Distro Fever

Thingiverse has recently been beset by some "enterprising" individuals and small groups who think spamming forums at best tangentially related to what they have to offer is a legitimate form of advertising in this day and age. Thingiverse is owned by Makerbot, in turn owned by Stratasys. It acts as a file repository for digital files created by its community for purposes of 3D printing, CNC, Laser-cutting, and many other forms of computer-aided manufacturing and rapid prototyping. There is no advertising on the site. 

Without getting into a long, drawn-out retrospective of what Linux is, one of the great aspects of Linus Torvalds' original source code is that it can be customized to whatever extent computer engineering allows. As a result of this, there are hundreds, if not thousands of individual "flavors" of Linux, with Android being the most widespread. The trouble this paradigm presents, however, is one of saturation. Operating Systems are vast technical undertakings, and barring anything simpler than a graphing calculator, they're not handled by small groups on their downtime. Debian, for example, is the culmination of thousands of hobbyists working piecemeal over many decades. The point is that while everyone starts somewhere, "humble beginnings" aren't as endearing a selling point as they once were when there were maybe a dozen computer manufacturers worldwide with virtually none of them having any interest in the consumer market. 

Okay, first big red flag. Never, ever, ever trust anyone who uses "Good day" as a greeting. I know it's more of a language barrier thing than anything else, but I've seen too many e-mail and telemarketing scams that use this slightly-broken English to ignore it. As a rule, "Good day" is a parting phrase, especially if you're Willy Wonka and/or you really want to stick it to somebody. Call it a pet peeve, but couple this with the fact this exact same message was posted in at least 8 different interest groups, and matters start looking more than a little shady, and we're only at the first line. 

What follows is a standard laundry list of claims. While many well-known Linux or other cross-platform applications such as OpenSCAD, FreeCAD, Blender, and Inkscape are as free of charge as they are easily available, certain flavors of Linux like to separate themselves from the endless cacophony by offering included bundles of programs. It's more a stamp of approval than anything meant to be convenient. By having a program preinstalled, you're showing that it's passed your various benchmarks and is guaranteed to work, whereas some Linux flavors may not play nice with others for the sake of favoring a different suite of programs. Again, there's nothing wrong with that (though some argue whether or not it violates the various open source licenses some programs are made under, but those cases are few and far between) and it's honestly very convenient, no more guesswork for one's workflow. 

Then there's this part about giving out free goods and services:

Along with the "Good Day" greeting and the faux pas that is forum spam, another red flag is unqualified promises. Something I used to see on Yahoo! Answers all the time was someone asking a fairly vague question about Risc Management or Viral Marketing or whatever, all wrapped up with the promise, "Help me out and I'll give you anything you want."

 

Yes, yes, I know they're just a phishing operation trying to get my e-mail and can't REALLY get me anything I want, but that's precisely my point. These InventOS yahoos answering the prayers of designers and makers are making the same vague, unqualified offer that a con artist does. If your product, an operating system, is still in the alpha stage as you say, are you sure you've got the resources to back up this 

Let's start with the elephant in the room concerning the economics of this claim. Yes, everybody starts somewhere, and of course you often have to spend money in order to make money, but there's a fine line between a free sample and a free ride, to say nothing of not being able to spell freeloader without free... and load. 

While the technology behind 3D printing is nothing new, with roots going back to the early 1970s, this recent wave of "Open Source Prosumerism" that started with the original Makerbot Kickstarter campaign and the explosive popularity of the Arduino microcontroller is still fairly young. We've had a lot of promising startups rise as quickly as they fall. Many a career has been made and ruined on the power of a few calculated risks. Still, a broad range of events across the board plus a little common sense have given this particular subculture of designers/inventors/makers/artisans/what-have-you a better perspective on how to market themselves. 

Your skills have a value, even if the only cost is your time. 

Offering a service of value for free drives down that value for everyone else in that profession. It's kind of ironic that the open source nature of the software you're using to make your OS (which comes prepackaged with applications other people have made) has seemingly driven you to offer physical printing services and design consultation for free. 

As of this writing, they have no responded, and I rather doubt they will. 

Actually, they're not offering everything for free (they're just asking for volunteers to help them back up their claims). I don't personally know of any Linux distribution that makes use of Patreon, but it's not necessarily a red flag. Ubuntu has a similar business model, offering its software for free but asking fees for technical support. Google doesn't offer Android as a standalone download, instead licensing it to hardware manufacturers with part of the sales helping support further developments. So, technical support and customer service has a dollar value, but a physical print of a design someone has volunteered to me is free, so long as...? 

So, is InventOS a scam? Probably not, but they sure act like it. Between the broad, sweeping claims, sketchy "marketing" efforts, too-good-to-be-true promises of free lunches, and wait-and-see attitude towards valid questions of their business model, it's certainly hard to tell their message apart from the many offers from Nigerian diplomats trapped aboard the ISS who need me to buy them 1,000 spark plugs with unsigned checks they'll mail me before getting sent off to out of state PO boxes. More likely is that they're simply inept. 

