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| A word about LEDBlinky… |
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| headkaze:
--- Quote from: Vanguard on May 03, 2010, 10:43:43 am ---This seems a little lame to me considering the amount of time and effort that was put into the drivers and SDK for the LEDWiz. LEDBlinky wouldn't exist without the FREE contributions of other members. You're essentially make money off other peoples work. While the driver for the LEDWiz is not terribly complex, hundreds of hours went into the debugging and devising workarounds for Nvidia USB chipset issues that made the LEDWiz flakey at best on those chipsets. LEDBlinky is a cool product but relies on the free work that has been done by others. Just my two cents. --- End quote --- It's not lame at all! Arzoo has put a tonne of work into LEDBlinky and I think he deserves to get something back for it. I have given Arzoo permission to use my UltraStik and UHID/PacDrive dll's which he didn't really need to do as I made an agreement with UltraStik to make them freely available (apart from UltraStik.dll which has never been released to the public) It's clear to me you're MikeQ so why not just disclose that in the first place? I know you were quite jaded because of all the work you had done on LEDWiz.dll and got nothing back from Randy. Infact that was one of the reasons you stated for leaving these forums. I totally understand your feelings and even quoted you on my LEDWiz makeover site. "If I could make a living selling software products to the MAME community, I'd quit my job tomorrow. You guys are a lot more fun to work with than corporate America. :) It's unfortunate that there is a mentality that you don't pay for peoples hard work when it is software but you do when it is hardware."[/i] - MikeQ I really just think you're upset because you couldn't make any money out of PowerMAME. But the MAME license clearly states that you can't. Just because you couldn't make money doesn't mean Arzoo can't. LEDBlinky it not strictly a MAME only product either, you could use it in a Jukebox for example. And how much money do you really think Arzoo will make? Enough to cover a fraction of his time and money spent perhaps? --- Quote from: Vanguard on May 03, 2010, 10:43:43 am ---In my opinion, everyone doing software should get paid. The hardware vendors often release products that are mostly useless without the community stepping up and doing the software work (almost always with no significant compensation for the work). --- End quote --- It's not Arzoo's fault that hardware manufacturers don't always support developers. I offered to write a LEDWiz driver for GGG but Randy didn't want to give me the necessary documentation to do it while he gave it to MikeQ and youki. Youki restricted use of his driver in any front end other than his own. MikeQ did end up releasing his final version which was a dll and useful for the type of plugin I was writing for GameEx. The official driver by GGG was crap to say the least and written as an ActiveX control which is a pain to use in anything other than VB6 (which is a dead language for the most part now anyway). Meanwhile I wrote drivers for Ultimarc software and while I didn't make alot of money Andy was kind enough to send me free hardware as well as some payment. It would be nice if hardware developers were more supportive like Andy and I think he has benefitted greatly by doing that. I have written quite alot of stuff for him since then and updated some of his software for free. We have a good relationship which is based on good will and I think it was a smart business move on his part aswell as displaying respectable character. I think Randy could have been more supportive. For writing the LEDWiz plugin for GameEx he gave me a free LEDWiz but I had to pay for my buttons and second LEDWiz. I believe Arzoo encountered a similar situation where he had to buy the bulk of his hardware from GGG. That doesn't seem right to me really. It's a shame he can't even write something like LuminAudio and give away the source code or a dll for developers so they can actually make something useful with it but he wouldn't even do that. Of course both Arzoo and myself ended up writing our own audio to lighting solutions. I think Randy has upset a number of developers on here (in fact I know he has from talking to several of them) which is a shame since we work very hard to support his hardware which he is clearly profiting from. His LEDWiz software was pretty much useless from the beginning and Arzoo and I wanted to update the format (lwa) to a more modern xml format which could also support other devices such as the PacDrive (lwax). I think it's ridiculous for Randy to say he stopped development because we created a new format. What has that go to do with anything? Just face the facts that your software is useless and that people don't use it so why bother writing software when other people are doing it at no cost to you? Pretty bad attitude IMHO. So it's really no suprise to me that LEDBlinky has gone shareware and I think Arzoo deserves to get something back for his hard work. If all hardware vendors supported freelancers like Andy did then there would be no need for it. Anyway best wishes to Arzoo! :cheers: |
| syph007:
$20 bucks compared to the thousands I've spent in the last 3 years on other tools/material/time is insignificant. I have no problem with that if it supports continued development. I've been aware of this software, but it was always going to be a phase 2 of my cab, but when I go ahead and add illuminated buttons, I'm fine with 20 bucks for control/interface software. |
| RandyT:
