Hello, I am one of the co-founder of zFrontier. We received several emails from our users about this discussion here. So I would like to chime in on this discussion.

First of all, I apologize for not actively participating in discussions here on GH before. Our main market is still in China, and we have a community forum which is only in Chinese. As a result, we are kind of disconnected with the mainstream western community here.

We started our first GMK group buy in late 2016 on our China website, and received a sizable amount of interest from buyers outside China, who contacted us to ask if they can join the GB (as our Chinese fulfillment requires an address in China). We addressed this need by collecting their information on a Google sheet. After a couple of GBs, with an increasing number of buyers out of China, we set up our English site in Feb. 2017.

Group buys of keysets operate in a quite different way in China. Other than our Chinese website, we have several QQ groups (an online instant messenger) of about 2000 people each. And discussions are active almost 24/7. This is something that people out of China, who don’t use QQ, are probably not used to.  We collect information and do our sort of IC in this manner, taking community feedback in real time.

That is why some of you might think our GBs are “abnormal” , showing up seemingly out of the blue with no ICs on GH or Reddit. This is something that we are trying to improve. With the help of some of the members here, we have done several ICs on GH and Reddit for recent key sets from GMK, Maxkey and JTK. Of course, there are still a lot of things we need to improve to better serve buyers out of China, and I really appreciate the feedback and advices from GH.

For international buyers, we ship everything via DHL from China, and the shipping fee is free for orders over $100 (all GMK sets are with free shipping). For order below $100, the shipping fee is only $16.8 flat, which is way lower than the actual cost we pay to DHL.

The reason why we are subsidizing the shipping fee is related to the goal and our understanding of the market. We are trying to lower the threshold (price, lead time, and uncertainty) of buying customized items for enthusiasts so that the aggregate demand will be enlarged and that attracts more suppliers, and this builds a positive feedback loop which will eventually improve the overall efficiency of this niche market （more options, lower prices, decenteralized).

For the Raindrop set. Like all other GBs we run, it started with the request of a group buy leader, and this guy is well-known in community in China. He had contacted SP about this set for several months, and then asked us whether we can host this GB.

Actually the group buy had been listed for no more than 24 hours, when we got feedback about the authorization issue, we took the GB down immediately, and refunded the participants.

We take the full responsibility of not having done due diligence check about the authorization of this set. We took it for granted that the group buy leader had authorization and then got the quotes. We don't mean to blame any single party for this incidence as the fault does lie with us for not verifying the situation with the designer ourselves. Please understand that it is not in line with our interests to conduct any unauthorized group buy. We have redesigned our internal flow of hosting GBs to prevent similar occurrence from happening in the future.

I would like to apologize for the controversy that our past actions have caused. We are striving to improve our services for keyboard communities everywhere, not just in China. It has been a learning process. Feedback on how we’re doing would be greatly appreciated. I look forward to interacting and possibly even collaborating with many of you in the future. Thank you for your time in reading this long-winded post, and I hope it has helped to clear some things up here.

Quote from: T0mb3ry on Sat, 30 September 2017, 03:01:24

Quote from: Indiana_Jones on Sat, 30 September 2017, 01:16:29

Hello, I am one of the co-founder of zFrontier. We received several emails from our users about this discussion here. So I would like to chime in on this discussion.

First of all, I apologize for not actively participating in discussions here on GH before. Our main market is still in China, and we have a community forum which is only in Chinese. As a result, we are kind of disconnected with the mainstream western community here.

We started our first GMK group buy in late 2016 on our China website, and received a sizable amount of interest from buyers outside China, who contacted us to ask if they can join the GB (as our Chinese fulfillment requires an address in China). We addressed this need by collecting their information on a Google sheet. After a couple of GBs, with an increasing number of buyers out of China, we set up our English site in Feb. 2017.

Group buys of keysets operate in a quite different way in China. Other than our Chinese website, we have several QQ groups (an online instant messenger) of about 2000 people each. And discussions are active almost 24/7. This is something that people out of China, who don’t use QQ, are probably not used to.  We collect information and do our sort of IC in this manner, taking community feedback in real time.

That is why some of you might think our GBs are “abnormal” , showing up seemingly out of the blue with no ICs on GH or Reddit. This is something that we are trying to improve. With the help of some of the members here, we have done several ICs on GH and Reddit for recent key sets from GMK, Maxkey and JTK. Of course, there are still a lot of things we need to improve to better serve buyers out of China, and I really appreciate the feedback and advices from GH.

For international buyers, we ship everything via DHL from China, and the shipping fee is free for orders over $100 (all GMK sets are with free shipping). For order below $100, the shipping fee is only $16.8 flat, which is way lower than the actual cost we pay to DHL.

The reason why we are subsidizing the shipping fee is related to the goal and our understanding of the market. We are trying to lower the threshold (price, lead time, and uncertainty) of buying customized items for enthusiasts so that the aggregate demand will be enlarged and that attracts more suppliers, and this builds a positive feedback loop which will eventually improve the overall efficiency of this niche market （more options, lower prices, decenteralized).

