On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 7:36 PM, Paul Shaffer <[email protected]> wrote:

> > FlexRadio Systems was born of open source software...
>
> Hello, I have not read any of the replies to this entry,
> and I may 180 out of phase with the other customers...
> I'm a little bit negative towards the thrust of your post.
> I have an sdr-1000 and at this point don't plan on buying
> any more Flex radio products. The obsolescence of the
> sdr-1000 has not been handled in a very graceful manner
> in my opinion and my programming bugs and suggestions have been
> ignored.


Well, the SDR-1000 was supplanted by the Flex 5000 several years ago. Still,
the software upgrades continue to support the SDR-1000 and if your SDR-1000
breaks it appears that Flex will still fix it for you. That seems pretty
reasonable for a legacy product. I bet they continue to support it for 5
years after its replacement hit the streets. That seems eminently fair to
me. That is at least as good as the other radio manufacturers.

But I can see it from Flex's side of things too. They derive no revenue from
the SDR-1000 anymore and they are a small company. Supporting the SDR-1000
is a total loss for them. And I can see them not spending time on software
enhancements for the SDR-1000 for the same reason. But it does seem that I
have seen bug fixes and enhancements in the two years or so I have been
hanging out here. It is not as if you have been left hanging in the wind.
Now it might not be the full support that the Flex xxxx owners are getting
but it far and away better than nothing.


> I never got any support for the product through
> the official email channel, but only on the reflector.
>

Don't you think that is kind of a moot point? Dudley and the rest do support
for all the radios on the reflector. I have seen Dudley, Tim, Gerald, Steve,
Eric, and even Bob answering people's questions. Sure sounds like official
support to me. And if it gets too fiddly they usually say call them or they
will call.


> Since I'm a programmer, in future I plan to challenge you
> as per the open source GPL provisions on the licenses.
>

I was just watching the email exchange on the topic and it appears that Flex
is going to maintain the SVN repository available for now and make source
available on all the GPL-licensed bits on an as-request basis. That seems to
fit within the letter of the license terms.


> I hate that this is turning into an almost adversarial
> confrontation with a corporation.
>

It sure looks to me like you are the one turning it adversarial. I
understand your frustration if you are a hard-core, open-software person,
but I don't get the feeling that Flex has totally abandoned the SDR-1000
population, nor does it appear that they are going to bypass the letter of
GPL.

-- 
Brian Lloyd, WB6RQN/J79BPL
3191 Western Dr.
Cameron Park, CA 95682
[email protected]
+1.767.617.1365 (Dominica)
+1.931.492.6776 (USA)
(+1.931.4.WB6RQN)
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