--- Quote ---It's not Arzoo's fault that hardware manufacturers don't always support developers. I offered to write a LEDWiz driver for GGG but Randy didn't want to give me the necessary documentation to do it while he gave it to MikeQ and youki. Youki restricted use of his driver in any front end other than his own. MikeQ did end up releasing his final version which was a dll and useful for the type of plugin I was writing for GameEx. The official driver by GGG was crap to say the least and written as an ActiveX control which is a pain to use in anything other than VB6 (which is a dead language for the most part now anyway). --- End quote --- It doesn't make sense to have umpteen different dll's out there that all do the same thing, especially when you already have an extremely capable individual (MikeQ) who had already written one and agreed to release his work. And when I did offer to give you the information to write your own, after you showed that you were dedicated enough to actually do something with it, you declined in favor of using the one made by MikeQ. As for your comments about the ActiveX control I wrote, it seems to work fine for the world's largest aluminum producer and the 100+ year old department store chain who use it every day with large quantities of the hardware, not to mention countless others. It should also be mentioned that there could have been another approach taken, one that is taken by virtually every other "real" hardware producer, and that is to completely lock down direct communication with the device and force developers to license the one and only library so MikeQ or Youki could be compensated for their efforts. Another could have been to officially commission someone to write a suite of apps to provide with the hardware and then charge another $30 more per unit to cover the cost and force folks to buy it, whether they wanted it or not. No, instead we chose, at great financial risk, to make the best hardware we can for a fairly miserable profit margin to fill a void in the community, and to simply provide the basic tools and let those with the desire and skills make it do what they wanted, leaving compensation for their efforts up to them. Perhaps this isn't the best way, based on the nature of these comments. --- Quote ---I think Randy could have been more supportive. For writing the LEDWiz plugin for GameEx he gave me a free LEDWiz but I had to pay for my buttons and second LEDWiz. I believe Arzoo encountered a similar situation where he had to buy the bulk of his hardware from GGG. That doesn't seem right to me really. --- End quote --- Just to keep your story straight, Arzoo bought all of his gear long before LED-Blinky was a gleam in his eye. And I didn't bat an eyelash about sending him a free unit when he asked for one for development not so long ago. And you don't know it, but I have sent out more than $500 in hardware (my cost, not retail value) based on promises of getting support under Linux. Do you see any Linux support for the LED-Wiz? I have attempted this 3 times, once even with an individual from this community. There comes a time when you have to say "no more". We aren't Intel here, just two people who bust their humps close to 12 hours a day and our "take home" pay is less than most of our customers. If you are suggesting that we should raise our prices so that we can provide free hardware to anyone who may or may not actually produce something beneficial to the community or to GGG, then I'll take it under advisement. --- Quote ---I think it's ridiculous for Randy to say he stopped development because we created a new format. What has that go to do with anything? --- End quote --- It may not give you a warm fuzzy, but it is certainly true. It would have made no sense for me to continue development to produce what would have been a competing piece of software with a format that it was made perfectly clear would not be supported by anyone else. BTW, you make it seem like every hardware producer out there has a responsibility to provide software to do every possible thing that an end user might consider doing with it. This is, at minimum, off-the-wall. It's akin to stating that a modem producer should have written the Internet. No, what the hardware producer is expected to deliver are the tools for others to build upon to make it do what they would like it to do. Call it a driver, a function library, whathaveyou. And we did that just fine, through my own efforts, and the efforts of MikeQ and Youki, about 4 years ago. I'm sorry those efforts weren't sufficient for you. RandyT |
| headkaze:
--- Quote from: RandyT on May 12, 2010, 12:30:19 pm ---I'm sorry those efforts weren't sufficient for you. --- End quote --- It's not just me who thinks your efforts wern't sufficient enough. The fact is there are other hardware manufacturers in the arcade scene that do the right thing by developers. Not because it's better for their bottom line, but because they want to support the coders who are supporting them. It's really actually a smart thing to do. I think you'll find that MikeQ is trying to tell you something in his comments in this thread. |
| RandyT:
--- Quote from: headkaze on May 12, 2010, 12:41:53 pm ---It's not just me who thinks your efforts wern't sufficient enough. The fact is there are other hardware manufacturers in the arcade scene that do the right thing by developers. Not because it's better for their bottom line, but because they want to support the coders who are supporting them. It's really actually a smart thing to do. I think you'll find that MikeQ is trying to tell you something in his comments in this thread. --- End quote --- No, it's because it's better for their bottom line. I realize this, and so should you. But as a hardware producer, everything is tangible and has real cost associated with it. One has to be careful unless the profit margins are so high, as they apparently are with other vendors, to put those resources where they will do the most good. As for MikeQ, I think his main issue was having his graciously donated work being used as part of a "product" that he receives no compensation for. The fundamental difference is that the LED-Wiz, with the tools we provide, is fully functional and will continue to exist and have value outside the availability of a third party DLL or application. The same cannot be said of a piece of software that essentially does nothing, or is severely crippled, when a third party DLL is no longer present. Perhaps Arzoo should offer MikeQ a portion of whatever proceeds he derives through his use of it, as is commonly done for any 3rd party programming libraries one wishes to incorporate into a commercial product. This is the gist of what I read in this thread. RandyT |
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