Pardon my slightly sexist language here, but:
I'm portuguese, that's not even a fraction of the sexism I'm used to :)
IMO the best way to deter is this to have big balls! :)
Write patches that are so amazingly rad and self-confident that not many
people would want to change them. And have balls when you encounter
those people who actually are able to improve on them. You can make sure
you profit from these ubermasters by releasing your patches as GPL, so
their balls make your balls bigger, too. :) Or alternatively you don't
even give a s**t about others having bigger balls and release as BSD,
stating by this that your balls are so big that you don't even care if a
mighty commercial company comes along, grabs your work and tries to make
money from it. Consider these companies as petty thieves.
I might be repeating some things, here are some comments to that:
- the patch isn't locked, anyone can download it and look at it, and tell
me how it sucks, if they want to - I'm always very grateful for that. I
never had a programming class or read a book about it, for sure many
people here can point me several things that could be better. I'm not sure
many people will, because the patch is already a bit complex (can take
some time to understand it), and it's not something that this community
usually needs. No crafty audio effects, network or haptic interfaces, just
a click track generator.
- I've put xxx hours (3 digits, at least) of work into it, on my own
costs. That would be normal for any project of mine, but if I'm working to
make this a comprehensive tool to be used by the "general user", a
considerable amount of time is spent on user-friendly features, to make
sure that anyone can open it and use it instantly (even basic stuff like
writing a clear tutorial take their time). This kind of work is never
necessary if I'm working on something for myself, evidently.
- I won't put that in front of other priorities or necessary things (like
working to pay my rent) anymore, but will only work further on it if
there's an involvement from the user community. For now the patch would be
at version ~0.9/1, but I have a list of possible features to make it up to
version 2. This development will only be possible if I get some financial
support for it. For this reason I would like to retain control of the
development for now, so that the work doesn't stop in the middle.
- I think that my patch is a good, one, and many reactions from several
kinds of persons have confirmed it, they love my balls. But I want to make
it even better, and independently of how big and shiny my balls are, if
(by a very remote chance, must I say) something interrupts the process,
all my time/effort will have been in vain. Not much use of having big
balls, if you can't show them off.
As I said before, several people ask me why I don't go to a software
publisher and make a shareware out of it. If I get asked that that often,
should I be afraid that someone will grab this and make it himself?
In this view, Miller has the biggest balls of dem all. :)
I'm no Miller, that's a given. Besides the evident skills, I don't have a
job teching at a university, which would allow me to program in my free
time.
Open source is very fine and dandy, but if you don't have a roof, a chair,
a table, electricity, internet, no code is going to program itself alone.
That's what I'm asking around, what's the best way to try to coordenate
all these together in a pd patch.
João
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