The real question is why isn't the shirt open source and decentralized?
More empty promises from Bluesky
LOL. You need to make multiple distributed instances of the awesome shirt.
Well, it is an all black shirt...
Is this a serious question
Tech people can be smart and incredibly dense at the same time.
More or less, I am being incredulous that they "didn't make enough oops", it's ink printed on a commodity, there is essentially an endless supply available, so it's a choice to sell out.
Have you ever ordered commercial merchandise? You tend to order a number far below infinite, and if your goods sell faster than you’re able to get a new order, it is “sold out.”
And yeah, presumably they didn’t do a giant run for this, nor should they have?
They don't make the shirts themselves. They ordered a finite number from a supplier. They're not claiming that the world is out of potential to make new shirts.
So you're saying this is a marketing piece.
What company-branded shirt isn't?
selling out is a marketing piece. If they wanted to raise money for development of AT Proto they could raise more by taking backorders and shipping when available. Selling a limited edition in order to sell out is because it's cheaper to get people to write about you than it is to buy ad placement.
It can be both, and there's nothing wrong with that. Could they have gathered a few bucks more if they had taken orders as long as they come in? Sure. But at some point they'd inevitably go "we could make even more with larger batches" only to end up with considerably loss on that one last batch.
Taking the publicity instead of squeezing the lemon past the easy part is a perfectly rational decision.
I mean, not every company wants to turn into a t-shirt shop permanently.
Yeah fair enough, they set a goal and reached it. Good deal.