The Icon Bar: Cloverleaf campaign goes live

Posted by Mark Stephens on 13:35, 5/5/2021 | News

Stefan has relaunched his Cloverleaf campaign on Kickstarter. He explains it much better than me in his email, so over to Stefan...

Cloverleaf RISCOS Computer UG
Olpe, Germany
May 5th, 2021

We are happy to announce the restart of our Kickstarter Cloverleaf RISC OS
project. We have refined the project for its new incarnation and have
provided more detail than in the previous Kickstarter.

The main objective of our campaign is still to attract new users to RISC
OS, rather than to become a competitor in the limited RISC OS community.
That is why we have chosen Kickstarter and Facebook as our marketing
platforms - to reach people beyond the current RISC OS community. Our
goal is to promote RISC OS as a unique operating system, and to find new
users, helping revive this amazing OS.

Additionally, it is still our aim to bring the RockChip RK3399 ARM SoC to
RISC OS world, working with our partners and programmers both inside and
outside the traditional RISC OS world. This will give us a range of
exciting SBC boards and access to fast EMMC and NVMe mass storage which
are not included in current Raspberry Pi hardware. This also unlocks
access to a new 14"-laptop in the form of the PineBook Pro with 4 GB RAM,
64 GB EMMC and NVMe connector. This time we are offering the RK3399 RISC
OS image separately for a price of 199 Euro (approx £172 ). This price
includes also our Cloverleaf RISC OS Standard distro with High-res Doom
game and full SparkFS (compressing ZIP and Tar files). There are two more
distros available, the Plus and the Art distro, with many additional
valuable programs.

For new RISC OS users, we offer the plug&play Kitten Pi based on the
Raspberry Pi 4B for 299 Euro (approx. £259) including the Cloverleaf
RISC OS Standard distro.

For those of you looking for new hardware, we offer the Cloverleaf Puma
desktop PC with 4 GB RAM, 32 GB EMMC and NVMe connector based on the
RK3399 for 399 Euro (approx. £344). The driver for NVMe is a separate
pledge.

This time the 14" laptop is not part of the funding as Kickstarter have
become more restrictive of projects leveraging external hardware designs
(ie. we can't offer items that we don't build ourselves). Therefore we
decided to offer the RK3399 RISC OS image separately and customers can
purchase the laptop directly from the manufacturer Pine64 or at our shops
(Cloverleaf or R-Comp Interactive). The RK3399 image will work also with a
selection of RK3399 SBC boards. Currently, the development is based on the
Pine RockPro64 but we plan to include also the Radxa RockPi 4B. So if you
want the RockChip RK3399 to become part of the RISC OS world then please
help to fund the development of the port.

The project also consists also of multiple software projects which you can
pledge to separately, or add to your hardware order:

ChatCube client for IRC (49 Euro/£42)
ChatCube client for Signal (49 Euro/£42)
ChatCube app for Android and iPhone (49 Euro/£42)
ArtCube (photo editing) (49 Euro/£42)
CodeCube (programming IDE) (69 Euro/£60)
New !Desktop environment (49 Euro/£42)(open-source initiative by Paolo Zaino)
New Filer (49 Euro/£42)
WIFI driver (49 Euro/£42)
NVMe driver (49 Euro/£42)
2D/3D GPU driver for RK3399 (49 Euro/£42)

If 49 Euro/£42 is too much for you then you can fund smaller amount too. With
each pledge in the crowdfunding for software or hardware, you are
supporting the development of new drivers, UI/interface improvements or
more applications.

For details please look into the Kickstarter page.

We don't necessarily expect to receive a full funding for all the packages
we offer. Our future plan is to finance the missing elements with the
sales of software, hardware and the Cloverleaf RISC OS distribution. The
packages that get the most funding will be taken care of first. If a third
party (organization or individual) solves one of the tasks we will forward
the funds to them. If the pledges for one reward are too low we will
refund your pledge or ask you to contribute it to another part of the
project.

