[RTTY] Soundcard and Serial ports

[Rick Ruhl]

Dave.

Back when you worked for Rational though, it was in a commercial market and
on the leading edge of development too, you didn't have much shareware and
freeware to compete with. I was at Software Link then and it was an entirely
difference universe and market than ham radio.

In fact Rational Rose (and then after you guys bought Visual Test) made IBM
realized how valuable the tools were and then bought Rational.

Your freeware stuff is some of the best out there, commercial or not, by
far.  In fact, Im sure it would easily sell on the open market for
$100-$200, but there is crappier freeware and shareware out there written by
hams who have no clue about software development, and hams would rather use
that because it's FREE, than even your good stuff, much less quality
commercial software.  

There is also a mentality in our small industry that if you're a ham, you
shouldn't charge other hams for software. That's nuts. Who else but a
software developer who is a ham that would know the needs of what hams want
and need in ham radio.

But what I think freeware does is take away from possible good products by
taking market share away.  The ham market is a cottage market, that there is
no way development companies can hire good coders, testers, QA, doc and
support people. This means that it costs JOBS and god knows we need in this
economy, we need to create jobs.

And this would means jobs for hams in the ham industry.

Rick - W4PC


-----Original Message-----
From: rtty-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:rtty-bounces at contesting.com] On
Behalf Of Dave AA6YQ
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2009 3:27 PM
To: rtty at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [RTTY] Soundcard and Serial ports

>>>AA6YQ comments below


To get a true good RTTY TU, you need external hardware, like Joe was talking
about, but because hams found a way to make these work in a non-standard
mode, then it's almost impossible for hardware people to do good, quality
work and make a profit.  (It's the same with software people, some of us try
to make a living with software).

>>>Either a product provides enough differential value to attract buyers
over free alternatives, or it doesn't. Free software definitely raises the
bar for commercial alternatives -- a good thing, IMHO.

     73,

         Dave, AA6YQ