For the Raindrop set. Like all other GBs we run, it started with the request of a group buy leader, and this guy is well-known in community in China. He had contacted SP about this set for several months, and then asked us whether we can host this GB.

Actually the group buy had been listed for no more than 24 hours, when we got feedback about the authorization issue, we took the GB down immediately, and refunded the participants.

We take the full responsibility of not having done due diligence check about the authorization of this set. We took it for granted that the group buy leader had authorization and then got the quotes. We don't mean to blame any single party for this incidence as the fault does lie with us for not verifying the situation with the designer ourselves. Please understand that it is not in line with our interests to conduct any unauthorized group buy. We have redesigned our internal flow of hosting GBs to prevent similar occurrence from happening in the future.

I would like to apologize for the controversy that our past actions have caused. We are striving to improve our services for keyboard communities everywhere, not just in China. It has been a learning process. Feedback on how we’re doing would be greatly appreciated. I look forward to interacting and possibly even collaborating with many of you in the future. Thank you for your time in reading this long-winded post, and I hope it has helped to clear some things up here.

For being transparent and honest to the community can you tell us the geekhack username of the designer?

Hiding the plagiarist and cheater does not make any excuses for me, because you can call him designer but in reallity he could belong to zFrontiers.

You assume the designer has any presence on geekhack at all. My assumption is he means the guy is well known in China. I doubt he uses GH much if at all.

I’m not really sure what the issue is here. Let’s not even get into the idea behind owning a colorway to begin with. They started a GB at the request of their much larger Chinese community. They found out the designer didn’t have permission to run the gb so they cancelled it and refunded the money.

Sure they should do a better job vetting before they start, but you cannot possibly think the original intent was malicious. Ignorant sure, but you need to recognize there is a massive divide between the communities. Of the 160 sets that sold of raindrop, only 25% came from countries other than us and sk. There is a perfectly good chance most people in China would have had no clue that there was an issue at all. When they were informed they did what they should.

Saying the designer could belong to zFrontier is like saying you belong to MassDrop.

I’ll totally buy WS1 from zFrontier or wherever sells it. I just don’t care about L9 one bit. I’m kinda curious if L9 isn’t selling as well as hoped since I think there are a lot of people on both sides that want just their specific color and not any of the others (L9, CP, WS1). I bet both colors will have a more difficult time hitting moq. This set is also not helped by 9009 about to run too.

But regardless, raindrop has nothing to do with this thread or this set. Pristine was designed in thread and the designer is working with zFrontier, so there should be no issue. If you blacklist anyone or any business that ever makes a mistake you will end up the richest guy alive with literally nothing to spend money on.

Well T0mb3ry, afaik that dude is not a guy working for zFrontier, in fact zF is usually accpeting ICs/GBs from people, they usually don't do something on their own, they just accept designs/new GBs from people requests.  You can just design a set, do a IC, show them the IC and they will make it (and you will be what they call "Group Buy Leader"). 

The GB was deleted later when zF found out that. Surely they could have made a better job to carefully check before starting the GB but whatever, they tried to fix that and they did.     
I mean, if you really want to blame zF for that, at this point you have to blame SP too because they gived out the pricing/permission without carefully checking it (or they got tricked into it by that user). 

This actually reminds me of when Massdrop did the GB of Sprit products and later when people complained for this cooperation with a not-fully trustworthy person, Massdrop closed the GB and our reaction was to clap-clap at Massdrop, saying they did a good job.   
Wasn't this a similar situation (or even worse)? Did we implied that Sprit  was working directly for Massdrop, we condemned to death Massdrop for that? No, we didn't.     
Basically MD did the same exact mistake, not checking properly before starting a GB, happens, what they did later is what matters. 


Said that, if you want to condemn a seller (zF) for that, you are free to do it, but for the same reasons you shouldn't run your sets via Massdrop.  If we want to judge heavily every single small mistake like you are doing with zF,  we should have burned down Massdrop time ago and we didn't. 


 

Quote from: ideus on Sat, 30 September 2017, 08:33:54

People who ask for permission to use a particular color-way do that out of courtesy and etiquette, but such diligence is not legally required.

While true, there is a sort of code of conduct expected from prospective designers in this (the western) mech enthusiast community. Courtesy and etiquette is expected if you, as a prospective designer, want to maintain the goodwill and respect of the community. It is the lack of courtesy and respect for previous creative work, even if that work is primarily in the form of an interesting colorway, that gets folks here reaching for their torches and pitchforks. Prospective designers, regardless of their country of origin, would do well to understand this before copying any salient design elements from a previous (especially well-known) keycap set.

tl;dr
The legalities are irrelevant. This is about courtesy, etiquette, and respect, or the lack shown thereof towards the creative work of previous designers. The message isn't, "Stop that, it's illegal," but rather, "Stop that, you're being a disrespectful ****."