Funders receive a copy/license for the software they have supported. For
application developments such as ArtCube, ChatCube or CodeCube,
beta-versions will be delivered before the final release.

Thanks for your interest!

Best wishes,

Stefan Frohling

Cloverleaf campaign goes live

andypoole (15:08 5/5/2021)
  markee174 (19:35 5/5/2021)
    Cloverleaf (09:36 7/5/2021)
      andypoole (11:31 7/5/2021)
        Raik (13:56 7/5/2021)
    Cloverleaf (09:43 7/5/2021)
      dchen (10:48 8/5/2021)

Andrew Poole

Message #125116, posted by andypoole at 15:08, 5/5/2021

Mouse enthusiast
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Posts: 5558

I'm interested to see how Stefan's going to produce all of those reward tiers for 6000 Euro.

Per Kickstarter's rules, the project's main target amount should be the amount required to deliver all reward tiers. Hiding the higher target goals deep in the text on the project page is massively misleading and is against the Kickstarter's rules.

It's also explicitly against Kickstarter's rules on prohibited items to resell anything not designed and created by the project itself, so most of the reward tiers that include any software or hardware not created entirely by Cloverleaf are also entirely against the Kickstarter rules.

Honestly, it seems like Kickstarter is entirely the wrong platform for the type of project Stefan's trying to do.

Of course, when asked about these things, Stefan resorts to name calling instead of being transparent and answering questions. Not a good look for someone wanting people to send them money and support their project, but then it's about what I expected after the last time I tried to ask him something...

[edit]Stefan's deleted the tweet I linked to above and blocked me from his Twitter account (I'm getting a sense of deja vu here...). Here's a screenshot of what it said. Since when was asking questions about something he wants people to pay money for "negative talking"?

Maybe the message Cloverleaf want to convey is "No questions, only money"?[/edit]

Disclaimer: My opinion, not that of TIB or the other TIB staff, etc.

[Edited by andypoole at 21:30, 5/5/2021]

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Mark Stephens

Message #125117, posted by markee174 at 19:35, 5/5/2021, in reply to message #125116

Does all the
work around here
Posts: 154

ClipBoard support for RPCEmu would be a really nice and welcome improvement for the Emulator. Would it work on Mac version as well?

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Stefan Fröhling

Message #125120, posted by Cloverleaf at 09:36, 7/5/2021, in reply to message #125117

Member
Posts: 7

Andrew & Andy, Many thanks for your feedback/questions. I have tried to answer/explain below. It has also given me an opportunity to expand on what we are trying to do/offer.

Question1: Do we violate Kickstarter rules which don‘t allow resale by including Raspberry Pi hardware in our Kickstarter rewards?
Answer: No! First, we clearly state that the Kitten Pi is based on the Raspberry Pi 4B. Kickstarter wants to support creativity and startups and the subject of our Kickstarter is not hardware but the software development for RISC OS. Our Kickstarter is about getting funds to improve RISC OS. The reason why we offer RISC OS desktop PCs is that the funder then can also enjoy RISC OS without being a computer hacker or a handyman without the need to assemble their own computers which 99.99 % of the population will not like to do. What is the use of supporting a campaign without being able to use the funded product? In this case, it is enough creativity to have our own designed and produced computer cases.

Kickstarter has refused to include the 14“-laptop PineBook Pro as a reward due to the „resale prohibited“ rule. So we just include now the RISC OS image that will enable PineBookPro owners to run RISC OS on it.

Question 2: Is the campaign underfunded?
Answer: Yes. But this RISC OS initiative is driven by enthusiasts and not purely capitalism. We do this as we believe in RISC OS and we will continue until we will succeed or fail.

