[ct-user] A Newbie's question

[Dick Dievendorff]

I'll offer an opinion or two.  I write software for a living, and I've used
several contest logging programs for about 8 years.

1) Writing great software is hard work.  Supporting people with widely
varying skill levels is even harder work.

2)  The amateur radio community isn't large enough to make any real money
(enough to make a living, or enough to entince someone away from a "real"
software job).  You just can't sell enough copies to make it worthwhile. If
you're going to bust your butt working a lot of strange hours, it's easier
explaining it to your XYL if you're paying the bills and creating a future
for your family.  Working strange and long hours year after year to give the
stuff away cheap is hard to explain to your wife, kids, dog, and even
sometimes your  mirror.

3) The common denominator is PC DOS.  Even the business community is largely
still mostly on PC DOS with Windows 3.1.  Granted all new machines have
32-bit multitasking operating systems on them, and that trend will continue,
but PC DOS compatibility is still extremely important.

If, hypothetically, you were to write some great 32-bit-only ham software,
there would be a very large group asking to have it revised to run on their
system (the 1 megabyte 80286 that runs CT or TRLOG just fine). And even
though it's arguably easier to write for the newer systems, those people who
want it to work on 16-bit machines would feel that they should pay less for
it.  They figure YOU should spend time revising your program to work on
their machine rather than them buying a current machine.  And when they do
upgrade, they'll want the 32-bit version.  For free. After all, they bought
the 16-bit version.

3) To send good smooth morse code, you probably need to mess with the PC
clock.  I'm not an expert in the techniques, but I think it is difficult to
provide smooth speed changes (from 22 to 23 to 24 WPM) and "accurate" morse
code with a clock as coarse-grained as the standard-rate PC time-of-day
clock.  So I suspect CT and its peers run the clock at a higher speeds.
Most multitasking OSs won't let you mess with the hardware unless you
install a device driver, and talking Joe Ham through the details of device
driver
installation isn't something I'd like to spend much time doing minutes
before a contest.

4) But a major reason is that to do a good contesting program you need to
really love contesting, and if you really love contesting you probably would
want to enter contests, not take all the phone calls from guys who decide a
half a day before the contest that they'd like to learn how to set up their
computer.  Sometimes this happens because stations are thrown
together at the last minute from a crew that meets for the first time on the
day.
And I do this all the time.  But would I like to be spending my
pre-contest hours working on my station or answering questions about IRQs
from one of my customers?

5) Hams can be a bit fast and loose with license agreements..  For every
paid copy of a contesting program out there I would suspect that there are
several others that the users have ahhh "deferred" payment for.  And of
course the author will get support calls from all users, whether or not
they've bothered to register their copy.

I heard once that the author of a very popular contesting program took tens
of calls EVERY DAY during contest season from people who thought they needed
his help.  That would be fun for a while to talk with your friends, but I
suspect it would get pretty old after a few years.  I know I and my wife
would tire of it.


I do not mean this as a flame.  It's not a bad question.  But maintaining an
application through all the various PC hardware, PC software, and radio
control permutations can become a life's work.  If you're going to take on
that sort of crusade, there ought to be a good living in it.  And there just
isn't one there with the kinds of numbers contesters represent.  Cheap
software is cheap because you sell many thousands of copies.  If there are
relatively few purchasers, expect to pay thousands of dollars for a
professionally written and supported application.

73 de Dick, K6KR
k6kr@contesting.com





-----Original Message-----
From: AP2TJ - Tariq <ap2tj@paknet2.ptc.pk>
To: ct-user@contesting.com <ct-user@contesting.com>
Date: Friday, October 31, 1997 9:20 AM
Subject: [ct-user] A Newbie's question


>OK, at the risk of flames/mailbombing, here goes:
>
>Why is the "Rolls-Royce/Cadillac/Mercedes" (your choice of car/country) of
>contesting software still not ported to a multitasking environment like
>Win95 and/or OS/2 or Linux? Any thought for the 000's (maybe millions) of
>poor 3rd World users like yours truly who do not have access to a
>PacketCluster and must rely on a single machine for a multitude of tasks
>like running CT, connecting to a WebCluster etc.etc.?
>
>In any case, why the fixation with DOS, which will disappear soon? If a
>multitasking  OS of choice, why not Win95 or Linux? Living in this day &
age
>why must CT stick to the 8088 era? At $ 80 a throw surely one can expect to
>get CT in the OS of choice, or am I wrong?
>
>73 de Tariq/AP2TJ.
>
>
>--
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>Administrative requests:  ct-user-REQUEST@contesting.com
>WWW:                      http://www.contesting.com/ct/
>Questions:                owner-ct-user@contesting.com
>







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