For example the whole thing might have gone this way:   

• Chinese dude stealing the design
• Stealer asking another guy familiar with english to ask pricings/MOQs to SP, claiming with that guy that he is the designer
• Getting back with prices
• zF unknown of everything just start the GB

 

... and still this could be just a random guess. 

I just don't feel to blame zF, i don't feel to blame the guy asking for prices, unless you know more about it and how the whole thing happened. 


I think that whoever was involved in this, you still should blame SP more than others, SP was supposed to block this before happening and not providing prices, warning whoever contacted them that they are not going to produce that set. It doesn't make sense to me that anyone can write to SP and say "Hey Melissa, I have the permission of the original Designer". If this is true, it is a big problem on SP part. 

Also my example of your sets wasn't an accusation toward you lol (sorry if you get it this way), it was just an example where we are ready to kill zF for every single stupid mistake, where basically every seller made bigger or smaller mistakes. Even the most popular and biggest shop did mistakes, Massdrop did tons of mistakes and shady things (and mine was just one example, where we even congratulated them when they fixed their mistake).

Quote from: T0mb3ry on Sat, 30 September 2017, 04:38:08

I will not call the username yet and probably i will call it never.

> and you just called it

I don't honestly know if your info are correct but i give you the benefit of the doubt. I do believe you might be right about him working for zF seeing his post history. 
However i would let you notice a thing and later i will stop because really there is no point to run in other people defense like the devil's advocate since this set has nothing to do with them. 


So not defending shower_king or anything, but you might be wrong on something, by checking their history.

Quote from: T0mb3ry on Sat, 30 September 2017, 04:38:08

You cant say he could not knew Raindrop.

Knowing it doesn't mean to know who was the designer, see this:


Raindrop GB starts:  Thu, 21 February 2013, 01:28:03
Raindrop post LAST BUMP:  Thu, 19 December 2013, 00:27:01 
shower_king Date Registered:  Thu, 05 June 2014, 00:49:43   
shower_king first comment: Thu, 30 October 2014, 01:35:01 
shower_king starting to be active: Later in 2015... 

Now, as you can see, 19 December 2013 was literally the last post on the Raindrop GB, the day when this post started to shift down and disappear, not bumping anymore.  Having this date in mind:

shower_king registered 6 months later. 
shower_king did his first comment 9 months later.   
shower_king started to be active like you say more than 1 yeah later. 


Now i just saw there was a GB from China in 31 July 2015 for Raindrop in DSA. Here is the link. Not sure who is that OP (can't confirm that) but as you can see shower_king is one of the people that joined the GB (or that wanted to join the GB). 

Given these dates, can't you just assume that shower_king saw that post on that chinese site from that OP and not here on geekhack?   

Again, you stil didn't commented on the why SP gived the quotes and the initial OK, why aren't you blaming SP as well? 

EDIT: also this comment in the GB of the Raindrop could be relevant to you: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=89723.msg2444764#msg2444764

Quote from: T0mb3ry on Sat, 30 September 2017, 04:38:08

I will not call the username yet and probably i will call it never.

> and you just called it


I don't honestly know if your info are correct but i give you the benefit of the doubt. I do believe you might be right about him working for zF seeing his post history. 
However i would let you notice a thing and later i will stop because really there is no point to run in other people defense like the devil's advocate since this set has nothing to do with them. 


So not defending shower_king or anything, but you might be wrong on something, by checking their history.

Quote from: T0mb3ry on Sat, 30 September 2017, 04:38:08

You cant say he could not knew Raindrop.

Knowing it doesn't mean to know who was the designer, see this:


Raindrop GB starts:  Thu, 21 February 2013, 01:28:03
Raindrop post LAST BUMP:  Thu, 19 December 2013, 00:27:01 
shower_king Date Registered:  Thu, 05 June 2014, 00:49:43   
shower_king first comment: Thu, 30 October 2014, 01:35:01 
shower_king starting to be active: Later in 2015... 

Now, as you can see, 19 December 2013 was literally the last post on the Raindrop GB, the day when this post started to shift down and disappear, not bumping anymore.  Having this date in mind:

shower_king registered 6 months later. 
shower_king did his first comment 9 months later.   
shower_king started to be active like you say more than 1 yeah later. 


Now i just saw there was a GB from China in 31 July 2015 for Raindrop in DSA. Here is the link. Not sure who is that OP (can't confirm that) but as you can see shower_king is one of the people that joined the GB (or that wanted to join the GB). 

Given these dates, can't you just assume that shower_king saw that post on that chinese site from that OP and not here on geekhack?   

Again, you stil didn't commented on the why SP gived the quotes and the initial OK, why aren't you blaming SP as well? 

EDIT: also this comment in the GB of the Raindrop could be relevant to you: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=89723.msg2444764#msg2444764