I’d like to take this opportunity to step in and clear up some confusion that is going on regarding this project.
First things first, I am no longer an employee at Massdrop so I can’t speak for what they actually are going to execute on going forward, but I’d like to let everyone know exactly what I committed to so that some of the Massdrop hate here is alleviated.
I offered to assist mkawa with the SmallFry Keyboard Kit because the project was suffering from enormous delays and I had been working on putting together a 40% keyboard project for quite a while.
The process of implementing someone else’s keyboard design is a complex task because it is of utmost importance to get their full permission and blessing before proceeding, so I reached out to jdcarpe and received his go-ahead to use his design.
I then approached Input Club, who designed the Infinity 60%, and discussed their availability to work on a project like this, and they said that they were interested and would add it to their pipeline of tasks. I communicated this information to mkawa as an intermediary and set up a brief introduction between him and Input Club.
I then proceeded to do a financial analysis with mkawa into what had happened to the SmallFry Keyboard Kit so far, tracking where all of the money had gone and what it was spent on. Mkawa told me that the PCB’s hadn’t been ordered yet, and I told him that we could leverage Massdrop’s buying power to bundle his order for PCB’s into the larger Massdrop order for Infinity 40% PCB’s. If we did this, it would make the cost of the PCB quite a bit lower, and everyone who had participated in the SmallFry kit would be receiving a significantly upgraded piece of technology.
Let’s take this opportunity to clarify something.
Mkawa already collected your money for a PCB when everyone first joined this group buy. Massdrop has never collected any money from anyone in this thread and therefore is not able to “screw anyone over” or shortchange anyone. Literally all Massdrop can do at this point in time is help lower costs and provide upgraded technology. In units of 1000, the Infinity 40% assembled will be quite affordable, and be the obvious choice when compared to the price for 100 blank JD40s + Teensy 2.0s.
Back to our narrative, at this point in time while mkawa and I were figuring out these aspects of the situation, mkawa had agreed to send me all of the money left over from the initial Group Buy that was allocated toward PCB manufacture, which at the time was communicated to be “a few thousand dollars” (1, possibly 2). This is probably where some of the confusion has arrived on the topic of Massdrop “providing the PCBs” has come from. When organizing a joint project where people from around the world are contributing different parts, it is typical to have clear descriptions of who is actually going to be creating, or providing each aspect of the overall project.
I agreed that if he sent me all of the parts he had already purchased, we would order the PCB’s and fulfill the order from our warehouse which would dramatically lower the cost incurred to ship all of these out. Mkawa had agreed to completely cover the cost of outbound shipping from our warehouse, but that Massdrop would use their UPS account to get a better rate.
The cost savings to mkawa and the entire group for doing all of this work were going to be extremely significant and do remember that I had absolutely no obligation to do any of this work. All of this was simply because I thought it was the right thing to do and I saw that you had all been waiting for quite a while for your keyboards and I wanted to offer my help. There are a lot of accusations and attacks going on in this thread and I really consider that hardly reasonable considering that this isn’t Massdrop’s mess in the slightest. Massdrop is simply going to do it’s due diligence on this keyboard and is going to release an Infinity 40% regardless and if everyone in this thread wants to be a part of that, they are generously offering to allow you to participate and instead of getting an obsolete keyboard delivered over a year late, you have the opportunity to type on a state of the art, fully programmable version designed by Input Club.
Don’t turn this into something it’s not and make Massdrop into some kind of villain for going significantly out of their way to give you cheaper and cooler stuff. Doing so would set an incredibly bad precedent for ever helping with this sort of situation ever again.
If anyone has any questions or wants me to clarify anything in more detail, I am happy to do so.
