05-12-2023, 10:39 PM
There's something that Ultraman said that applies for many people: the program should be free unless it does something special. If what the program does isn't "unique" enough then it better be the best at what it does. For as low as 3USD LOL.
Because I came from a music technology forum where there is a group of people chasing a developer that created a DAW for them, and 10 years at least have passed that developer hasn't kept up with technology as was expected. A person usually expects support "forever" for 40USD or something else considered a small amount of money to some people.
Then I have seen at least one person becoming put off very much that he/she requested something done to the QB64 IDE. He/she appeared offended when I said he/she should fork this project and come up with it in his/her own time. Otherwise this programming system could be used at no charge. Just as it is, the source code could be downloaded and then whoever knows how to program could get started modifying things to his/her taste, to try to make it better in his/her opinion. Now I'm not sure about the licensing but he/she could even offer the result for download, and maybe could even force people to pay for it, but it's not ethical.
Imagine if this programming system had to be bought since Galleon developed it. Before it hit v1, QB64 used to have an auto-update feature. If it had costed money, the moment that feature broke people would have been pecking on him LOL until it were fixed. For money this programming system might have had to cover 100% of the keywords on Linux and MacOS as well as Windows. For money, much more than a tutorial would have had to exist for GUI programming, for dot-web server or workstation correspondence, and for three-dimensional graphics programming for games and for science. For money, and how the product stands now, people would begin asking where's the debugger. "That's not a debugger LOL, I mean like in QuickBASIC, and I could even modify the line there somewhere and don't have to recompile it." Then other things like incremental compilation, just-in-time, debug net client, full portable-phone support and/or fusion with QBJS... it could get very ugly.
There's this music-creation program I really should be using more often, called Sunvox done by a Russian. He was a real music lover. He used to ask for 15USD for a ZIP file which contained Windows, MacOS, Linux, PalmOS and other editions for operating systems for portable devices. After a whole he lost heart with doing that and therefore offered the program for free except the iOS version. At the moment he set it free, he was pretty much the only developer of the program. Although fast forward to Sunvox v2 and he has received coding assistance but they're under no illusion to force people to pay again. I had the third release of the program or so after it was set free. It had a couple of serious bugs. One machine caused the program to hang after using it in the song for long enough. Another bug was a "mutex lock" when an attempt was made to use a web browser to look at the program's documentation in HTML format. People are less sympathetic if the product asked money from them, than if the product were free since first release, if the developer had been working overtime to squash the bugs.
It's OK to demand a quality product for money. But some people want to carry it to another level like a vendetta or a life lesson. Because we are surrounded by dishonesty and distrust, even free software gets debunked all the time. Heck, right now I am reinstalling another Linux distro on the slow internal HDD of my ageing laptop because one of them crapped out on me after I did the full system update, and I don't care to troubleshoot it.
Sorry this is TL;DR. I had a power outage while I was typing up this message. It's been a while LOL.
Because I came from a music technology forum where there is a group of people chasing a developer that created a DAW for them, and 10 years at least have passed that developer hasn't kept up with technology as was expected. A person usually expects support "forever" for 40USD or something else considered a small amount of money to some people.
Then I have seen at least one person becoming put off very much that he/she requested something done to the QB64 IDE. He/she appeared offended when I said he/she should fork this project and come up with it in his/her own time. Otherwise this programming system could be used at no charge. Just as it is, the source code could be downloaded and then whoever knows how to program could get started modifying things to his/her taste, to try to make it better in his/her opinion. Now I'm not sure about the licensing but he/she could even offer the result for download, and maybe could even force people to pay for it, but it's not ethical.
Imagine if this programming system had to be bought since Galleon developed it. Before it hit v1, QB64 used to have an auto-update feature. If it had costed money, the moment that feature broke people would have been pecking on him LOL until it were fixed. For money this programming system might have had to cover 100% of the keywords on Linux and MacOS as well as Windows. For money, much more than a tutorial would have had to exist for GUI programming, for dot-web server or workstation correspondence, and for three-dimensional graphics programming for games and for science. For money, and how the product stands now, people would begin asking where's the debugger. "That's not a debugger LOL, I mean like in QuickBASIC, and I could even modify the line there somewhere and don't have to recompile it." Then other things like incremental compilation, just-in-time, debug net client, full portable-phone support and/or fusion with QBJS... it could get very ugly.
There's this music-creation program I really should be using more often, called Sunvox done by a Russian. He was a real music lover. He used to ask for 15USD for a ZIP file which contained Windows, MacOS, Linux, PalmOS and other editions for operating systems for portable devices. After a whole he lost heart with doing that and therefore offered the program for free except the iOS version. At the moment he set it free, he was pretty much the only developer of the program. Although fast forward to Sunvox v2 and he has received coding assistance but they're under no illusion to force people to pay again. I had the third release of the program or so after it was set free. It had a couple of serious bugs. One machine caused the program to hang after using it in the song for long enough. Another bug was a "mutex lock" when an attempt was made to use a web browser to look at the program's documentation in HTML format. People are less sympathetic if the product asked money from them, than if the product were free since first release, if the developer had been working overtime to squash the bugs.
It's OK to demand a quality product for money. But some people want to carry it to another level like a vendetta or a life lesson. Because we are surrounded by dishonesty and distrust, even free software gets debunked all the time. Heck, right now I am reinstalling another Linux distro on the slow internal HDD of my ageing laptop because one of them crapped out on me after I did the full system update, and I don't care to troubleshoot it.
Sorry this is TL;DR. I had a power outage while I was typing up this message. It's been a while LOL.