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. 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 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 have tried to respond to your comments below;
Your wrote;
Planning phase of the license but pay us now... Right. I've heard that before. Can you elaborate on which (exactly) portions of your release will be GPL and what capabilities the 'base' Dianemo-Rpi2 includes? This is very ambiguous and leaves room for you to decide, after you have solicited monies from people, which portions you may release as GPL and which not. Since the majority of the base of the Dianemo system is GPL (as LinuxMCE is) I'm not sure what the difference is and when/if you intend to provide source for those GPL portions.
Dianemo-Rpi2 Base is the whole system and source code will be provided under the GPL.
You wrote;
Do 'developers' get access to source code that non-'developers' would not have access to?
If you subscribe to our proposed Dianemo-Rpi2 Developer Subscription site then yes you will get access to source code that is not available to non-subscribers. But that source code will only be for the Plugin extensions we provide as part of the subscription. The plugins we provide to subscribers (the way to extend the base system with custom code) will likely be GPL too - we are still considering this. But in any case source code will be provided to subscribers for our Plugins.
You wrote;
I'm sorry. Did I just read that correctly. People will have to pay for support through this 'free' forum? WTF? I do not agree with this myself. Andrew do you intend to sponsor the forums and pay for the running of the forum to help with your 'paid' support that you will provide?
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.
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.
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.
Your wrote;
I really love what you're doing (from a commercial standpoint). But to do it on the back of OSS and a free support forum appears shady to me.
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.
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