Also, the volunteer that led the development of the Broadcastify Calls integration got $2500 CASH MONEY for his work. He deserved it, and therefore he got something out of it.
Announcing Broadcastify Calls Developer Incentives
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Also, the volunteer that led the development of the Broadcastify Calls integration got $2500 CASH MONEY for his work. He deserved it, and therefore he got something out of it.
kb9mwr
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Well I am glad folks are rewarding the open source folks for their fine work. I get sick reading the threads of all the supporters of dsdplus, etc.
However, trunk-recorder relies heavily on op25, and then one step under that is gnuradio...
A $2500 one time payment to enable software that will generate revenue for this site in perpetuity doesn't seem like anything to be emphasizing SO VIGOROUSLY. With that being said I obviously have no idea how much revenue this site actually generates to have a feel for how $2500 fits into the overall budget or how much extra you're contributing to robotastic monthly. But $2500 in the world of revenue-generating software is chump change.
OK, so what is your point? Would you rather I contribute $100,000? Or how about I contribute nothing like 99.9% of people who utilize open source software?
I'm not sure what the purpose of your post is, other than to just stir up trouble, or you don't like the fact that capitalism is what drives innovation, or maybe you are jealous of the AWESOME VIGOROUS WORK we're doing here.
1.) "direct take off" meant it is doing the same thing. Yes Broadcastify Calls looks different, but as far as I can tell it does the same thing... except that it makes money doing it.
2.) I didn't ask any questions, just made a comment and I'm glad you are supporting Trunk Recorder on a monthly basis. I would definitely make that point clear here on the forum as I agree that the $2500 one time bounty for a tool that could revolutionize how radio feed content is made available to people seems pretty low (as another person commented) when compared to how much Broadcastify could stand to profit. You got pretty snippy with him in asking if $100,000 would have been more appropriate. Since Broadcastify runs on a subscription model I would have thought something similar for the developer would have been appropriate. I don't have a dog in the fight financially. I just know if I was volunteer working on the project I might decide to take any innovations I make and keep them on my own private branch and out of the open source world rather than share them if I knew someone else was going to make money off my work. I like it when Capitalism drives innovation... I don't like it when it drives it underground.
3.) While Capitalism IS the way we do business here in our country... I think it is a little more comfortable for everyone if the "I'm going to make as much as I can and give you as little as possible for your work and effort" tone isn't quite so "in your face." When things seem fair, I think it encourages more people to participate rather than stay on the sidelines. It may seem petty, but in this case I think it depends on where you stand in the scene.
Let's be clear here blueonesparky, your past post history suggests that you have a real hangup on people earning money from feeds, content, etc. That's fine, I get it, but let's call a spade a spade. Don't be all virtuous and proclaim you believe in capitalism and then set conditions around it. That's why we have crazy jackass politicians - they can do that for us.
There is a big difference when someone writes software, and when someone takes something to market. The developer who wrote the Broadcastify Calls implementation probably only spent a few hours on the implementation, and was handsomely rewarded for his efforts, based on an agreement in advance of his work. So you are making assumptions about things you don't understand. And that is fine, but don't publically come into my house and lecture me on capitalism and how things should be.
I don't need a review of how I "should" be paying anyone, or what is appropriate, or what you feel how things should operate.
To be frank, I am the one that is bringing this project to market, and my team has spent countless hours and resources to do so. It doesn't matter if I make $1, or $1 billion dollars, the only thing you should be concerned with is whether or not the work that my team does provides value to you. That's it. Otherwise you are just being jealous or envious. Period.
There is a big difference when someone writes software, and when someone takes something to market. The developer who wrote the Broadcastify Calls implementation probably only spent a few hours on the implementation, and was handsomely rewarded for his efforts, based on an agreement in advance of his work. So you are making assumptions about things you don't understand. And that is fine, but don't publically come into my house and lecture me on capitalism and how things should be.
I don't need a review of how I "should" be paying anyone, or what is appropriate, or what you feel how things should operate.
To be frank, I am the one that is bringing this project to market, and my team has spent countless hours and resources to do so. It doesn't matter if I make $1, or $1 billion dollars, the only thing you should be concerned with is whether or not the work that my team does provides value to you. That's it. Otherwise you are just being jealous or envious. Period.
Come on man, you're the one who started ranting about capitalism and is now issuing ideological purity tests.
We get that, we really do. And no one is discounting the work you and your team have done. You've built an amazing platform. What you're running into here is a common issued/debate relating to open source software. Your team has spent countless time and resources on this, but so have the developers of trunk-recorder, op25, gnuradio, and so on down the line. All of those open source building blocks are fundamental requirements to make your new platform work, but those downstream developers aren't making the money. You are. Being able to leverage all of that prior work to generate revenue for a mere $2500 is where people start to raise eyebrows. Yes, it's legal, we get that.
