From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: August 8, 2012 11:14:09 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Macs and Science

Hi John;

On 7-Aug-12, at 9:59 PM, John Bacus wrote:

I appreciate the difficulties of keeping Astro IIDC going— I'm in the software business myself, working on an application for Mac OS X. I just bought my first copy of Astro IIDC a few short weeks ago and was unable to find anything better on the market. Pity to see an end so soon. The economics of this business model are tough, though. No question about it. I can't imagine that amateur CCD astrophotography on Mac OS X is a huge market in even the best of times.

About half or more of our sales came from Microscopy, medical research and other disciplines. Astrophotography has become less a revenue source - even though the bulk of my work was adding features for it.

I talked to some our Microscopy clients on several occasions about what feature they need and Astro IIDC hits most of them . Where it doesn't is in things like movable microscope stages or focus and control of other esoteric  devices. It's the same problem as with astronomy - the devices have proprietary control codes - and the manufacturer has to provide those and all their notes so we can interface with it. Most won't do that for the Mac as they (surprise surprise) do not see a market there. And then there is the testing of those features too - which can be an exasperating process when done remotely.

Milton: any chance we could convince you to open your source before shutting down for good? Maybe if we're able to hustle up enough license sales for the next three months of your time? Maybe you know the history of Blender?

Interesting read - thanks for the Blender Link.

I do not believe in "Open Source" - never have and never will. I do not use "Open Source" projects or code bases ever - in many cases the code has been stolen from other sources.

All "Open Source" does is compete  (poorly from a support / features perspective) with people and companies that are trying to earn a living and provide services for fees.

I would rather delete all my back up copies, put the final  Astro IIDC source code on a CD and then microwave the CD than offer it to "Open Source".

Besides, the Astro IIDC source code does have a lot of value. The USB 2 code could be moved to Android tablets (I already did a preliminary code scoping study on that) and there is a tonne of SSE3 and Altivec code for doing real time processing - as well as all the multi threading code and the fact I can create movies from scratch without involving Apple APIs at all. So short of selling the source code, it's not ever going to be "Open Sourced".

Alternately, would you be willing to issue a "golden key" that at least leaves Astro IIDC usable for folks who buy new cameras/computers in the next year or so? Again, perhaps if we are able to support three more months of your development effort?

I am looking into a "golden key" situation. It will be the last thing I do before shutting down - as there is no way to control it.  I really do not want to leave Astro IIDC "open" as that potentially could hurt another company that may want to develop a similar supported / evolving product. Ending it cleanly may be better going forward.

I probably already know the counterarguments to the above ideas, but it is worth asking ;-) If all else fails, I'm hiring talented Mac OS X developers. There are precious few folks in the world who have proven able to ship and maintain a complex app like yours for as long as you have.

Interesting. I haven't worked with GPS and mapping coordinate data since my GIS days. I'll definitely keep it in mind.

In any case, I have to get back at finishing off the documentation so I can put a near golden .dmg out for this weekend.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle