I have taken my asbestos suit out, had it dry cleaned, and refitted:
Bob Shomler wrote:
>> Either Ed has stopped announcing new releases of Vuescan or not all
the mail
>> is getting through. Visited his site today and found that version
7.03 is
>> now available.
>>
>> Dale
>
>
> He may not be announcing new releases on the list. In other
correspondence he wrote a few days ago
"I'm not on this [filmscanner] mailing list any more - too many
off-topic postings."
>
> --
> Bob Shomler
>
I find that very interesting, if accurate. Especially after he
encouraged the flood of this exact group with literally hundreds, if not
thousands, of messages regarding his Vuescan product. He was very
willing to use this group to advance his product sales and acquire free
public input of valuable suggestions that otherwise he would have had to
pay consultants for and free beta testing.
I don't discount the amount of time he spends on this project, but he
does pocket $40 US per sale, and I'm sure he is doing well with product
sales. Eventually, he will sell this product to a major supplier, or
license it for major money. That's great for him. It seems like a good
or growing product, but he has received plenty of repayment for whatever
energy has gone into being on this list though said beta testing and
think-tank sessions.
To simply abandon his paying public on this group, which I imagine is
not small, based upon the feedback he generated concerning improvements,
shows a lack of regard for them, especially without making an
announcement of this, so they weren't whistling in the wind, thinking
they were still communicating with him. Even if he no longer reads this
group, and chose to announce that and supplied another method of
communications with him, he could still provide information of updates
here quite easily.
The other side of this equation is that he took a lot of heat off the
scanner manufacturers who have been producing weak or literally
defective software which they have an obligation to improve the quality
of, which might explain the ease he has in receiving advance sample
product from companies like Nikon. If Nikon likes it so much, they
should include the product as an alternative to their own, included in
the price of their scanner.
I have referred hundreds of people to his software as a potential
alternative, including a number of local local scanner dealers, so I am
not grinding any axes here. But just imagine what Linux would have
looked like, had each coder/contributor required payment.
Socialistically yours,
Art
