On Oct 26, 2:54pm, Ken Wolff wrote:
> Subject: Re: Missing Port Bits
>
> If I didn't keep trying to "improve" CT, it wouldn't break. However, I keep
> trying to do my best for everyone, and each and every change carries its own
> risk. Software which has a total market of several thousand copies cannot be
> sold for under $100 and fully supported. Either the market needs to be in
> the tens of thousands of copies range, or the price needs to be over $1,000.
> Should I withdraw the product from the market? CT now represents only a tiny
> fraction of our business and my partners urge me to abandon it altogether.
>
> - Ken
Abandoning the product certainly would be a solution for the on going
problems. It would also alleviate the support problems. Be a lot less
complaints, and quite a bit less traffic on the reflector. This could
be a good thing. Probably piss off a couple folks.
Another solution might be let the community figure out a list of "features"
they would be willing to live with for some time and reduce the updates
to only every couple years. An only a small set of features like a new
radio, dropping an old one, etc.
Another solution might be the tapping of other talent to help maintain
and upgrade the product so it is less of a one man show. Not sure how
the incentives would work on this one.
You do let some of the more vocal users beta test the software before
release, don't you? This might help.
Perhaps the feature addition schedule could be adjusted to where there
is less emotion generated at the time. But then the motovation would
probably be less to "check it out". i.e, make the release time May
instead of late September.
Over the years many nice features have been added to CT that have been
useful and that I enjoyed. The most recent feature that was added that
made me quite happy was support for the OMNI-V. The breaking the DVK
support made me less happy. (Which I have not verified, by the way). If
the DVK support is broken, well, 9.10a works and my OMNI-VI is happy
being an ICOM. I can wait to see if things get updated and in the mean
time continue contesting with what I have.
If it really gets bad, there is always paper and pencils. They still work,
don't they? Maybe I should check that out, perhaps a needed feature is
broken.
73, Jim, WA6SDM
jholly@cup.hp.com
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