In the Kickstarter story is stated in „Project goals“:
„We cannot take care of all that with just this Kickstarter project but there are other RISC OS support groups and also single programmers that do a great job to support RISC OS. We managed to motivate some of them to work with us. Jeffrey Lee is going to finish his work on multi-threading (Multi-core support). Jason Tribbeck will modernize the whole audio system of RISC OS and make it easier adaptable for new hardware. His AudioSystem will include 32-bit audio data, multiple output devices, multi-channel audio devices and Non-LPCM encoding. Currently, all these RISC OS programmers work for free and a big thanks for their commitment to RISC OS. We have already introduced the new instant messenger !ChatCube to the RISC OS world which will be the gateway to many open source messengers like Telegram, IRC and Signal. Also, we upgraded the Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulator !Fuse to the latest version 1.5.7.

In the Kickstarter story is stated in „Funding software“:
„We also don‘t expect to receive a full funding for the packages we offer. So the plan is to finance the missing funding with the sales of software, hardware and the Cloverleaf RISC OS distribution. The packages that get the most funding will be taken care of first. If a third party (organization or individual) solves one of the tasks we will forward the funds to them.

With each pledge in this crowdfunding for software or hardware, you support the development of RISC OS regarding new drivers, handling improvements or more applications. If the pledges for one reward are too low we will refund your pledge or ask you to contribute it to another part of the project. Improvements to the OS will be open source.“

Question 3: Will we get rich by the Cloverleaf Kickstarter campaign?
Answer: No! To get back any of the investments it will take years to come.
To prepare this project I have invested about 50.000 Euro (= £43.375) during 2 years. This consists of hiring a crowdfunding specialist (about 8000 Euro = £6940), advertising in Facebook (7000 Euro = £6072), video production (1000 Euro = £867), travelling to Computer shows in UK ( London show 2019 & Southwest show 2020) (1500 Euro = £1301), hardware purchases of 1 x Titanium, 2 x Raspberry 3B, 2 x Raspberry 4B, 2 x PineRro64, 2 x PineBook Pro, 1 x PinePhone, 1 x Radxa RockPi 4B, 1 x Khadas VIM3), 1 x 3D printer (3570 Euro = £3096). Programming cost and training of two programmers for RISC OS to create !ChatCube, !ArtCube and investigation into Panfrost Mali graphics driver which amounts to 31500 Euro = £27326)

This does not yet include one hour of my work during 2 years.
This does not yet include the investments done by Andrew Rawnsley for the RK3399 adoption.
You can do the math!

I am doing this because I want to be able to contribute to RISC OS and get others involved (especially outside the traditional supporters). I hope we can take RISC OS forward together through this and all the other exciting projects people are doing at the moment. If anyone wants to ask any more questions about our project, I am always happy to answer on any forum and also welcome your suggestions.

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Stefan Fröhling

Message #125121, posted by Cloverleaf at 09:43, 7/5/2021, in reply to message #125117

Member
Posts: 7

ClipBoard support for RPCEmu would be a really nice and welcome improvement for the Emulator. Would it work on Mac version as well?

We will implement it that it should work both on Windows and Linux based systems. So it should work on MacOS too.
We see RCPEmu as a valuable software to promote RISC OS as interested people can try it out on their current OS (Windows, Linux distributions and MacOS.
RPCEmu is fast enough to use it with most RISC OS applications as a hardware alternative.

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Andrew Poole

Message #125122, posted by andypoole at 11:31, 7/5/2021, in reply to message #125120

Mouse enthusiast
Web
Twitter

Posts: 5558

Question1: Do we violate Kickstarter rules which don‘t allow resale by including Raspberry Pi hardware in our Kickstarter rewards?
Answer: No! First, we clearly state that the Kitten Pi is based on the Raspberry Pi 4B. Kickstarter wants to support creativity and startups and the subject of our Kickstarter is not hardware but the software development for RISC OS. Our Kickstarter is about getting funds to improve RISC OS. The reason why we offer RISC OS desktop PCs is that the funder then can also enjoy RISC OS without being a computer hacker or a handyman without the need to assemble their own computers which 99.99 % of the population will not like to do. What is the use of supporting a campaign without being able to use the funded product? In this case, it is enough creativity to have our own designed and produced computer cases.

