Today marks the end of the AppCenter for Everyone crowdfunding campaign. We’re happy to report that we hit over 190% of our original goal, thanks to 619 backers pledging a total of $19,002. Thank you to everyone who backed the campaign and shared it on social media! As previously shared, any excess above our expenses for the sprint will be put towards further development of AppCenter and elementary OS.

We’ll be sending out 87 mugs, 78 hoodies, 129 sticker packs, and 270 early access invites to backers. 507 names will be added to the AppCenter source code, and we’ll be sending out 565 thank you emails.

We smashed through our original $10,000 goal in just a few days, and launched a stretch goal for a Privacy & Security sprint. While we didn’t quite meet the 200% stretch goal, we came really close! We expect to be able to use the excess funds to cover at least part of the expenses for an additional sprint later this year.

COVID-19 Virus

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be a post about an event in March without addressing concerns around COVID-19—the disease caused by novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. As of now, our sprint is still taking place. We are monitoring the situation and taking precautions as recommended by the CDC and WHO. Our sprint is a small gathering in an isolated venue and we will be strongly enforcing frequent hand-washing, avoiding unnecessary physical contact, and keeping ourselves relatively spread out. We will also not be attending any larger events or gatherings while in Denver.

However, it does mean that folks from highly-affected areas or those who don’t wish to travel will not be attending. We’ve made alternate arrangements for them to participate remotely—while it’s not as effective as face-to-face collaboration, keeping our contributors safe is more important. If a critical mass of planned attendees are unable to attend, we will consider postponing the sprint or transitioning to remote-only. Doing so would be less effective overall and costly as we would be unable to be reimbursed for much of the travel and accommodation, so we hope it doesn’t come to that—but we will do what we need to keep our contributors safe.

Timeline

Assuming the sprint takes place as planned, here’s our anticipated timeline.

AppCenter for Everyone Sprint

The sprint is March 12–19, including arrival/departure days. We plan to be flexible based on discussion at the sprint itself, but we’ve planned to break into three teams and have a rough idea of tasks to tackle each day. You can follow along with the sprint plans and progress on our GitHub Project as well.

Design Track

Wallet

Subscriptions on AppCenter app info pages

Subscription settings

Flatpak permissions

AppCenter Dashboard (submission status, download stats, etc.)

Other design consultation as needed

Web Track

Stripe Connect

Build Flatpaks in Houston

Use Stripe Customers for payment history

Trigger AppCenter builds using hooks

Create an internal Flatpak repo and build with release hooks

AppCenter Dashboard

Desktop Track

Create Flatpak Authenticator

Save payment tokens with the Secrets Portal

Restore purchases from Stripe Customer account

FileChooser portal

Rewards

We plan to start the work towards fulfilling physical rewards (i.e. ensuring we have correct sizes and addresses, getting stickers ordered, etc.) soon after the sprint, and shipping physical rewards out in May.

Backers of the “Your Name In Our Source Code” perk and higher have been added to the AppCenter source code—if you selected one of these perks but chose to keep your contribution anonymous, please send us a message to list your name. Backers of the “Early Access” perk and higher will receive an email with early access instructions once we have usable development builds of elementary OS 6, which we expect to be this April.

Privacy & Security Sprint

We have started discussing a follow-up Privacy & Security sprint, but have not planned any specific dates yet. The COVID-19 situation will very likely factor into our travel plans and whether or not we plan a physical sprint, opt for fully-remote, do smaller simultaneous satellite gatherings, etc. We’ll keep you updated as we know/plan more!