3 Mar
2012
3 Mar
'12
1:23 a.m.
Tony,
That's why I explained that it is. You can have a detailed doc for our
ingestion STREAM format and the complete source for the IPF decoder,
including our high performance bit accurate WD177x emulator. There are
even third party tools available working with it.
Don't reverse my words! I said absolutely nothing about free software. I
do like free software. I only outlined why being commercial is good for
the path we've chosen. We can even afford sending someone over, like we
did several times in the past, to help with setup and give a
comprehensive hands-on lesson. We also can afford donating free boards
and software to certain institutions because others subsidise them.
What I said was that someone that gets paid will help you solve your
problem and try to add whatever awkward format is needed to make you
happy. I see nothing evil in that, because there aren't many volunteers
around that will do this.
Hi Dave, so do I. now I think I understand the
issue. It's about the
(old) open source discussion and daring to ask for money. I really don't
It's partly that, but actually I think there's more to it.
Firstly, I think it is a very bad idea to archive someing in a format
which is not fully docuemtned. The fact that there's somehign around
_now_ that can read it does not mean there will be soemthing aroudn in 50
years time that can read it. At least if you know the archive format
then you have a chance of creatign somethign to make sense of it.
Seocndly, these disk readers are, or at least should be, very verstile
devices. I know that the FPGA code for the Diskferret is available, so if
you want to modify it (at your own risk, of course) to read some other
type of disk then you can do so.
That's why we store raw flux transitions. Even if no sector decoder
matches, you can still read it at the lowest level. You even don't have
to modify or change anything.
And thirdly, there;'s the question of support. I've had_much_ better
support -every time -- from the authors of free software than from
commerical software companies. This may be becuase I am often talkign to
the guy who wrote hte code in the former case. It may be becuase they
genuinely care.
You obviously never worked with me or anyone else in our organisation.
But obviously the fact that we are commercial qualifies you to make any
assumption regarding my (our) work ethics. Would it be fair to say all
open source is crap because the tool I relied on has been discontinued?
Why would any assumption qualify you to criticize what we do? What you
say is: A green man cheated me. All green men will cheat. Note that
green was chosen on purpose. If anyone reading this is green please
accept my apologies.
Many customers work directly with our head of development for very
specific problems and usually we deliver solutions pretty quickly in a
couple of hours or days.
Apart from that we even publish the board schematics. You could build
your own board and use our software for free which means I don't get a
single cent from you yet I would still try to support you if possible.
How many companies would do that?
> feel
like arguing against that. What I know is that people deliver good
> work when they are motivated. I see no evil in the fact that people get
> paid because this can be a very good motivation. It also enables you to
> spend money for things that make the product better.You also can spend
> the money to train programmers so they use latest techniques and don't
I
think that's one of the msot insulting things against all the excellent
free software uthors that I have ever read. Are youy seriosuly claiming
that a program like gcc is no good becuase it's free and that the
programmers who wrote it are clueless and not motivated? [No, gcc is not
perfect. But it's better than several commercial C compilers I've been
forced to use]. Quite simply if that's your attidude I do not wish
to do business with you.
Again, you never worked with us. How insulted would you feel if someone
judged about you in public, without ever having worked with you?