You know, the one thing that always immensely bothered me about the mentality at tech talk was that somehow you were the fucking devil himself if god forbid you made some kind of profit on these things. Without trying to incite a nasty argument, can any of you guys on that side of the coin please explain how someone offering an item that is CLEARLY geared towards the people of this community and making a profit somehow has a negative impact on the community?
I think it absolutely SUCKS that people here, who make kits available for people like us, specifically us to build are discouraged to do so.
Think for a moment about the business plan here. Say a project like this costs $10K in capital. Thats ten thousand dollars that isnt in your bank earning interest, its out there in the form of transformers and chasis and paint sitting on a shelf, collecting dust. This is significant risk. So, factor in the sizable capital it takes to start a venture and THEN add the enormous amount of time something like this takes to pull together and every single last one of us here knows how much time it takes to pull a project together. So consider the capital you have earning no interest and then whatever your time is worth to put the whole thing together and then, the cherry that you add on top is that you go through all that work and you dont even break even, let alone make a profit.
If I approached you and asked you to invest $10K into a venture and explained to you that in addition to your investment, I needed to you sit in a white room for 80 hours doing nothing and that in return not only wouldnt I guarantee that you would see one cent of your money in return, but I would also guarantee that you wouldnt ever make a profit. Im sorry, this is insane and there isnt anyone here that would agree to that. Why is it so terrible for someone taking SUCH a risk to be crucified for offering the kits to us?
I really think this stinks.
There is one line to draw however, which I think is pretty important. we all know scenaria. He's active on the forum and he's a big contributor. there is a world of difference between scenaria offering us a kit vs. some dealer who never ever posts on the group coming here to sell crap. If we were being flooded with offers to buy all kinds of junk from random people, I could understand the attitude, but not for a friend of the forum.
I dont know, I think its totally fucked to discourage people from putting things together to make our lives easier. And Im probably not even buying one of the kits, I dont have 3 rack spaces free, I need to fit an LA2A in two spaces, so I need to do a custom chasis, different conversation. ITs just the principle of people discouraging any kind of profit which is really confusing to me, very few are going to go through the trouble of doing things right for us if we string them up for not doing things for us at cost, its a big financial investment to do something like this. I would hate to see people stop offering high quality PCB's for us as a result of this attitude, its beyond amazing that we have guys like gyraf who are able to contribute SO MUCH design time to this group, I mean, thats really incredible and we are very lucky, but I think its highly unrealistic to hold everyone to that kind of ethic, some people plain and simple can not afford to. I think if its good for the direction of the group, offers like this IMO should be encouraged. I dont see how steve's la2a kit is harmful to the group. Advertisements from dealers are of course another thing all together. I dont want to see this place become a sea of advertising, but in recent memory, everyone enjoyed drew's levellock kit, the JLM kit is in high regard, whats the problem with scenaria's LA2A kit? It costs too much? please... Beyond that, if its posted in the black market section then doubly whats the problem? IT was nice to see scenaria post pictures in the main forum only because he's been working on this as we all know for months and updating the group every step of the way. Now that he's done all this work, now people have a problem? I just dont get it.
Thats my opinion, Im not asking anyone to agree with it, it just feels especially pertinent to vent this right now.
dave