Hi One key point in an earlier reference:
"...Brooks made 300 pre-programmed (PIC) chips for people.." I'm sure I didn't get that exactly verbatim, but 300 is the number mentioned. We could debate endlessly weather the number is accurate or not, for the moment assume it's correct. The cost of the chips (programmed or otherwise) is and was trivial. Your menu decisions at lunch (small fires / large coke) cost you more than these chips. Cost was not an impediment to people getting parts. Availability of the chips was not a major issue in the early years. There was no mystery about who you asked. Brooks had the chips. He was easy to find on the internet. No major hunting was involved. The article is dated 1998. For the sake of this, say that Brooks was still active for 10 to 12 years after the article. That gets you to something like 25 to 30 chips a year. I'm sure it was not linear, but there's no way of knowing how non-linear it was. Based on my own junk box, I'd guess that if 30 chips went out, something less than 15 got powered up. I'm probably being overly optimistic at 50%. We now are at the ~15 year point after the article came out. I think it's a bit crazy to *expect* someone to be actively supporting a "< 15 a year" sort of charity 15 years later. If that's what someone wants to do as a hobby - fine. If his / her decision is to move on - that's also fine. Bob -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Kirkby Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 10:53 AM To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Brooks Shera On 25 March 2013 13:36, Jim Lux <[email protected]> wrote: > On 3/24/13 8:22 PM, Chris Albertson wrote: >> This is a perfect example of why people need to publish the source. >> Make it GPL or whatever. > > > That's a decision that the author gets to make. I've been on both the > supplier and consumer side of that aspect. Sometimes I've published source, > sometimes I haven't. There's a lot of factors involved, and the consumers > need to respect the author: only the author knows all of them. I've often wondered in there is a half-way house, for small projects like this, where one makes money from them, but where one would be happy to release the source code on ones death, or where one is sufficiently incapacitated to do anything with it. I could send the source to whoever wants it, but it would be useless without a decryption key. One gives the key to a wife, sibling or someone else so it could only be made available when that party agrees to make it available. To get around the possibility of an ex-wife deciding to get nasty, it could be done that there are two keys and both are necessary. A system like that would protect the author, but ensure that in the event of their death, the code is public. That license could be GPL, freeware of whatever else the author choses. I suspect Brooks Shera would have agreed to do something like that. Dave _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
