Please read AND VOTE (an Idea for Media Portal to be #1) (2 Viewers)

[Boilermaker]

getting paid a little on the side wont really encourage them at all

Agreed...would 4k (which is based on some pretty optomistic assumptions) really motivate any of the devs, its not why they started MP to begin with. A lot users would look at the money they pay as license to make unreasonable demands on the devs, and we've already lost some good people to that.

what makes mp work so well is that it is open source...mp would suffer big time if it ever moved away from that.

 

[wishywashy]

From the home page:

You get MediaPortal for free, as Open Source software. This means anyone can help develop MediaPortal or tweak-it for their own needs!

Not trying to be a jackass, but... I was a strong supporter of Meedio/myHTPC from way back and really liked it. Then they went to pay to play. Now it is "we made a partnership with them", "they made a deal with us." Fine and dandy but the support and functionality dropped through the floor. Maybe they should have spent time on the program as compared to makeing "partnerships".

I like Media Portal because (besides being an awsome program) the developers have nothing to gain besides our praise and a personal fully funtional home theater program. I am not paying for them to fly to Florida to intergrate some house with X10 functions, that I will never see or use.

Just my 0.016618 EUR

 

[mattoid]

I agree entirely with Boilermaker
A few grand in the pocket, while a nice bonus, does not make better software, and will not create extra leave from the full time job in order to work on MP. It may have worked well for one person to quit the job and set up on their own, but MP is a large project with many programmers and a sizable community behind it. I can't see anyone giving up the day job for 4 grand. Maybe one or two could live off the revenue, but would they want to, and how would that affect the ethos behind the project, and all the others who work under that ethos?
I work in IT technical support, and I have experience of commercial software developers, and they have been almost universally woeful in their support services, more adept at deflecting requests for help and blaming third parties than actually offering any real help. I think people are reticent when it comes to assisting someone else in making a profit for no personal gain. It would be a tragedy for MP to go that way. We have too much to lose.

mattoid

 

[scoop]

Hi,


I generally agree with the "no" comments expressed earlier.

And - I don't want to create a GPL rant here - how would the license it currently is distributed under allow transformation to payware? AFAIK it's not even possible, or one would have to pull off something ridiculous such as Sveasoft did. And I'm sure that will never happen with MP.

Kind regards,
Michel