleaf have assembled with the OS etc that will work out of the box. Fair enough, not directly re-selling there, I think.

€399 - the Puma desktop - running an RK3399 chipset. More powerful than the Kitten. In the last campaign, there was the option of a 14-inch laptop at this price point (the Pinebook Pro). Kickstarter decreed that just passing on the laptop with an OS added is re-selling, whereas putting a board into a case you have created/sourced is not. Hence no 14-inch laptop.

€1,000 - to show you really, really care and you get nothing for this. 

So what do I think?

Some of you may remember my initial enthusiasm for Cloverleaf when it was first announced. This became more guarded when the campaign launched and now, well, I'm not entirely convinced - though it must be said, more than happy to be proven wrong here. There are still questions to be answered...

Firstly, the name. Cloverleaf is still the name of the distro, but calling the campaign RISC OS is slightly disingenuous as this sounds like it is coming from the OS rights holders when in fact it is not. For people new to the OS, it would perhaps be confusing and they would be better off checking out the established websites such as RISCOSDev and RISC OS Open to name but two... 

Next up is the funding goal - €6,000 is a low target and if you read through the pledge options, you can see that the total estimated cost of development of the various features ranges from €63,000 to €104,000 (now that the ChatCube pledges have been removed). I can see why the target is low - to ensure funding is secured. The plan for spending the pledged funds is more open than before, detailing as it does what will happen after the campaign has closed and whether or not your pledge will be acted upon (refund or move funds to another goal), so that's more clear, but it's still opaque enough to raise queries. Why the scattershot approach to financing several improvements at the same time and using people's money to determine the primary development goals? Why not launch a Kickstarter for one or two goals (maybe one as a stretch) whilst offering hardware to entice existing users with the improvements and new users with a machine? I mean, that looks like the thinking behind the latest campaign but there are far too many options here. I feel that this is definitely a case of more is too much. Admitting that not all of the goals will be reached with this funding round might be open and honest, but in itself, it goes against the guidelines of Kickstarter - your project must be 100% deliverable using the achieved funding goal. That's the reason for the goal. With this campaign, it's very much "trust us, give us your money and we'll do something with it..." That, more than anything else, raises a red flag for me. If you want my money, you need to convince me that what I put my money towards will be delivered. That is not the case with the the €49 software tiers in this project. 

Then there are the risk levels. Each of the software goals has a timescale and a risk level, most of which are rated as no risk or low risk. Now, being just a humble software QA tester, far be it from me to question timescales in software development or risk factors, but I really would like to know how they are classifying risk and what their timescales are based on. From personal experience, if a developer tells me something is simple and has a low level of risk, that almost certainly means low flying faecal matter will intersect with a large spinny thing. I could be very wrong here, but my cynicism is strong with this one.

And those timescales. Interesting and intriguing. The Kitten Pi4 is just a Pi in a case with an SD card, so no real concerns there. However, my attention is drawn to the Puma. Estimated delivery is August/September. Estimated delivery of the RK3399 distro is November. Does that mean the Puma is an expensive doorstop for three months? Or will it ship with a Linux distro in the short-term?

I don't want to sound too harsh about Cloverleaf, as the goal of improving RISC OS is noble and if it can bring new users to the OS, the better it is for RISC OS as a whole. However, I am not sure a Kickstarter promising new, currently unsupported hardware and new software enhancements that have a suspiciously risk free timescale is the best way for a newbie to enter the world of RISC OS. I think a trip to one of the three existing hardware suppliers is probably your best bet. Still, what Cloverleaf are trying here is a different way of funding (compared to the existing bounty-led voluntary funding process) and you can see it's aimed at both the existing (software improvements) and potential (hardware) user base. Given that there have been some notable failures from successfully funded Kickstarter campaigns, I can't help but think that maybe Stefan should have started small (say the ArtCube program, Cloverleaf Pi Distro, Kitten Pi desktop for the main funding goal and then some software improvements as stretch goals?) and built upwards (another Kickstarter for the RK3399 distro and the Puma desktop, more software improvements as stretch goals?). By achieving smaller goals successfully, that would gain trust and respect from potential supporters as they would see a history of successful funding and, more importantly, delivery. Instead, we have a suspiciously low funding target (that at the time of posting had been met) and goal approach that looks as organised as a flock of spuggies. 

Maybe it's enthusiasm, maybe it's the pressing need of a timescale no-one apart from Stefan knows about, but surely it would be better to take small steps, build up a reputation and a customer base (whilst also creating revenue streams from the applications being created) and staying well within Kickstarter's guidelines? 

Anyhoo, that's my tuppence worth into the conversation. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on the project as it approaches it's closing date on June 16th and hey, you never know, this might be successful in both funding and execution. That's the joys of Kickstarter, it's your money you risk with every single pledge. You have to make your mind up if you believe that the project will be successful if funded. What I would say is that if this project does appeal to you, carefully read the Kickstarter pages first and then have a perusal in the Cloverleaf thread in the RISC OS Open forums. There has certainly been a great deal of debate, from both the original campaign and the new one, the latter of which starts on page 10 of the thread.