Re: VetTux Free and Open Source?

[Christian Heller <christian.heller@tuxtax.de>]

Hi,

find the VetTux author's reply and my answer to him below.
Since he didn't object, I guess it is o.k. to forward his mail.

It may be worth noting that VetTux seems to be the (commercial)
successor of the FreeVet project.

Regards,
Christian


Hi Ross,

thanks for your reply!
Would you mind me forwarding it to the Debian-Med list?

I understand your disappointment. Many users forget that we sacrifice
a lot of spare time, energy, family life, health ... for developing
our FLOSS projects.

I will not try to convince you, but perhaps you try to see it following:
- you are the project founder/ main developer, so you can decide what
  to develop next in your software, possibly for your own usage
- criticism from users can point out weaknesses and sometimes even
  deliver good ideas for improvement of your software
- if some users start to put you or your software down, they are unfair
  and you are free to ignore them (I understand that this is difficult)
- special wishes from users could be implemented faster, if they pay you
- you cannot avoid others earning money with services around your software
- perhaps you could try to focus on servicing *real* end-users (doctors)
  yourself, earning a living by that; you then always know what your
  end-users want and can implement it first
- if other firms earn with your software, they should either:
  - pay you
  - contribute to your project (development, documentation etc.)
  - not expect help from you for free, while they earn money
- otherwise, you are free to ignore their requests for help
- better focus on those end-users who give positive feedback and
  really try to improve your software with their criticism
- such feedback can be very precious and commercial companies often
  do not get it so much

Just some thoughts of mine.
But I really do understand your point of view and I should not try to
teach you otherwise, because I do not have to live from my software.
However, perhaps one day, you find a good chance to reopen your software.

Best Regards,
Christian

On Thursday 21 April 2005 09:28, you wrote:
> On Wednesday 20 April 2005 19:43, you wrote:
>
> Hi Christian
>
> Before VetTux there was FreeVet, along with that came a huge number of
> requests for help, most of these would have been simple to answer had
> the docs just been consulted or just been familiar with system admin.
>
> What hapend was the "Linux experts" installed Linux for some Vets along
> with VetTux. Most of these charged for their time, many of these were
> the people asking for help. Often this help was to do with database
> setup, networking etc. (Hence the quoted "Linux experts")
>
> In all this period I supported Troll Tech with a duo license, payed for
> ISP space etc. I was never sent any compensation or thanks in any way
> other than about 4 odd emails saying "thanks for the great software".
>
> One day I had enough, I stopped further development on FreeVet and
> continued with VetTux. Now at least I have had a few support payments.
>
> I thought then that perhaps the OpenSource industry had matured a
> little, so I wrote TuxShop a Point Of Sale system similar in ways to
> VetTux, this I placed as OpenSource on Sourceforge, the released
> version had a few issues that were located, I fixed the sources in CVS
> but this was not good enough for most people.
>
> This just confirmed my belief, most people are just in for a free lunch
> they don't care for the recipe, or how to make it themselves. It must
> be cooked  and served, you will also wash the dishes, in return they
> will say it was quite nice, a bit more spice, a bit less spice etc.
>
> So in conclusion OpenSource is great for developers and if I write any
> code that would be useful to core developers I will opensource it for
> sure because developers truly share. But the end user IMO can feed us
> for a change.
>
> Regards Ross