dTV worth money  

Er, what?

Were it shareware, it is unlikely it would be in the shape it's in now.

Freeware has the distinct advantage of a larger number of contributers to the code base and splitting shareware revenues among the various developers would maybe get them a movie ticket once a month...without popcorn or sodas. Maybe.

I haven't peeked at the dTV licence (other than the 2 second glance looking for the agree button) but most freeware licences allows folks to provide service for a fee. Hence companies that support XEmacs, GNU, Linux, etc.

Personally, I don't know how well they do...

If you want sound sorted out you have several choices: wait until someone has the time to work on sound, learn to code yourself, or hire a programmer. Some rates are as low as $20/hour (college students most likely).

My personal commercial rates are a mere $75/hour (a company would charge around $120-$200 for my time...).

Nigel

PS I have no connection with the dTV team other than as a happy user. Hourly rates are provided as an example of the monetary value of these folk's time in providing us with a great program.

Anyone with a "clue" understands that the economics of shareware are dwarfed by any job that offers overtime in the software industry (rare)...or becoming a software consultant (common...but chock full of headaches).

I have to agree with Steve and Nigel in that it would be hard to reward the developers (being such a diverse and changing group) but also understand (I think) where kyrill was coming from (and with a non native english speaker at that)...

I realise that it is probably impossible / very difficult to truly reward the work that has gone in but if a small financial contribution solved the things that are still outstanding then all the better... I also understand the benefits (and perhaps essential in this case) of the open source nature of a project like this

...dTV is an essential HTPC item... I would happily fork over a license fee for this (much more so than many so called commercial apps) especially if it could be made more bullet proof in those area's of code (sound is a weak link) that are slightly lacking could be improved...

Remember not everyone has the benefit of seeing dTV evolve over time and it is easy to miss the 'collaborative' nature of a project if you are not on the inside..

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PhatPhreddy@Bigfoot.com
HTPC without using windows... GUI Front Ends for Home Theater

Kyrill: umm, you could have phrased both parts of your post slightly differently. Do you ever want sound support for your card? http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif

The fact is that most people aren't experiencing sound problems. It's true! I've had 3 different cards, none of which had any problems. But there are several hundred different capture cards out there, most of which have different chips in them. Also, please consider that most of the developers have external tuners, so don't focus on sound issues. If you are a developer and are having problems with sound, perhaps you could take a look at the code and try to fix it yourself?

I'll leave the open source v. pay model to others. Please note, however, that open source and pay can coexist peacefully. Right now, a developer can write an advanced deinterlacing algorithm and sell it as a dTV plug-in. But I doubt that hardware support for all of these sound chips would ever pay a cent to even the most enterprising.

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Dan

I'll expound on that a little, speaking as one of the people who's worked on dTV (though not so much recently). dTV is a neat app. It's a fun diversion to play with on weekends, and it's something I personally find very useful.

It is not anything close to a living.

The instant we start charging money, we'll be morally obligated to provide at least some minimal level of support. And since charging invites cost/benefit analysis, I quickly conclude that the time I've already put into dTV is worth a lot more than the amount of money we'd collectively make from shareware fees, let alone what any one of us would see.

I haven't looked at dTV sound issues because I have no use for dTV's sound capability (and even if I did, that's not my expertise and I'd probably just stare blankly at that part of the code). That's both the attraction and the downside of a free project like this; all the developers are free to only work on things they find interesting or useful. Money would destroy that aspect of it since we'd be obliged to try to fix people's problems rather than encouraging them to join the team and work on the areas they find useful.

And lets not even get into how the heck you'd manage payouts to a constantly shifting set of developers spanning several continents.

Not to slight John Adcock in any way, but I'm certain dTV wouldn't be anywhere close to as cool as it is today if he'd released it as shareware.

In short, charging money would cost the project way too much.

However! There's nothing to stop some enterprising person from selling dTV support services. Several companies have made money doing exactly that with other GPLed software. While I think dTV's target market is a lot more limited than, say, gcc's, it's not zero. Something to consider, anyway.