Like at a Real Job®, the day the hounding starts is precisely the day you told them you would have it done. Or maybe a day or two beforehand: "Will it be done?"

What does every boss say? Please communicate as soon as possible if you think the date is going to slip. Then everybody can recalibrate their expectations and you might get another little period of not being hounded. Though unfortunately it won't be as free of hounding as before, because your 2nd estimate will be trusted somewhat less than your first one, which turned out to be wrong.

Some bosses, not the good ones, will say "You will meet the date, end of story." But what no boss ever says is "You need to meet this date, and if you can't, I don't want to know about it. Please obfuscate."

Everybody knows a completely open phone is a hard job, but that ironically is the reason nobody believes the happy-face blog posts saying "Hi, everything's great!" I backed this project and I smelled something fishy as soon as they announced the "iterative shipping schedule." Not because I'm a crybaby who wants his phone now (in fact I opted for the latest possible shipment knowing the earlier ones would have "issues"), but because of how they tried to cloak the obvious and expected ("We're not ready") in terms of something straight out of Animal Farm ("We always planned it this way.") You tryin' to say you ain't ready dawg? Just say that.

As usual the missing ingredient is leadership. You need somebody who's a compass needle, not a weathervane. You need somebody who's confident enough to tell the truth, warts and all, and who knows how to get everybody to love the warts. People will dump even more money and manpower in to help you if you do that.

Are there people hounding them to release it? This series of blog posts certainly isn't. All I've seen that could possibly be construed as hounding (this post included) is just asking for the honesty and transparency that they made a big deal about in their original campaign.

I'm a backer. I have a devkit. I opted for Aspen, Birch, and Chestnut, in that order, just like the author. I had also been figuring I'd also end up buying a batch Fir (mech v2, Q4 2020) when it came out because I can't imagine there won't be shortcomings with the versions before that. I also already own a Neo Freerunner and a Firefox Flame. I say that all to show that I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is when I say I want an open source phone.

However, even I am considering requesting a refund. I've been burned on kickstarter before and this project is so far following the "this project isn't going to deliver" manual to a t.

Usually you dont bypass engineering practices because customers are hounding you. The best way is to answer, demonstrate, and improve customer relations by showing them the facts. Answer a critic and you will better improve your relations. Customers can and do wait when the waiting is warranted.

Thus far, Purism has been omitting facts such as RAM performance, and sidestepping directed questions. These don't instill confidence in customers for an "open" company.

Moreover, hardware cannot be shipped this way. Schedules and the needs of the hardware dictate the control of the schedule. You literally cannot ship a PCB until regulatory requirements are satisfied and the boards are assembled.

I should also note: RMAs are literally taken off the profit line as a total loss in manufacturing -- if you ship something that doesnt work or has major issues, you are throwing money away.