By the way, here's what their community forums look like as of today:

Don't Patreon-ize Me (totes not begging)

Thank you for your Patreon-age.

Patreon made a big change to their platform, and it's getting a less-than favorable reaction. Their menu for both their desktop site and mobile app looks chunkier and geometrically harsher. Most notably, though, is their logo, which one Twitter user felt made it unrecognizable when compared to the original. 

Tip for the staff at @patreon: When thousands of vendors depend on your branding, don't mutilate it. #newpatreonlogo pic.twitter.com/eBbbpRsSuD

— Jon Perry - SC (@StatedClearly) June 14, 2017

I can understand his point of view, especially considering the logo looks less like a "P" and more like a lower-case "r". If I didn't know any better, I would have thought it was a new logo for ReasonTV. Then again, even before the rebranding, the Patreon logo tended to have trouble standing out, blending right in with the Google+ tile or even Blogger's icon. They're both reddish-orange squares with white lines in them. There would be times when I would click on a social link for what I thought was Patreon and found it to be a Blogger page. 

Besides, let's face it, more people have heard of Patreon than Reason (and I say that as a fan of ReasonTV). 

As for the new logo, it's certainly striking. White backgrounds tend to be a bit of a no-no in logos unless the line-work is strong (read: dark) so it can be used as a watermark or stamped onto simple stationary. Despite that, I like how the logo looks a little like crate paper with its muted, seemingly-translucent color scheme, especially that muted red-orange dot. It may not quite pop from the white the way a deeper red would (i.e., Japan's flag), but it's not lost in the great pale sea, either. The washed-out navy blue of the P's back also helps ground the whole design and helps center your eyes. Also, the more I look at it, the less I see that lower-case "r" and the more I see a stylized "P". That's the odd thing about rebranding; you can get used to almost anything. 
Many graphic designers will tell you about brand images that simply shouldn't work; Google, eBay, Yahoo, Apple's old rainbow logo, and MTV to name a few, yet with a handful of exceptions, they persist and endure. They don't necessarily rewrite any typography or design rules, but they earn their place and show that sometimes breaking the rules is how you stand out and get an edge (the iconoclast). DeviantART decided to forego having its initials in its icon and instead went a more abstract route, like if Matisse made traffic signs. It caused a stir, but down the road, it's as if it never happened, and I certainly haven't heard of anyone missing the "DA" hemisphere of old. ---Actually, I just now had the logo explained to me as the "mid-section" of a "d" sidling up to an "A" and now I feel a bit silly. 

Then again, let's face it, Seattle's Best Coffee still looks like it's advertising a blood drive, and SyFy is as stupid a name now as it was when it was announced, I don't care how good The Expanse is supposed to be. 

The point is that for all the testing and research and time invested into creating a new identity for a corporate entity, no one can afford a sharp turn or backpedal to begin with, and there is truly no good way of discerning how well a new logo will go over with audiences. People generally don't like change, and while some criticisms are more valid than others, events reveal that people can get used to an idea they were once opposed to. In the end, most of us likely weren't involved in the decision and it's not going to affect how we spend our money, so we'll either get on with our lives and carry on or we'll decide this new direction, however superficial, isn't worth our business.

Speaking of money and business....

I've debated setting up a creator's Patreon for myself. I once talked at great length about why I don't take commissions, and while I'm not motivated by money in my artwork (no artist is, it's just enthusiasm can't pay bills), I am grateful that people out there enjoy and appreciate what I do. As such, it's only fair that I offer people as many means of "supporting the cause" as possible, whether that's the share buttons on my journal pages or my DevaintART gallery or my Thingiverse profile, to more, er, direct means such as the Ko-Fi links both here and on my Twitter, the "tip designer" button on Thingiverse, my Paypal links I scatter in a few different places, and my Amazon wishlist (located in the sidebar). I've gotten a few tips here and there, and I even get asked about commissions (I'm not above making exceptions, especially to "support a cause" as it were). I've also gotten comments and other feedback such as dis/likes, up/down votes, hearts, stars, clovers and blue moons, pots of gold and rainbows, and me red ba--sorry. I'm grateful for it all and never want anyone to be shy about what they have to say about what I say and do (provided the freedom goes both ways, that's only fair). 
Going back to Patreon, what I do doesn't quite lend itself to much of a consistent output, and I don't feel like comparing the time and effort spent writing a journal entry or movie review with a painting or a comic. Thirty movie reviews in a month versus 10 digital paintings in the same month is not a quantification I feel like justifying to an audience, and I don't think you should have to entertain that concept either. As much as I like the "set and forget" nature of Patreon, even a small reward tier would simply feel like too much of an onus for me to place on someone. Maybe if I ever get to working on a regular webcomic I can commit to or I start doing livestreaming of my painting (which may happen as soon as Inktober of this year), then I'll consider it. 

Until then, thank you for visiting my page.