2 Nov
2011
2 Nov
'11
5:02 p.m.
Mouse wrote:
I sent them mail saying "I would want
documentatino on how to talk to
the hardware, because your GUI will not be suitable for me" (any UI
that's suitable to most of pretty much any market has an excellent
chance of being somewhere between unpleasant and unsable for me).
Well, since I wrote the user interface for KryoFlux, I'd be very
interested in what would work for you, even if you don't intend to use
whatever changes we might make.
The GUI was designed to be extremely easy to use, even for
non-technical people such as those in libraries and archives. There
are advanced features, but they are mostly hidden unless specifically
wanted. I think it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. Some
examples:
http://www.softpres.org/kryoflux:ui:stream-plot
http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=262
As it happens, even though I wrote the graphical user interface, I
didn't need to know anything about how to talk to the hardware. The
GUI just uses the existing software supplied. Anyone could have done
it really.
Document it enough I can write my own software to
drive it, and I might
be interested in the hardware. I will not be interested in
undocumented hardware and, as mentioned above, I will not be interested
in the software (unless it's open sourced, and then only insofar as it
forms documentation on how to talk to the hardware).
That is fair enough. If it is not suitable for you, it's just not. We
do have the stream file/protocol documented, which is the main
complicated part: http://www.softpres.org/kryoflux:stream
It would be nice to document completely as you want, but we have very
limited resources, and unless there is much demand for something, we
would find it hard to prioritise it. I think you might agree that your
requirement is a little unusual... :)
Kieron
4 Nov
4 Nov
12:32 p.m.
On 11/02/2011 05:02 PM, Kieron Wilkinson wrote:
It would be nice to document completely as you want,
but we have very
limited resources, and unless there is much demand for something, we
would find it hard to prioritise it. I think you might agree that your
requirement is a little unusual... :) Kieron
Even more of a reason to document the hardware and open source some of
the software. If you do that, the community will help and support your
hardware and will create drivers for both the hardware as well as
provide conversion tools for file systems and low level formats.. Hell,
you should setup an SVN server and accept submissions.
Stick to selling the hardware and make that the profit center. The more
formats it supports, the more host systems it supports, and the more
capabilities it has, the more interest you'll generate, the more kits
you'll sell. It's not rocket science, and you won't have to spend tons
of time wring up code that others would be happy to, or worse have to
hire others to do it and cut into your profit margins each time someone
asks for a new file system or low level format.
Build something useful and open instead of locked down and useful only
in a very narrow sense.
7:04 p.m.
On 4 Nov 2011, at 16:32, Ray Arachelian wrote:
Even more of a reason to document the hardware and
open source some of
the software. If you do that, the community will help and support your
hardware and will create drivers for both the hardware as well as
provide conversion tools for file systems and low level formats.. Hell,
you should setup an SVN server and accept submissions.
The hardware is a standard piece of kit really. It's basically an ARM dev board with
some bits and bobs and a drive interface.
I definitely sympathise with people, particularly here, who would want to see and play
with the guts of the KryoFlux software. However, the software is what makes us money to
fund our preservation efforts at SPS. Well, more than the personal edition anyway, so it
is a much harder decision for us. We don't see any other way to fund that work, and it
is so important...
I definitely agree about documenting the firmware interface though.
Stick to selling the hardware and make that the profit
center. The more
As mentioned before. There isn't really any money in hardware without making it far
too expensive. We definitely wanted it to be under 100 EUR (the basic edition is 90 EUR),
and we can only do that by selling it near cost. The commercial licenses we provide are
for the software.
Also, this way, you can get KryoFlux for free by building a board yourself (okay, the cost
of the components).
of time wring up code that others would be happy to,
or worse have to
hire others to do it and cut into your profit margins each time someone
asks for a new file system or low level format.
Not really needed for that. The file format for the raw data is open, so people can (and
have) built their own tools and converters. If you can get the raw data and a good
selection of sector image output (and more being added all the time), that seems to me to
solve all normal usage.
Build something useful and open instead of locked down
and useful only
in a very narrow sense.
The only reason I can think of people needing the code is to tinker (which is very nice I
admit, but not really a "need" surely?). Are there other uses you are thinking
of?
Kieron
9 p.m.
I may be dense today, but after digging through the kryoflux.org site I'm
not having any luck finding the schematic.
5 Nov
5 Nov
4:58 p.m.
The only reason I can think of people needing the code
is to tinker
which is very nice I admit, but not really a "need" surely?). Are there
other uses you are thinking of? >
Nobody _needs_ a disk archiver. In fact it's quite possible to exist
without any computers at all (not that I'd want to).
More seriously, the reasons for wanting source code are many and varied.
Among them are :
To modify (call it 'tinker' if you like to make the user interface more
useful for you, and a feature you've not throught of, etc
To modify it to run on some hardware (or operating system) that you don;t
support
To understand how the thing works, either to design/write your own verion
or to understand how the data on the disk was wencoded in the first
place as an aid to understnadign and repairing the disk controlelr in the
classic computer
To ensrue the program is not doing anything malicious. OK, I don't
believe that _you_ would add some malicious 'feature', but equally I'd
like to be able to check
To 'future-proof' it. To be sure the file formats are really going to be
useful in the future, to be able to modify the software ot run on some
machine that doesn't exist at the moment, and so on.
It's your product, you can distribute it how you like. And at the moment
I couldn't use it anyway. But I can assure you that if I ever do decide
to get a comptuer that could support such a device, I would choose the
DiskFerret over this one, simply due to the availability of source code.
-tony
4643
days inactive
4646
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4 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
geoffr＠zipcon.net -
kieron.wilkinson＠gmail.com -
lists＠softpres.org -
ray＠arachelian.com