As one who has developed a classic-related program, I can say that I can understand Dave's side. The Altair32 project generally receives mostly positive feedback with a sprinkling of "wish list" items and a one-off rant. I've also had only one person complain about the licensing (actually, the lack thereof) which I largely ignored because after I investigated all of the "open" licensing types and couldn't come up with one I liked and that fit how the code has developed through outside contributions. Feedback has even resulted in several contributors to the project, a few of whom lurk on this list. I will say that the times I've received well-intentioned criticism I do take it personally because I've poured so much effort into the project. Then, I step back and say that it's not personal, it's just comments on the product. Within the criticism there is a different point of view and if it ultimately results in a better product, then that's good. Do you think Bill Gates loses sleep at night because people complain about Windows? No, but it drives Microsoft to at least attempt to improve the product (even if they don't succeed). The code I've written could be considered godawful ugly by an experienced programmer, but it works. I felt that getting the program and the code out there for people to use and modify was more important than how it looked. Maybe that's a na?ve way to look at it; I don't know. Rich -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Teo Zenios Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 9:27 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: ImageDisk project is canceled This thread is like a soap opera. If you offer to program a utility for the "comunity" you should expect a decent amount of email in reply that runs from praise to ridicule. People will be bugging you to add features you probably dont have time for. Others will want to see the sourcecode because they want to see how it is done, to take the guts and modify the interface, just to have it, or maybe even to modify and sell. You should think about what you are getting into before going public. The reason there are not alot of multi platform disk archivers is because the person doing the programming on their own gets bored with the project, or quits in the middle of it when somebody gets on their nerves. The tools I use for backing up and restoring disk images are platform dependant and that is fine with me. I find groups of programmers for specific platforms tend to finish their utilities because they need them for their hobby, and if one person loses motivation another takes his place. I am not criticising anybody for attempting to go it alone, but it is easy for the developer to get a bruised ego because they take any criticism personally while a team of developers (with a smaller platform specific project) tend to ignore the chatter and turn out a project they are happy with. There are pitfalls to going public with a project, if being in the spotlight and everything associated with that is not your thing then think twice about going public in the first place.