Back when GFA decided to use the OLC for it's Decentralised
Competition, there was no alternative available. The OLC offerred a
good (and at the time, innovative) way to operate a Decentralised
Competition without the administrative hassles that previously
existed.
It was quite definitely worth the 4 euros per pilot per year for
this service, and while there have been some difficulties (for
example, not being able to have our own handicap list) in general it
has worked out pretty well. If I had to pay the 4 euro myself, well
that's about 10c per flight uploaded for last season. Won't break
the bank.
Of course, if there were competing services available then it would
be worth looking at a change - we don't have any commitment to
continue with OLC and it would be good to see some alternative
services and also some other competition types available. I would
like to see a competition for pure gliders, and a competition that
required pre-declared tasks - both of which would redress the bias
towards motorgliders.
Whether "free" services are a viable alternative in the long term is
questionable, however.
One problem with volunteer developments of any kind, is that the
"sexy" part is the development. There are always plenty of people
willing to help with putting together something new and different.
The problem comes with maintenance and support - not only bug fixing,
but dealing with questions, complaints and endless requests for new
features (which of course, no one is paying for so anyone can ask for
anything no matter how difficult it may be).
The number of volunteers willing to deal with the hard grind of
keeping things running tends to be much smaller, and so the shelf life
for these "free" services can be rather short. Users have no
guarantee that the volunteers won't suddenly get sick of it, and there
is no way anyone can demand a certain service level because no one is
paying.
Of course, paying for a service doesn't guarantee that it will be
provided either, and doesn't guarantee that the business will
continue. But at least the user has the comfort that they are
providing something towards the upkeep of the service and at least has
the right to expect something in return.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. And if it sounds too good to
be true, well...
Cheers
Tim
----- Original Message -----
From:[email protected] "Discussion of issues relating to
Soaring in Australia."
To:"aus soaring"
Cc:
Sent:Sat, 14 Jul 2012 10:27:32 +0930
Subject:Re: [Aus-soaring] Alternative to the OLC
Like Rolf I've been following the OLC discussions for some time. It
is sad to see how commercial interests and personalities have created
this rift. Unlike Rolf though, I'm with the Skylines camp for the
following reasons:
The data uploaded to the OLC is owned by them (similar to Facebook
etc) and once uploaded the user community can't easily - if at all -
control what happens to it any more. The intent for Skylines is that
the data remains public if I understand correctly.
Downloading large numbers of flights from the OLC necessary for
statistical analyses like thermal and wave maps is blocked I believe.
The data may be for sale if someone is serious enough about it but
given the relatively small number of glider pilots in the various
regions or even globally, a commercial venture along these lines is
going to be a tough business case. When I see how rapid the
development of XCsoar is compared to its commercial counterparts then
I can't help but think that this is the future. Open source can tap
into a large resource cloud that a business, especially in a small
niche like ours, cannot or will find very hard to match. So over the
years I would not be surprised if Skylines (or a similar platform)
overtook OLC in terms of the features it will be able to offer and
especially the spin-offs that the promised unlimited data download and
public ownership will enable. That in turn might win even hardnosed
OLC fans over...
It has also been proposed for Skylines to have an OLC upload function
so if you choose your flight(s) would be automatically forwarded to
the OLC as well (provided they don't block Skylines from doing so...).
In that case you can have the best of both worlds.
An open platform could allow any number of competitions (with
different rule sets) to "plug in" and experiment with different
formats. (Maybe the "lucky dip" of our Pylon Race would finally gain
the global following it deserves;-)). The OLC team can't support
diversity at such a scale unless the data is made public which may not
be in their commercial interest.
I believe that the competition won't hurt. Besides, Skylines is not
the only alternative. There are a number of perhaps lesser
known platforms already in existence, all exploring different feature
sets and models. We as the user community have the choice and
ultimately the extra features and spin-offs can only enrich the
gliding community - no matter which platform ends up "winning".
Time will tell...
Ulrich
On Sat 14/07/12 07:56 , "rolf a. buelter" [email protected] sent:
I'm following the OLC / Skylines discussion on segelflug.de.
Max K., the main force behind the Skyline development is of the
opinion that the OLC organisation is to dictatorial and
possesive when it comes to the use of data they collect, i.e. IGC
files. On top of that there are a few rules in the OLC scoring which
don't meet the approval of all, e.g. motorgliders get no penalty
applied eventhough they have a perceived advantage. The developers are
also unhappy that the german decentralised comp is derived from the
OLC, similar to ours and the DAeC pays for that admin too. The whole
thing is motivated by a mix of personality, the genuine drive to do
better and some local (german) issues.
I'm with Pam and Stuart.
Rgds - Rolf
> From: [email protected]
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2012 22:07:57 +1000
> Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] Alternative to the OLC
>
> I'm with Pam; WHY?????
>
> The wonderful thing about the OLC is that it brings most of us
together -
> this is why we find it so interesting?
>
> I'm not saying that the guys and gals developing the new site do not
have
> some innovative ideas - I hope they do
> but by diluting the numbers participating erodes what we love about
the OLC
> - is that what we really want - I doubt it.
> Can we see some collaboration?
>
> SDF
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Pam
> Kurstjens
> Sent: Friday, 13 July 2012 3:55 PM
> To: 'Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.'
> Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] Alternative to the OLC
>
> Why would we need an alternative? I think there is great strength
and
> interest having worldwide flights in one place.
> If you would like to see an alternative system, check out the BGA
Ladder in
> the UK: http://www.bgaladder.co.uk and click on 'daily scores' for
example.
> Yesterday, 39 flights in the UK were posted to this site, and only 5
of
> those were posted to OLC.
> People are regularly doing 750's and the rare 1000, which are
incredible
> flights given the size of the island, the airspace, and the weather,
yet we
> see few flights on the OLC so gliding in the UK goes largely
unnoticed by
> the worldwide gliding community.
>
> Pam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Peter F
> Bradshaw
> Sent: Monday, 2 July 2012 9:51 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [Aus-soaring] Alternative to the OLC
>
> Hi;
>
> There is an alternative to the OLC at:
>
> http://skylines.xcsoar.org/
>
> IGC files may be uploaded and scored here. In addition it is planned
to
> implement a realtime tracking feature in conjunction with XCSoar
(v6.4).
>
> Cheers
>
> --
> Peter F Bradshaw: http://www.exadios.com (public keys avaliable
there).
> Personal site: http://personal.exadios.com "I love truth, and the
way the
> government still uses it occasionally to keep us guessing." - Sam
Kekovich.
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