I am sorry to say that I am very, very disappointed. I have been a loyal QL user from nearly day 1, have never made any money off of it, but keep going at it. I am now working extremely hard on QDT as some of you may know. To be honest, it is a labor of love. I will be happy if I ever make enough money to pay for my trips to the shows that I do get the chance to attend.
I am very appreciative of all who have kept the QL alive. Some make money off if (not much I bet) and others don't. This includes both those involved in the hardware and software; all very much appreciated, whether or not I use their product. Everyone counts in this group. I recently just joined this email list because I was hoping to get some help on some implementation problems that I am having with the QDT project. Instead I have been getting this stream of emails that, to be very blunt, sounds like a lot on non-productive whining. I understand that there are major disagreements in the license plans for SMSQ/E. But I would hope that, instead of putting the dirty laundry out for the public to see (and it is very disappointing to have to see all this), that the parties who are involved would try to have some constructive and pro-active direct contact amongst themselves to resolve the disagreements. And, as it is in the real world, not everything is going to be perfect for everyone. The parties involved need to step back, take a breath, try to understand what is important to them AND to the others. And then, and only then, with that understanding and acceptance, come up with some real proposals that try to do the best for all involved. I will continue to work on QDT. I made a decision a long time ago that it will require SMSQ/E to run as there are some major pieces that I need from SMSQ/E to to it properly without having to write a tremendous amount of additional code. I would hope that everyone can come to an agreement about this license that will support SMSQ/E for all systems currently available which will allow QDT to also run on them. Just as a final reality check, until a few months ago, SMSQ/E was not open source or anything else. It was being maintained by Tony and a few vendors who put a lot of effort into getting changes done as required to run on different systems and to add important capabilities (such as color drivers). And I suspect that there hasn't been much money made off of it for some time for anyone. As far as I can see, with the new licensing being worked out, everyone should try to make the best of it for everyone, instead of making it ideal for themselves. I hope that this didn't come over too bluntly, but I have to deal with disagreements much larger than this everyday in my 'real' job and we get them resolved, without resorting to the kind of stuff that I have been reading for the last couple of days. I really enjoy working on my system and my development of QDT. So, please guys, just find a way to resolve this and get on with it. Jim
