FreeCalypso funding and direction update

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hello FC community,

This is yet another periodic post about the difficulties of financing
our family of projects and the lack of progress that stems directly
from the lack of financing.  There are two key issues here:

1) Our FC family of projects is mostly about hardware rather than
software.  There is very little in this space that can be accomplished
through sw/fw hacking alone (beyond the very impressive results which
I have already produced!), and any meaningful further movement toward
any of our oft-repeated goals (whether my personal goals or the goals
of those few people who have found some commercial use for Calypso
modems doing non-standard things) will require more hardware
development.  But hardware development requires money, which is
sharply different from sw/fw hacking which requires only time and a
passion.  I have virtually unlimited passion for FreeCalypso,
translating to nearly unlimited ability to do FC sw/fw work, but money
is much much more limited, putting a damper on anything that needs
further hw development.

2) As most people here know from repetition, I have been funding
FreeCalypso almost single-handedly over the past years, with my own
personal financial investment being about 3 times greater than the
total contributed by everyone else combined over the entire lifetime
of the project.  And as most of you also know, it has been a never-
ending struggle for me to balance between my passion for FreeCalypso
(i.e., dumping money into the project) and my gender/medical needs.

Now here is the new development: with the Trump regime in Amerikkka
continuing to look more and more like Germany in the 1930s, with my
birth country (Russia) being extremely hostile and very unsafe for
people of my kind (LGBTQ+, in my case both transsexual and lesbian),
and with right-wing movements on the rise generally throughout the
world, I have reached the conclusion that it is simply NOT SAFE for
me to continue living as a non-surgically-corrected trans woman any
longer, as the risk of intolerant people/governments/etc forcibly
taking my hard-won female gender away from me is getting too great.
With the political climate being the way it is, it has become clear to
me that I need to get my sex correction surgery done ASAP, and to make
it a financial priority first and above everything else.  In other
words, I simply cannot allow myself to spend any more money on FC
until my safety-increasing surgery is done and paid for.

More concretely, I have just scheduled my surgery with the Chettawut
Plastic Surgery Center in Thailand for the date of 2020-05-25 (date
chosen because it is the latest surgery date that still allows me to
travel to Thailand and back with my current stateless person travel
document without having to get a new one), and I have put down the
required 20% holding deposit of about 80,000 THB (Thai Baht currency).
At this point there are two possibilities:

Alternative 1: if I can gather the rest of the money (whether on my
own or from external donations) by around February (T minus 3 months
is the deadline for rescheduling without forfeiting any of the already
paid money), my surgery will proceed as planned: I will fly from
San Diego to Bangkok, Thailand in 2020-05, leave my unwanted bits
there, and come back to California as 100% girl in 2020-06.  The total
amount needed is about 21 kUSD, breaking down as follows: about
11 kUSD for the remainder of the surgery cost, about 1 kUSD for the
round trip flight, about 2.5 kUSD for my time in Thailand (post-op
recovery hotel, food, misc expenses) and about 6.5 kUSD to keep my
partner alive and my bills paid back at home while I take 5 weeks off
from my regular day job.

Alternative 2: if 2020-02 rolls around and I have too little money to
proceed with the original plan, I will have to reschedule my surgery
for some time in 2021, in which case it will be that much longer
before I can go back to any kind of further FreeCalypso development.

How is all of this relevant to FreeCalypso?  The answer is simple: I
won't be able to do any more FC work beyond simple maintenance until
and unless my absolutely essential surgery is funded.  Therefore, the
*only* way to unblock further FC progress is to donate toward the cost
of my surgery; until then, the project is in maintenance mode.  There
are 3 ways to donate:

Option 1 is Bitcoin: 159Yx6JRJ4oMLPTYrh1jW7fQ5D5tPHdnoM.

Option 2: This weekend I am going to open a new Gofundme campaign,
allowing easy credit card donations.

Option 3: For anyone who is able to make a substantial donation but
operates with conventional currencies rather than crypto, please email
me off-list and I will give you bank wire transfer details.

Finally, if there are any commercial business entities seeking to use
Calypso modems for whatever special application you've got, you can
have my undivided support and customized hardware for whatever you
need if you pay for my full remaining surgery cost or at least a major
portion of it; the exact terms will depend on how much you are willing
to pay.

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
Mychaela aka The Mother