The software that I continue to work towards releasing (QDT) will have a cost for it but it will be reasonable - QL community based. Obviously, I would never even get enough out of the sales to pay for even a very small percentage of the time invested into it, but perhaps enough for a trip to a show (if I fly cheap :) ).
The reasons for putting a price on the software are two fold:
- the project is so large that the price will indicate to me that people appreciate (or not) the work and the finished product. This is more of a principle thing than not.
- two, the vendors need to get paid for distributing it and handling the customers. I don't have time for that or the energy, especially being here in the States. Not to mention, the vendors deserve a lot for helping keep this all going.
As to why am I doing a project of this size - it amounts to a love of creation and challenges, and a promise made to other QLers some time ago. We are a very tight community and I consider a lot of the group personal friends.
If and when I ever get it done, the community will also get some additional freebies out of the project. At the most, some general capabilities such as a generic script run installer and at the minimum, some utilities that will be open source for further development by others.
Cheers, jim
On Wednesday, July 16, 2003, at 10:28 AM, Mark Martin wrote:
Quoting Dilwyn Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Will you be releasing this as freeware or shareware, or as acommercial product?
MarkCommercial (price undecided yet) and a demo version: useable, but limited by the number of program icons which can be set up.
Please do NOT flame me. I mean no disrespect to anyone involved in developing
QL software or hardware. I am a casual user, who has just recently gotten
back "into" using QL after more than 10 years. I understand this is mostly a
philosophical question, but I have a direct question I'd like an answer to.
This is NOT a direct response or reaction to the above mentioned product, BTW.
I'm curious to understand why just about anything for the QL is commercial. Is
there that much of a market for QL software in Europe or the rest of the world
BESIDES the US? I might have a mistaken impression that any QL computing done
nowadays is by dedicated hobbyists. I guess I've grown too accustomed to the
Linux/BSD world of open source projects that anybody can hitch their wagon to.
There seem to be a number of decent or really good QL programs that run great
on hardware that is arguably almost 20 years old, but it _appears_ to me that
the vast majority of it is commercial. Not terribly expensive, necessarily,
but certainly not open source where a project can perhaps evolve quicker with
more contributions.
I had hopes of porting some useful applications to QL. Or of even writing
them. I'm finding, after having only just recently purchased a QXL card and
setting up a box, that I _almost_ have to purchase a bit more software to do
any serious development on this box. I am also disheartened to realize that I
can't contribute directly to any products or projects currently underway.
I do see that there are still a number of companies and individuals selling
software and hardware to this day. I could assume, I guess, that this means
there's still a market, if only not in the US.
I would love to have an environment setup on the pQL (pseudo QL) box I have so
that I can compile _and_ edit BASIC and C/C++ programs and release them. Port
useful *nix userland utils where possible. I'd *REALLY* love to get ppp/tcp-ip
up and running on this box so I can put it on the net. My first project would
then be a port of thttpd or something similar. My biggest fear is that I'll
have to bootstrap the whole process, reinventing what someone has done
commercially for a box that's really just a hobby. :)
Mark
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