Revolution Comment

[J. Landman Gay]

On 11/21/04 7:02 AM, Mathewson wrote:

> Re Ken Ray's remark about a "WRAPPER" for RR:
> 
> This is the whole thrust of my MSc thesis - unfortunately
> the prototype 'Wrapper' I have written presently weighs in
> at a hefty 25 MB.
> 
> While the theoretical background is all there in the thesis
> the best solution would be to let any RR-ers who are
> interested to have a copy of my prototype to pull apart,
> play with, and criticise. There are some problems that
> stand in the way of this:
> 
> 1.  I requested help from RR with this development and
> (after about 6 weeks) recieved some very vague promises
> that have never materialised.
> 
> 2.  RR do very nicely thank you by appropriating people's
> idea that are offered FREE on thi list and elsewhere and
> then charging us all for them - this doesn't seem entirely
> fair.
> 
> 3.  I would be more than happy to release my prototype
> under some type of open source agreement - but how I make
> sure RR don't get their rapacious commercial paws on it I
> just don't know!!!
> 
> 4.  My website can only hold 3 MB of stuff so I would need
> someone to offer me space to upload the prototype to.
> 
> The prototype has largely been designed using RR 2.0.1
> (last 'FREE' version) but has now (last week) been
> hived-off so it can function both with RR and MC.

As long as we are making point-lists here, I'd like to add one of my own:

1. Newcomers to the list should know that Mr. Mathewson has never 
purchased a copy of Revolution. He has used only the legacy free 
version, and when that was discontinued, wrote perhaps the nastiest 
diatribe this list has ever seen, using the foulest of language, 
accusing RR of -- well, I'm not sure what. Trying to stay in business, I 
guess.

2. RR chooses its next feature set based in large part on what the 
community has said it most wants to see. It pulls ideas for new features 
from both this list and from the feature requests submitted to Bugzilla. 
Implementing new features takes time and money; the features are rolled 
into new versions which are released as paid upgrades. This is the same 
technique used by every commercial software company in the world.

3. If charging for upgrades is "rapacious" then perhaps Mr. Mathewson 
can suggest some other way for RR to pay for the programmers, rental 
space, printing, duplication and shipping costs, trade show exhibits, 
internet access, accounting and tax expenses, tech support personnel, 
computer purchases for more than a dozen platforms, and other working 
expenses that allow RR to stay in business and continue development of 
the tool that Mr. Mathewson likes to use.

4. If Mr. Mathewson feels that RR will "steal" his ideas, then maybe he 
needs to implement them with a different development tool -- perhaps 
something open source -- so that he can freely contribute to a different 
group of people who will, coincidentally, also use his ideas.

5. Finally, I can't offhand think of any ideas that Mr. Mathewson has 
presented which RR has "stolen." Perhaps he has a list. Before 
submitting that list, he should check with Bugzilla to make sure that 
these ideas were not previously submitted as formal feature requests.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com