I have been lurking around since before there was an EMC2, back when the BDI was hailed the best thing since bottled beer. I remember the final official release of 2.0.0 which was eagerly awaited. Since my coding skills are limited to BASIC,HTML and the many flavors of RS274-D (G/M code), I have kept to the shadows mainly, except when some of the programmers needed help understanding how other main stream machine control execute certain G-code. I have programmed for Bandit, Okuma, FANUC, MAZAK and some rare bizarre custom built controls. I had hoped to be a much more active particapant, but it seems I'm allways working multible jobs often running 7 days a week when a 59hr work week feels like a vacation. Many people really don't understand the History of EMC2 / LinuxCNC. This is a subject better told by those directly involved, but in short... A few people got EMC released to the public from the work done at NIST and then began to work from that. Like most open source projects volunteers jumped in to work on parts of the code they had a personal interest in. Upgrades and revisions happened when the code would not do what you needed it to and you were willing to grab your pencil and dig into the source. Now I must say that the work done by John K and his revolutionary HAL made it to the point non C programmers could do all sorts of things which might have required hard coding before. Likewise the addition of AXIS put a more user friendly face on LinuxCNC. Pyvcp gave the user the power to make AXIS in his/her own flavor. Today, thanks to all the volunteers we have many ways to skin the cat. There is no real "division of labor", people grab the shovel and dig in when there is something they want, or want changed. I would have expected a fork to deal with the unique issues of controlling a Wire EDM. Didn't happen because there were too few skilled people who wanted to get it done, and with hardware to test any changes. On the flip side, there are a surprising number of 5 axis machines out there now, this I didn't expect. Robotics - possible, but this again needs work to be user friendly - Robotics needs its own custom GUI as well. The one thing I would bring up is the little nastyness that forced the official name change to LinuxCNC. There is an evil in the world, a soulless preditor called LAWYERS. In some places they are known as Barrister's. As users and contributers of LCNC we need to protect ourselves from such leeches. I would like to suggest that a formal statement be added to future install discs that states that LCNC is in perpetual BETA state and that a user who installs this software is fully responsible for testing there own application of LCNC before appling power to an actual machine and that they in no way hold any other contributer responsible for the actions or inactions of any machine. On a different subject. I don't have Chris R. skills at doing a GUI but I would like to do both a FANUC zeroT and zeroM type GUI that is close enough that users can make a fairly easy transition. I'd like to buid a small puma robot to work on doing an operator/programmer teach pendant if Alex J. can help me thru a few hard spots. ( I used to setup Staubli Puma's ) All in All I would have to say that LCNC has to be one of the greatest success stories of any global open source project. LCNC will continue to grow at its own pace, and I don't think anything will change that. I would love to go to Wichita to meet many of the great brains I have only met via IRC and to see Stuart's wonderful toys! Reversal of fortune has hit and now I find myself with more time than cash. I keep the IRS paid off working as a part time IT Admin and assistant radio engineer here in southern Colorado. (iHeartRadio) Since I'm not getting paid to make chips anymore I guess I should spend more time out in my own shop and put my own iron to work. Thanks for reading. Greg ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How ServiceNow helps IT people transform IT departments: 1. A cloud service to automate IT design, transition and operations 2. Dashboards that offer high-level views of enterprise services 3. A single system of record for all IT processes http://p.sf.net/sfu/servicenow-d2d-j _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