While yes, in theory, taking a Raspberry Pi and building something around it would satisfy the Kickstarter rules, that doesn't cover everything in your project.

Many of your rewards are boasting software you neither designed nor produced. ArtWorks, for one example. Cloverleaf did not develop ArtWorks, yet you're offering it as a selling point of one of the rewards. That's reselling and is very clearly covered by this rule:

"All rewards must have been produced or designed by the project or one of its creators — no reselling things from elsewhere."

Question 2: Is the campaign underfunded?
Answer: Yes. But this RISC OS initiative is driven by enthusiasts and not purely capitalism. We do this as we believe in RISC OS and we will continue until we will succeed or fail.

So you admit, then, that the goal of 6000 Euro that you set for the project is misleading and you cannot fulfil all the rewards you're offering for that amount?

Again, from Kickstarter's rules:
"Projects can’t mislead people or misrepresent facts, and creators should be candid about what they plan to accomplish."

Kickstarter's guidelines on presenting honestly and clearly also say:

"(Do) Set your funding goal according to what you realistically need to completely fulfill your Kickstarter rewards, instead of a low goal that will allow you to claim a quick funding success."

As you admit above, your goal of 6000 Euro is nowhere near enoguh to realistically fulfil all of your kickstarter rewards.

"(Do) Disclose whether you’ve already received any funds prior to running your campaign, and how you plan to use those funds."

As noted below where you speak about what you've already spent, you've not included any of that detail in either of your Kickstarter project pages. Nor have you said anything about exactly how you plan to use the money you may or may not receive from the project.

"(Do not) Set a funding goal that won’t allow you to bring your project to completion, or accept funds on Kickstarter with the knowledge that you’ll require future outside funds in order to fulfill all of your rewards."

Again, as you've said above, 6000 Euro is nowhere near enoguh to complete your project. Your project clearly goes against all three of these guidelines.

In the Kickstarter story is stated in „Project goals“:
„We cannot take care of all that with just this Kickstarter project but there are other RISC OS support groups and also single programmers that do a great job to support RISC OS. We managed to motivate some of them to work with us. Jeffrey Lee is going to finish his work on multi-threading (Multi-core support). Jason Tribbeck will modernize the whole audio system of RISC OS and make it easier adaptable for new hardware. His AudioSystem will include 32-bit audio data, multiple output devices, multi-channel audio devices and Non-LPCM encoding. Currently, all these RISC OS programmers work for free and a big thanks for their commitment to RISC OS. We have already introduced the new instant messenger !ChatCube to the RISC OS world which will be the gateway to many open source messengers like Telegram, IRC and Signal. Also, we upgraded the Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulator !Fuse to the latest version 1.5.7.

Other than your *Cube apps and the updated emulator, none of these are anything to do with your project and are things that are happening anyway. Back on the resale rule, you can't use their stuff as your rewards becuase they're not being done as part of your project. You're basically asking people to pay you for other people's work.

In the Kickstarter story is stated in „Funding software“:
„We also don‘t expect to receive a full funding for the packages we offer. So the plan is to finance the missing funding with the sales of software, hardware and the Cloverleaf RISC OS distribution. The packages that get the most funding will be taken care of first. If a third party (organization or individual) solves one of the tasks we will forward the funds to them.

If someone backs the project at a reward tier where they get a specific reward and you're not planning to fulfil that reward after hitting the main project goal, that's misleading if not fraud.

Question 3: Will we get rich by the Cloverleaf Kickstarter campaign?
Answer: No! To get back any of the investments it will take years to come.
To prepare this project I have invested about 50.000 Euro (= £43.375) during 2 years.

Oh, my...

