Hi Andrew, thank you for your response I appreciate it greatly,
Hi Jason,
As ever you seem to always take an aggressive stance whenever you post something relating to Dianemo. You seem to have an inherent dislike for anything we do or say.
Yes I have been a little agressive, I will tone that down as it is not helpfull. It is not that I have an inherent dislike of what you do or say, in fact I like your product (or what I know of it) and have respect for you, if I didn't non of this would matter to me. Hopefully I can explain my position through this response.
All I will say is that we've been involved with LinuxMCE as individuals, and as a company since the very moment this forum was created.
I knew CHT. Who are you now? What are you now? Who is "we" now? You have changed your addresses to a personal consulting address, not your CHT address. Can you explain to me/others what the current position you hold is and what the company you currently represent? CHT or some consulting company or both? What is your consulting company's relation to CHT? I am at a complete loss as to *whom* you actually represent now.
I believe we have demonstrated to everyone over the years here that we are honest and honourable, and we do what we say. We're not perfect of course, but I believe people know that we always strive to do the right 'thing' - you can look through the forums and see that I believe.
Usually you are honest and honourable. I understand you have commercial interests and I will pull up specific references from the forum here if you require it, our search sucks and that will take more time than I have at the moment, let me know and I will gladly pull specific references for you. You have *mostly* supported your customers extremely well, with exceptions. Uplink *does* provide some bug fixes to LinuxMCE as he encounters those in the core architecture, this is rare but we are all very, very thankful for that.
You have not always supported all of your clients. If you search the forum you will find an example of a client that have gone unanswered for weeks and left to 'figure it out on there own'. In another case you dropped support for a method of using portions of your system, and expressed to your client that 'They could create their own user interface to replace the feature you had removed'. This is very poor form in my opinion and although you do quite well supporting most of your clients this stands out as an utter embarassment. I would be very concerned about what features you may deprecate/obsolete without support in the future.
I believe we have demonstrated to everyone over the years here that we are honest and honourable, and we do what we say. We're not perfect of course, but I believe people know that we always strive to do the right 'thing' - you can look through the forums and see that I believe.
I agree that you go out of your way to assist most of your clients. I do not agree that you have been an entirely supportive member of the LinuxMCE community. There are a few points to support this, the first is: You have promised to push features to LMCE in the past and then NOT done that. This is important to me in regards to your current promise to release Dianemo RPi2 Base entirely GPL. Besides that, you have promised code would be released to the community as GPL code for some features or enhancements in the past and this has not happened in all cases. Don't get me wrong, some things have been pushed into LMCE (weborbiter & web rpc come to mind immediately.) But the upnp code that you promised arrived neither in LMCE nor in GPL code as you promised. Promising GPL code and not delivering it when the code is finished, regardless of compatibility, is *really* bad form in my books, a lot of community users were counting on you and you did not come through. I know Dianemo handles some things differently (including some methods of media delivery), but you said the code would be released as GPL. It has not been. This is very dissappointing from an OSS standpoint and, moreso, from your current development position of suggesting you are *about* to release some GPL code. The community may have been able to port the code to LinuxMCE if you had released it.
You wrote;
The Dianemo-Rpi2 Developer Forum will be hosted on our servers and not here. Yes developers who want to participate in our Dianemo-Rpi2 Developer forum will need to subscribe. As we will not be charging for a license to use Dianemo-Rpi2 Base this is how we will generate revenue from Dianemo-Rpi2. Developers will get access to our direct support and participation, our Plugin library and help/support with any Plugin code they are developing themselves.
Sounds interesting. Thank you for clarifying that your paid support is not through the free LinuxMCE forum. I am more that certain that donations would still be appreciated to help the community continue to support running the LinuxMCE servers.
We think this arrangement will work well for all concerned. Anyone will be able to download Dianemo-Rpi2 base and install it for free - and get a working system from it too. These people will be the majority of the user base, ordinary users who just want to get a basic system working. However if any of those ordinary users wish to dig a little deeper into Dianemo-Rpi2 then they can subscribe to our Forum and get access to all its resources - for about $96 USD per year. So an ordinary user might subscribe for a year simply while they were getting their system in shape. They can cancel their subscription after a year, and never pay us another cent, and they can keep and use any Plugins they downloaded from our library too. So in that scenario their system has cost them just $96.
Interesting again.
