Democracy Player

I posted this to Digg earlier regarding the Democracy Player's developers' plea for donations to keep development going... but felt like posting it here too:

"I've never had any major technical problems with the player... I guess I'm just lucky there. But it's the variety of channels, or rather the lack there of, and the fact that the feeds that they have in there are not nearly as up to date as the actual feed itself, are things that are keeping me from keeping Democracy installed... Again maybe it's just me.

As it has been said here earlier, when it's worth paying for, I'll donate[/pay for it]. Maybe I'm the only one, but I find it hard to justify paying for "beta" software, beta has become an excuse to put out buggy, unfinished software, that most never intend on cleaning up, let alone finishing development on. I applaud the developers of the Democracy player for committing to it's development, but unless it's going to have a firm timetable for a final release, it's kind of hard to throw money their way. Any software that I've written never sees the light of day until it's ready. Beta's are fun to try, and who doesn't like the bragging rights of being the first of their group to discover something, but come on release a beta when it's close to being ready for prime time...

Alpha is the new Beta.''

I have been a big proponent of the Democracy guys, and of open source software in general, but... when developing a piece of software, I've always felt that testing should be done in-house, or at least "close to home", with a limited number of users making sure that the wider audience isn't turned off by the bugs still in the system. That way when it's unleashed upon the world, you have a great product on your hands, rather than just a great idea.

Far too often these days people want to get paid for their product before it's done, rather than as it has been in the past; where you get paid for all of the hard work that you have done getting the product ready for market. I know that I don't pay for my car to be built while still in the R&D stages, I pay for the one that I want after it's built, picking the best one for my needs, not the one that might potentially be good when they finally figure out what it will look like in the end.

It's not the fault of these guys, after all they are developing it out of the goodness of their own hearts in an effort to fill a percieved gap in the market... or at least it was until they started asking for money... It's really too bad too, now people will be expecting those release dates, and for solid feature additions/fixes. I hope it all works out, since we need more choice, not less.

T