This consists of hiring a crowdfunding specialist (about 8000 Euro = £6940),

No comment...

advertising in Facebook (7000 Euro = £6072), video production (1000 Euro = £867), travelling to Computer shows in UK ( London show 2019 & Southwest show 2020) (1500 Euro = £1301), hardware purchases of 1 x Titanium, 2 x Raspberry 3B, 2 x Raspberry 4B, 2 x PineRro64, 2 x PineBook Pro, 1 x PinePhone, 1 x Radxa RockPi 4B, 1 x Khadas VIM3), 1 x 3D printer (3570 Euro = £3096). Programming cost and training of two programmers for RISC OS to create !ChatCube, !ArtCube and investigation into Panfrost Mali graphics driver which amounts to 31500 Euro = £27326)

Why have these numbers not been included in either of your Kickstarter project's detail? This is exactly what you should be describing in there as the costs of the project and where the money people are sending you is going.

When you're asking people to give you money for a project, you should be transparent on where that money's going and exactly how it'll be used. This is, to my knowledge, the first time you've posted these numbers when they should have been included in your project plan detail on the Kickstarter pages from the beginning.

I am doing this because I want to be able to contribute to RISC OS and get others involved (especially outside the traditional supporters). I hope we can take RISC OS forward together through this and all the other exciting projects people are doing at the moment.

Which, in itself, is great. But based on your project and what you describe, Kickstarter is entirely the wrong platform for what you're trying to do. If the project were for just the new software you're creating, that'd be fine. What you're actually doing for the most part, though, is reselling a load of stuff that already exists elsewhere.

And that's before we get to the idea of further fragmenting RISC OS into yet more distributions. Do we really need yet another OS distribution for an OS with so few users? Wouldn't it be far better if efforts were put into making the existing ROOL or ROD distributions better than adding more to confuse people and fragment the platform further? It was bad enough when RISC OS was split into ROL and Castle camps. Now we've got ROOL, ROD and Cloverleaf*.

Why not, for example, work with ROOL on making your improvements to RISC OS options in their bounty system and benefit the OS as a whole rather than splitting everything off into your own OS distribution?

* And technically ROL too, but they've been quiet for many years, so we can probably call their versions dead at this point.

If anyone wants to ask any more questions about our project, I am always happy to answer on any forum and also welcome your suggestions.

If you sincerely mean that, great, but I'm currently two for two on being shouted at and blocked by you for asking questions about your project, so forgive me if I have a small sense of doubt here...

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Raik Fischer

Message #125123, posted by Raik at 13:56, 7/5/2021, in reply to message #125122

Member
Posts: 12

"All rewards must have been produced or designed by the project or one of its creators — no reselling things from elsewhere."

In general, reselling means "buying and selling at a higher price". From my point of view, this is not the case here, because the bundle is cheaper than the individual parts.
If your point of view were correct, the Pi4 should not be sold with the box, nor should any commercially available screws, cables, etc.

"Kickstarter's guidelines on presenting honestly and clearly also say:..."

The German guidelines begin with "Hier ein paar zusätzliche Anregungen..." means "Here are a few additional suggestions ..." is more an advice than a rule.

It's not my project, but I like to use RISC OS. I think the project should be given a chance.
Doubts are allowed, critical questions and "bad days" and "rash reactions" are also. There are people involved ... ;-)

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David Boddie

Message #125124, posted by davidb at 22:39, 7/5/2021

Member
Posts: 147

From the Kickstarter page:

Sadly Acorn decided to close down their computer division in 1990 and only continue support the ARM technology.

I think I just drifted in from an alternate timeline.

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David Chen

Message #125125, posted by dchen at 10:48, 8/5/2021, in reply to message #125121

Member
Posts: 5

ClipBoard support for RPCEmu would be a really nice and welcome improvement for the Emulator. Would it work on Mac version as well?
We will implement it that it should work both on Windows and Linux based systems. So it should work on MacOS too.

Presumably, it'll work on MacOS through some sort of magic, seeing as you're not developing for the Mac?

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