Ohhh goody, PDA software price wars!

Andy Blackburn wrote:

Free software works, but only to the extent that you
can keep a community of talented volunteers interested
in continuing to innovate and support the product (the
latter being the tougher part since programmers tend
not to like all the administrative BS associate with
product support).

You have a highly flawed assumption above. Those that provide free
software do it for a reason, and their support is as good as of any
commercial organization. Have you ever tried getting real support from
Microsoft? A community of volunteer programmers helps, but success of
a commercial product depends on an analogous existance of motivated
(maybe by money) programmers, so a commercial product can stop its
development as well.


Personally, I don't find a few hundred bucks to be
all that much to pay for what these products do in

You are lucky.

terms of increasing the enjoyment and safety of cross-country
and racing flights - not to mention the potential for
improvement in overall pilot performance. I bought
a copy of WinPilot Pro last year and paid for copy
of SeeYou mobile. Consider it a subsidy for continued
development. They're both quite good pieces of software
and I hope they both prove successful in the market.


I think there is a contradiction here with your previous thoughts.
Since they are commercial products they do not need subsidy. If you
want to subsidise "increasing the enjoyment and safety of
cross-country and racing flights - not to mention the potential for
improvement in overall pilot performance" consider finding some way to
contribute to efforts of those that do that for soaring population at
large. This does not necessarily mean monetary renumeration.

Henryk Birecki