A rose by any other name…
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what, they’ve all Gong Fishing?
That’s what I hear.
Why can’t they share the code they have? Was there a nondisclosure agreement involved?
It’s suspicious, and the backers were harmed. The situation needs more investigation.
Maybe EFF would assist one of the backers to research options?
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Have you tried asking Matchstick?
yeah, I got the email the other day.
man, fuck these jive-ass charlatans.
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That’s a good idea. I would first do some homework to decide the best way to work on it. But yes, it wouldn’t surprise me if calling directly was an appropriate part of the process.
It’s suspicious, and the backers were harmed.
So what? The backers knew going in that the investment might be for nothing.
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Failing to deliver for reasons other than trying and actually failing should count as fraud. Mitigated by returning the money, but still fraud-lite.
They should at least publish the code, even if incomplete, as some compensation.
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Is that a legal opinion? Without research or investigation, there’s no possible remedy?
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You realize what kickstarter is and how it works, right? People who give money to projects get almost no guarantees and people are bitching about a project that is actually refunding everyone’s money instead of walking away with it.
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Yes it is. Plenty of Kickstarters fail. Kickstarter only requires that projects either deliver what they said they would or refund backers. Since they have refunded the money (or are going to), they’ve fulfilled their obligations.
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Yes and there’s the question of whether there was third party interference that was improper and concealed. If someone else realized gain from the work that gain could be unjust and subject to restitution. There’s are questions about specific performance and consumer protection … There are actually many significant fact questions and several potential remedies worth evaluating.
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Jesus. I feel bad for the Matchstick guys. What’s with the sense of entitlement?
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Even just a completely open stick that can play network files would be so welcome 
…you know - the thing they said they were making in the first place 
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Could we just improvise it off a Raspberry Pi class machine?
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I didn’t mean to suggest that there’s no way to achieve the goal now, but that backers already put up money for exactly this goal.
Matchstick shifted the goalposts, and then claimed they can’t meet the new goal.
The original goal was a worthy one - cheap, easy, open media device.
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Kickstarter projects fail all the time because people can’t complete them. That’s to be expected. However in this case they could have completed the project as originally advertised - or at least they didn’t explain why they couldn’t. They just didn’t want to, quite possibly because it wouldn’t have been especially useful to them beyond the Kickstarter project. Legality aside, that’s a shitty thing to do.
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Wonder why.
Like if I come to a pub, ask for a burger, pay. After a while I get my money back and the cook says that they are unable to make the steak with shit sauce because they can not get the shit working. Yes, I get money back but I am still hungry. And some here would even chastise me for complaining.
Yes. I wouldn’t mind more tech like that. For $25 retail, an open machine with HDMI output would be a nice thing to have.
Some data are still open and available. The hardware looks rather generic and the software is built mainly on already available open platforms, e.g. the Flint framework here. Maybe somebody comes and picks up the dropped ball…
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After a while I get my money back and the cook says that they are unable
to make the steak with shit sauce because they can not get the shit
working.
This is actually a pretty good analogy. A kitchen might not serve something that doesn’t live up to their standards even if it’s exactly what the customer wanted.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the DRM requirement came from a party that was interested in buying the technology. When they couldn’t get it working, they shut the project down because maybe a one-time project wasn’t really their goal in the first place. It would be a little like how Oculus Rift used Kickstarter money to develop their product enough to get bought out by Facebook.
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