Launching the Libre Tech Shop

80 points by proxygeek 4 years ago | 13 comments
  • maccard 4 years ago
    > Otherwise, direct bank transfers are a good and respectful option by default.

    Have you ever dealt with fraud at any reasonable amount of scale? This is an absolutely _terrible_ idea.

    • throwaway744678 4 years ago
      From the merchant point of view, I can't see how you can get defrauded with a wire transfer: as far as I know, there is no chargeback / recall / etc. possible. Once the funds reach your account, they should stay here.
      • pope_meat 4 years ago
        The person who provides the routing and account numbers to the merchant doesn't necessarily have to be the account holder, and then the authorities get involved and I assure you, they can compell you or your bank to return the fraudulent wire to the actual account holder.

        The legal system will make sure the funds do not stay in your account.

        • maccard 4 years ago
          As the other poster mentioned, you won't suffer chargebacks, but you _will_ find yourself on the receiving end of calls from the AML of your bank (if you're lucky), or your local authorities if you're less lucky. I am names on a clubs accounts for a local club and the terms we've signed up to are funds frozen for 6 months if we are _suspected_ of being involved even indirectly of laundering any money.
      • necovek 4 years ago
        A marvelous initiative.

        However, it feels like this would be a struggle to keep up personally. Have you considered being hub instead, where others can announce their products, get paid for them while ensuring that customers get the support they need too?

        • abhas 4 years ago
          Thank you for your encouragement.

          Yes - my long term plan with the Libre Tech Shop is to also list products from other developers (especially in India), help them document these products and make them available here.

          The idea is that once people know that if they want libre/liberated products that can run free/libre software reliably (and by default), they should be able to seek out all sorts of solutions for their needs from the same place.

        • neilv 4 years ago
          There's an FSF program along these lines: https://ryf.fsf.org/

          Complying with their requirements could be a major headache (ask Purism), but if you're already satisfying all those, the certification and links might make business sense.

          • Clex 4 years ago
            Great project! I'd suggest adding a <meta charset="UTF-8"> to the Mostly Harmless website to fix some mojibake that I ran into.
            • pcein 4 years ago
              This is a really wonderful initiative! Best wishes for its success!
              • insaaniManav 4 years ago
                Awesome work
                • patchtopic 4 years ago
                  great work guys!
                  • Aissen 4 years ago
                    Anyone has an exemple of a libre hardware business that did launch in Silicon Valley ? Seems that the two are opposites.
                    • dang 4 years ago
                      Submitted title was "Launching a free (libre) hardware business outside Silicon Valley". We've changed it to what the article says, in keeping with the site guidelines.

                      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

                      • sebow 4 years ago
                        SiFive comes to mind, though if i recall they received a big check from intel early on.Also not sure if i would call them libre hardware, but they support the open RISC-V ISA and are "fairly libre" compared to intel/amd, not to mention customizable.