From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: August 10, 2012 4:09:53 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Macs and Science

Dear Malte;

I have been down the "Donation Ware" path before - it's just an excuse not to pay people for their efforts and it does not work as a sustainable model.

I produced a Video Capture and Editing package named "My Vid Cap" on the Mac - right before Steve came back and Apple still had a 10% world wide market share. I was one of the first ones whom could do multi gigabyte Video recording on the Mac - including spanning multiple hard drives. I had 50,000 + downloads from my web site alone - and tens of thousands of other downloads from other web sites hosting it without my permission - but were generating revenue from advertising. I also had unscrupulous companies like MacWorld and others whom were including it on the CD they shipped with each magazine - which was against the "license agreement" which required my permission in Writing to do such a thing.  It was recommended by Adobe as a test app in case your Video Digitizing hardware did not work with Premier - and if it worked and theirs did not - they would look into it as a Bug - that's how reliable it was.

When I stopped it being donation ware (never had a single donation), and charged $30 per copy - I made about 20 sales. I just about had to hire a lawyer to get the other web sites like Macworld from illegally distributing the donation ware copies - as wells as companies selling Video hardware that were including that version on CD with their software. That is how the public and companies treat donation ware - you have no rights.

So that is why I would NEVER EVER do open source or release a product without keys. This is how the real world works - you get screwed over. In Academia where you you get large amounts of your funding from Government  - it's likely it's a requirement that the source code goes with it - but they get funded regardless if the software works or not. People writing software for a living don't have that luxury or backing.

This is why I am vehemently opposed to Open Source or Donation ware.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle

On 10-Aug-12, at 3:24 PM, maltetewes wrote:

Dear Milton,

I've been quickly catching up with these recent mails about the future of Astro IIDC, and was about to ask why you don't consider releasing the project under GPL or similar, and prominently invite people to donate.

My points were :

- extrapolating from my amateur astronomy pals, I think that this could bring in more money then the 500$ golden keys. Everyone willing  to buy a golden key to support you can still make a big donation, and those who want to donate less can also do it ... and use and *promote* the software. Clearly I don't claim any experience with this, just my thoughts.

- Astro IIDC would not immediately be filed as "abandonware" at first sight. On the contrary : combined with some PR efforts by its users, an open source release could bring a popularity boom.

Then I found your "microwave" post, which closes this discussion :)

Of course I understant that you might have some code/dependencies in there that you still want to develop and sell.

I thought I would write this anyway. I do believe in open source, especially in science, were results should always be reproducible. Related to our hobby : the community that worked and works on the theory and applications of wavelet transforms give an excellent example. They release demo code with nearly every publication. Also data reduction pipelines for professional telescopes around the world virtually all rely on open source libraries and run on open source OSes. Many scientists use Apple laptops precisely because UNIX gives them access to this command line / X window world, yet still the "Mac" side allows them to prepare their keynote presentations.

Now this is a completely different situation, and it doesn't pay your bills. Just wanted to share a positive opinion on open source.

I wish you plenty of success for your post-AstroIIDC business, and I'll try to advertise the sotware in any case.

Cheers,

Malte