But a lot of people also acknowledge that this type of situation is an issue and even a threat to open source software development. I don't claim to have a solution...it's a sticky problem. And yes, I've greatly benefited from open source software myself. I've also had open source software that I developed used commercially by others with no remuneration, as was their right under the open source license. Acknowledging that it's a sticky issue with a modicum of grace might be more compelling to your users than making a bunch of assumptions about how everyone who raises a question is a jealous commie who wants to take your money.
That's simply not true. Any consumer has a right to be concerned with how a company operates when deciding to do (or not do) business with them. That doesn't mean the consumer is jealous or envious. A lot of people may want to buy a diamond, but not everyone is willing to buy a blood diamond.
Oh for crying out loud, you are comparing the work that we’re doing here to the blood diamond trade because we use open source software and made a contribution that raised your eyebrow because it presumably wasn’t “enough?” Come on man. That is the most ridiculous assertion I’ve seen since the President wanted me to shine a UV light up my butt to possibly cure the ‘Rona.
The amount of money that I contribute to open source projects is my business, not yours. “Yes, it’s legal, we get that” is a disingenuous position - when you develop open source software, you inherently understand the approaches and risks, and you develop and release your software with the appropriate licenses. I don’t sit around and bemoan the fact that Amazon makes billions of dollars off of open source software on AWS. I admire how they were able to bring it to market, and open source software’s business model works with support contracts, and other methods. And not everyone measures success by how much money they made off their development.
The Trunk Recorder team is doing just fine - they have a number of financial contributors. There are TONS more people out there that use those projects with zero contributions back other than to generate revenue.
It just fascinates me that when someone DOES give to open source projects, they STILL get vilified on their own platforms. Cut that crap out. Some of you are practically advocating a profit sharing model - show me a business that implements a profit sharing model back to open source. I triple dog dare you.
If you’ve been around here long enough, you’ll know that I speak my mind very aggressively, especially when folks roll into my house to criticize how we do things around here. Once every 6 months or so, someone feels like they need to tell me how to act, or how to communicate, or how to run the business. And therefore I can come across as abrasive - but make no mistake, I’m not making any apologies here. I’m just setting the table. So if you are offended, don’t be.
The amount of money that I contribute to open source projects is my business, not yours. “Yes, it’s legal, we get that” is a disingenuous position - when you develop open source software, you inherently understand the approaches and risks, and you develop and release your software with the appropriate licenses. I don’t sit around and bemoan the fact that Amazon makes billions of dollars off of open source software on AWS. I admire how they were able to bring it to market, and open source software’s business model works with support contracts, and other methods. And not everyone measures success by how much money they made off their development.
The Trunk Recorder team is doing just fine - they have a number of financial contributors. There are TONS more people out there that use those projects with zero contributions back other than to generate revenue.
It just fascinates me that when someone DOES give to open source projects, they STILL get vilified on their own platforms. Cut that crap out. Some of you are practically advocating a profit sharing model - show me a business that implements a profit sharing model back to open source. I triple dog dare you.
If you’ve been around here long enough, you’ll know that I speak my mind very aggressively, especially when folks roll into my house to criticize how we do things around here. Once every 6 months or so, someone feels like they need to tell me how to act, or how to communicate, or how to run the business. And therefore I can come across as abrasive - but make no mistake, I’m not making any apologies here. I’m just setting the table. So if you are offended, don’t be.
I don't grant your premise with regard to my "hangup" being on people making money from feeds, content and the like. I DO find it ethically questionable to take something that people spend money and effort on to make available for free and make money off of it. In this case it is feeds. In other cases it may be a site that scrapes blog posts and serves them up with lots of ads. I agree that someone has the right to stand on the shoulders of giants... but I have a personal issue with that same person calling themselves "tall."
My comments and opinions here are about what I think is fair or not. For all I know, the agreement that you came to with the developer may actually be aligned with what my opinion of what is fair. I'm not privy to your business arrangements. If you really do feel that the agreement that was struck was fair for everyone involved then that's great! I'm glad to hear it. If not, then that's for you and the developer to hash out. Either way though, I get to have an opinion and that's what I shared as I thought that's something these forums are for... unless that opinion is about feeds causing encryption... that one is a clearly defined no-no. ;-)
Let me derail this *****fest with a legit question.. I have been thinking about doing a Trunk Recorder stream for a few months now, to replace my existing hardware scanner feed of a P25 system. Basically when it gets busy, traffic gets stepped on and lost. I must have missed the announcement about the beta for Calls, but I just got the email on it the other day. Last monday I had ordered some NESDR sticks, and just got them today to play with (knowing they were already on the way got me real excited when I read the email about Calls!). So Im wondering, once I get it all figured out, how long in the future are we looking at to create legacy streams? Is that something that would simply be sorted out at your end as an automated process, or is it something we the ingest providers would do - selecting which TGs to break into each stream? Would it be transparent to the end user (as in all links and such to my current feed, and the apps would still work)?
Thanks for all you do, this is going to be so cool!
Every feed on our site is provided by a volunteer who signed up to provide their feed on Broadcastify. We don’t “take” content from anyone without their express consent. That’s fair.
