Hurrah, an adult discussion!
2. is the one that's perplexing me the most - since when is the need to raise capital a characteristic of a pre-order? The ones providing said capital (be it investment, or a loan) aren't actually ordering anything. They don't much care about what's actually being produced other than if nothing gets produced, they probably won't see any returns / that loan paid back.
The investment itself isn't being considered a preorder. What is suggestive of a preorder model though, is that unless a huge investment is received, you either can't do that generation or it has to be funded using preorders. And so in the absence of an investment - you're business model is one of preorders.
Its not acceptable to say "but we can/will get investment" and so we won't need to use preorders because its not a certainty and its not taken place. It would be like ASICMiner putting out a press release saying they can make 0.01W/GH chips with the stipulations that they need $15M, Intel will license the use of proprietary technology for free, TSMC will rush them in ahead of all other companies,
and as long as their simulations are correct. ASICMiner can not be accepted to have 0.01W/GH chips until they actually make and prove them. This situation is analogous - ST is not a non preorder company / business model until they can prove it.
Your definition used for the pre-orders scoring is a little more vague, though.
Preorders?
Preorders are extremely bad for the industry and put all the financial risk on the buyer. This criterion does not act as a snapshot, but a longer term (both past and future) "does this company engage in preorders". A company who's business model relies on preorders to fund development and new generations is still considered to utilise preorders even if they intermediately sell some products from stock. Transitional scores may be used when companies have promised the exclusion of preorders but have yet to prove their business model can operate without them.
There's two points of contention I can see there:
A. the 'past and future' is not defined. The past: If a company took pre-orders 1 year ago, does that still weigh on the scoring
now? If not, what about 2 months? The future: Should this actually matter? If a company announces that in 2 months they'll start taking pre-orders, should that weigh on their score
now, even if in 1 month they might change their mind and say they won't take pre-orders the next month after all?
Its getting a bit harder to pick out questions here but I'll try. To start I'll say that this rating system uses discrete states in order to 'score' various factors as its less subjective and *should* provide less arguing and more transparency. In a system where a company can score 1-10 on any criterion then there will be endless bickering point for point both insulated within a company's own rating and comparative to other companies.
The side effect of discrete states is that its more unforgiving for those near boarders or in transition. At some point you have to set a mark and put a rating on one side or the other. Theoretically, as long as you impart the same methodology on all companies then there can physically be no disagreements without going down the conspiracy theory line like we have here. "You made it up just for us, even though you imparted the exact same methodology on another company, 3+ months prior". There isn't anything I can really do about that.
I'll answer your question with another scenario as its not really a yes or no-able question. If Bitmain continued to sell out of hand as it has done for a long long time, but said "right that's it, S6 onwards is preorder", would YOU take it into account now? I would say it would be taken into account as its clear that they're a preorder company and for the foreseeable future will be. How many notches that would put a similar company down
during the transition period is debatable. Its worth remembering that going from a preorder model to a not preorder model should be and is treated differently as its not as straight forward a switch. Even with best intentions its not always possible.
B. "prove their business model can operate without them" lies entirely at the whim of what the 'business model' is, and what the exact definition of "them" (pre-orders) is. Just as an example: BitFury's business model is quite a different one from most of the other manufacturers'. They also took several investment rounds. Could they have proved to operate their business model without those investment rounds? More importantly - if those investment rounds are equivalent to the earlier points 2/3 as it pertains to the "them" in that sentence - did they?
As in my first paragraph, I don't consider investments themselves to be preorders. If you raise investment money via financing, private equity investment etc then good on you. In regards to the specific ST case, I object to the claim that they can do non-preorders,
as long as they raise investment. Receiving an investment and wanting investment certainly aren't the same thing and so don't receive the same treatment. If we see an article on CoinDesk that ST has raised a further $XM or $XXM then great on them, and
then it would go a hell of a long way towards proving it.
I'm certainly not arguing that you should change scores, but rather to rethink/clarify definitions.
I keep clarifications to a minimum even when they're beneficial because it leads to all sorts of conspiracy theories as you can see. Apparently others are able to judge my criteria, my interpretations and my intentions better than me. On top of that, its the same reason why I keep updates to a minimum. Regardless of what a company scores, consumers and / or the company will be mad at me one way or another. Its not fun being flamed for days and days as a result of providing a free resource designed to help the community, by people who provide NOTHING themselves.
The earlier points 2 and 3, in my humble opinion, have far less to do with pre-orders as most people understand them than with solvency and/or financial health. SP's solvency is probably not in question (unlike, say, BFL's given recent events), but their financial health as it pertains to their next gen development may be (as admitted by SP). If that were a separate line item, with scores set as applicable, there may still be some argument over whether or not the scoring itself is just, or whether that item in itself is just - but not about whether or not the score actually applies to the item for which it's listed; which seems to be the main argument in the back-and-forth.
Never make assumptions. We've seen publicly that BFL has more bitcoins in
cash than ST raised publicly in
equity.
As an aside: NDAs suck
Yes, they do. I let ST know today that I've terminated our NDA but it doesn't release prior information unless Guy authorises it. If anyone's counting, I do have also have an NDA but its in a very different form which means I can disclose anything if its done in the best intentions of the company / not maliciously and has a MUCH shorter expiry time.
