Re: Autom8it nolonger free?

["Ian Lowe" <ian@xxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Hetherington" <mark.egroups@xxxxxxx>
> Ian Lowe wrote:
> > If this was indicated from the start, that's of course a very
> > different thing, and no-one would begrudge the author of
> > software some return for their efforts.  The only thing I
> > would say is that (almost) the same degree of control and
> > interaction can be achieved free of charge using the xPL
> > software in the field already, with more being developed as
> > time goes by.
>
> Couldn't this be said of pretty much all software from apps through
> games to the OS itself? Free during beta phase is not a new invention
> and had been running for sometime within software development. IIRC,
MS
> are still the only people that successfully charge beta testers for
> "public" testing.

Mark, what on earth are you talking about? You have cut out a chunk of my
post, and I'm left rather struggling to see what point you are trying to
make.

The only thing I can think, is that you have mistaken "xpl" for
"gpl". For
the sake of clarity, I'll make my point again:

I don't recall autom8it being described as a "free during beta, will
become
commercial" development. I was under the impression that development
of
plugins for autom8it was being undertaken as community work by UKHA
regulars, and the end product would be a free, grass roots developed
package.

If (as seems to be the case) it was clearly stated that autom8it was a
commercial product in development, with a free beta available, then I have
no issue, difficulty or problem with this. I'm happy for developers to make
some money from their products, and I'm sure most people would agree.

The only thing that would appear unacceptable to me, is for the product to
be described as free whilst people contribute their time in testing and
development, then re-badged as commercial whenever enough work has been
done
to justify it. This does not appear to have happened, so there is no
problem.

As an addendum, I pointed out that much of the functionality of Homeseer
and
Autom8it can be easily achieved using the software developed as part of the
xpl project ( www.xplhal.org )

I.