We provide a premium subscription in return to all feed providers. That’s fair.
Every feed on our site is available to everyone, for free. That’s fair.
I’m pretty sure Amazon would dispute your comment about whether they can call themselves “tall” or not. AWS stands on the shoulders of tons of open source hard work, and the results of them taking that all to market speaks for itself.
Your opinions don’t seem to jive with what is generally considered “fair”
We provide a premium subscription in return to all feed providers. That’s fair.
Every feed on our site is available to everyone, for free. That’s fair.
I’m pretty sure Amazon would dispute your comment about whether they can call themselves “tall” or not. AWS stands on the shoulders of tons of open source hard work, and the results of them taking that all to market speaks for itself.
Your opinions don’t seem to jive with what is generally considered “fair”
Yes, this is something that will be handled at our end, and would be transparent to the broadcaster and the end user.
I can pretty soon roll a web based version of a “broadcastify” feed that is just a playlist of content coming from the Broadcastify Calls with a slimmed down web interface. But that would only be available on the Broadcastify Web site and not the majority of the mobile device players. The mobile device consumers will require us to dynamically mix and create icecast streams of audio from Broadcastify Calls, which will be coming in the future.
Hope this helps.
Ok so that raises another question (sorry, it's day one for me on the subject).. Would the ingest computer be able to stream as well for the time being (ie: both the streaming server and the ingest uploader working simultaneously)? Or would I need to keep the hardware scanner up until such a time that the calls feed can be sent to the mobile apps?
No, I wasn't making that comparison at all. I was using that example as a counterpoint to your assertion that the only thing that should matter to a consumer is how much value a product provides to them personally.
That's not always true. It should be, but it's not. Sometimes a software developer doesn't fully understand a license because they're not a lawyer. Sometimes they create an open source project just to gain experience and as a vehicle to get input from other more experienced developers without really even caring about the license. I could list a dozen other scenarios where someone makes something open source without fully understanding the approaches and risks. In most cases it really doesn't matter because the project never goes anywhere. But once in awhile those small projects take off and then a small oversight or misunderstanding by the developer way back when they first started and chose a license can result in someone else making a bunch of money off the project while they make nothing. Legal, yes. You can argue that they should have known better, live and learn. Those with better lawyers win. That's a valid argument. But not everyone has a warm fuzzy about that being the best way.
As I said, it's an area that's very sticky and won't be solved here. If the trunk-recorder devs are cool with what's going on, I've got no issue with it and look forward to the new platform. If they're not, I'm sure we'll eventually hear about it and can at that point make our own decisions about how to proceed.
Andy
For some weird reason, I can't help but think that if the Trunk Recorder guys weren't OK with it, they wouldn't have written BCFY integration into the software for this purpose and collected the bounty.
At this point it is probably best to just drop this and let this conversation go. To be honest your post indicating that the developer received the $2500 bounty for the tools and, additionally, you or broadcastify makes monthly contributions in support of the teams continued development efforts was enough to placate my sense of fairness. That's why I suggested making that point very visible as to shut up anyone else who might feel the same way on the initial read.
I was actually going to let it drop at that point but that aggressive and abrasive tone made it tough for me to resist continuing the debate. I've been wired to interpret that as "bully" style tactics and act to confront that sort of thing head on rather than run or back down. Your position on the ethics of it is pretty clear now and I will let that guide me with respect to how I conduct my business in the future as is my prerogative as a consumer or programmer.
In other news, I'm curious to see how this tool is going to be used. I know it has dramatically changed how I do radio monitoring on multiple fronts and it may take linux based tools out of the fringes of the hobby and make them a little more mainstream. With a little AI or Machine Learning it may also be able to do some really interesting things in addition to just serving up a better listening experience by removing the cut outs in busy system areas.
Here's hoping. That's one of the troubles with open source though...someone can say "either do this for me and I'll pay you, or I'll fork it and pay someone else to do it". I'm not trying to suggest that's what happened at all, just pointing out some of the difficult situations that are possible.
You gotta understand that when you roll into someone's house and get critical with them, expect a response. As I previously said, anyone that knows me knows I'll take the bait and run with it.
And how you conduct your business is definitely your prerogative and I respect that. If I come across as abrasive or a jerk, you have my apologies. I've explained why that is.
But to even remotely question my ethics really crosses a line. That is a sly underhanded comment, and while you are in my house I won't tolerate it. I think you owe me an apology for that... I might be an a$$ hole, but my ethics in both business and the personal world are infallible.
What happened is:
1) I announced the incentives in this post
2) A developer said "I'll do it"
3) Developer was paid the incentive according to the terms announced.
I do apologize for not making myself as clear as I should have. I was pointing out that while I may not have liked how you comported your comments, you've made your stance on the ethical issues at play clear and I am indicating that THAT is what I am going to use to "guide me with respect to how I conduct my business in the future" and not the abrasive nature of your remarks.
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