From the website:

"What if you fail to reach the funding target?

We appreciate every bit of support we receive during the 30 days, and every backer will be welcomed into the Ubuntu community. If we don’t reach our target then we will focus only on commercially available handsets and there will not be an Ubuntu Edge. All contributions will be fully refunded."

Doesn't that mean they'll actually make a significant loss due to Paypal fees?

PayPal refunds fees when you issue a refund, so you lose nothing.

They refund fees to the client, not to the vendor iirc.

This could cost indiegogo a lot.

Maybe this is all just a big ploy set up by Ubuntu and Paypal. Set up a $32M campaign, sure to fail, split the fees!

They chose a fixed campaign so they don't get to keep the funds. All or nothing.

From the webpage: This campaign will only receive funds if at least $32,000,000 is raised by its deadline. Funding duration: July 22, 2013 - August 21, 2013 (11:59pm PT)

On this note - does anyone know the reasons Canonical went with Indiegogo rather than Kickstarter for this? Given that it's fixed funding anyway.

Kickstarter requires hardware projects to have a working prototype, which Ubuntu does not have.

No -- it looks like they set it up as Fixed Funding (as opposed to Flexible Funding) and won't get the money unless they reach the goal.

What's the advantage of going with Fixed Funding as opposed to Flexible? Wouldn't receiving the $8 million (or whatever it ends up at) be better than nothing?

There are significant fixed costs in building a smart phone, for example in design, certifications and tooling. Building something like 50K of them is already on the low end.

It would be a disaster for them if they got into a position were they had costs of $1500 per phone and had to choose between bailing out or eat the losses.

Arguably the whole attraction of these things is that there's a model where you pledge an amount and only have to pay up if there's enough money to get it off the ground.

No one wants to be the guy who stuck $700 down for something that will never exist because they were the only ones to pledge.

If it weren't for the fixed model, they would struggle to get even a fraction of the money they've raised so far.