Alternatively that ordinary user could contact any of the 3rd part Developers who will be subscribers to our Forum and have them customise their Dianemo-Rpi2 system for them - that would be an arrangement between them and we would not be involved in anyway.
Again, interesting. Creating a developer network is a wonderful way to distribute the software further than just you can. Great idea!
Your wrote;
I can't see anything shady at all. We are still evolving our plans, but anyone reading this or that has had any dealings with us, or me, will know we are in no way 'shady'. As I said above the Dianemo-Rpi2 Developer Forum will be hosted on our servers and not here. Anyone who purchases a Dianemo-Rpi2 Preview license currently will get a perpetual membership (at zero cost) to our Dianemo-Rpi2 Developer Forum when it goes live. This is what their payment is really for as Dianemo-Rpi2 Base will be free and available to anyone.
Thank you, that clarifies things further. My 'shady' comment is in regards to your soliciting funds without even a licensing agreement, or a product. That is 'shady' imho.
Dianemo X86 will be licensed as it is now (ie a one time license fee) and support will continue to be located here for software only customers as now, as there will continue to be a considerable commonality of code between Dianemo X86 & LinuxMCE.
Andy
I think it is wonderful that you will continue to support clients through the LinuxMCE forum! My issue was with you insinuating that 'paid' support would be through the LMCE forum. Clarity is good.
Andrew, Dianemo is built on GPL code, all plug-ins and other code created using DCEGen templates would also be GPL'd. There are some pieces of Dianemo that were not created with DCEGen, and also not modifications of existing code. However, much of the code is based on GPL'd Pluto code or templates created with DCEGen, making them also GPL'd.
Andrew you alienated the LinuxMCE community by launching a Kickstarter campaign to 'GPL' code that is vastly already GPL code. You did not communicate with the LinuxMCE developers (at all) about your intentions, that you were contemplating such a maneuver, or to seek assistance. Andrew, Dianemo is to LMCE like Android is to the Linux kernel, a fork; one that could be brought back into mainline with some work. You have demonstrated clearly through these actions that you do not wish to work with the LinuxMCE community. I am severely dissappointed in that.
Andrew a couple years ago (previous to myself being a primary developer) a LinuxMCE policy was created in relation to devices or items that persons were claiming to be LinuxMCE compatible. The jist of it is that it would be the LinuxMCE developer community that would decide to grant a LinuxMCE compatible description to a device, and the ability to use the logo, or not. You have commercially released a product (an rpi cec device iirc) that you claim to be compatible with LinuxMCE. No LinuxMCE developer has ever evaluated your product, nor have you ever provided a Device Template (or other driver) that would make your device compatible with LinuxMCE. I take serious offence to your assumption that you do not have to abide by the same requirements and responsibilities of any other developer whom wishes to produce a stand-alone product and claim it is LinuxMCE compatible. I still maintain that the product in question is *not* compatible with LinuxMCE. It *could* be, but no effort has been expended to make that happen. Again, there has been no contact with LinuxMCE developers for the right to claim LinuxMCE compatible.
Andrew, you don't know me well but I am one of the primary developers of LinuxMCE, and I have been for a few years now. You are not involved in IRC chats with LinuxMCE developers so you would not really have that knowledge. You try very hard to plug Dianemo in the forums (and I would not fault you for this except...) You took over the non-commerial posting 'Users' section for nearly 2wks with posts before moving back to the Marketplace section where all commercial posts are required to be, that was completely ignorant of the community and not indicative of someone whom is a part of it. As a volunteer developer, that spends a significant amount of time trying to help users and further LinuxMCE, your actions seem predatory and it is unfortunate that those actions have created that perception to me. It would be great if you re-joined the LinuxMCE developer community and worked with us.
I hope that I have explained my position to you and the (now long) history that has created that position. I *do* respect you greatly Andrew, you work very hard and seem dedicated. I would like the community to build back up from both sides. To that end:
Since your intention is to release the Dianemo RPi2 code as GPL and since Dianemo is already vastly GPL code: I am formally asking you to 'make available' (and continue to make available) all Dianemo x86 code based on GPL'd code, modified from GPL'd code or created with a DCEGen template (which creates GPL'd code). Then let's talk as a community about how we can move forward together. That, imho, would benefit all parties.
Thank you Andrew, these are my feelings and perceptions as a consumer and developer. In no way do my opinions represent any other LinuxMCE developer. I sincerely hope that my responses and explanations of my position are constructive for discussion.
Jason
