Opinion piece:
I certainly have no issue helping folks out whenever I can but it might behoove Ben to get on here and provide some support.
It's just that it looks like he's got himself a cost free support department sometimes. He could at least chip in a bit.
And here is my opinion:
Open source is great... Until you need support...
For many years, I released a lot of my code under open source licenses, GPL, etc. (nothing remotely 65xx related), and I foolishly (now, hindsight is great), put my name and email address in. Even worse I started to reply to the emails I got. I participated in forums and other online discussions, made personal appearances at various events and so on ... I was quite proud of my software - it's used all over (and off) the world.
What I didn't expect was for selfish un-printables to include my code in their products (both commercial and non-commercial), then expect me to support it because they never bothered to add in their own email address/contact details. I really didn't expect people to steal it. (ie. create a commercial product, then not publish it under the terms of the GPL but leave my contact details in.).
The GPL? Not worth the electrons it's printed with because I can't afford the legal fees to enforce it.
(And for the absence of doubt, no, this wasn't the Chinese, these were fine American and European people and companies)
After 1000 emails on one particular software package that included my libraries I automated the responses with pointers about who to get in-touch to fix their issues. After 10,000 emails I decided that enough was enough and removed my software and stopped offering free support. I will never release any of my code under an open source license ever again. I
may release
some source under a "source available" license (which incidentally is how I feel we ought to treat EhBASIC now) but if people want my support? Well, they can pay for it.
This may seem somewhat selfish, but I felt badly left down by that particular community - to the point it created health problems for me at the time and not one of those selfish unmentionables bothered to even pick up the phone and ask if I was OK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software
Ben is trying to make a living my producing YouTube videos and selling kits and I have no issues with that at all. Good luck to him. If you've ever looked into how YouTube monetisation works, then you'll realise that that's hard and they're squeezing the content producers harder and harder all the time. So I don't blame him for not being here. He does run his own little forum for each project though - I suspect people can get support there.
And one day I might sell kits and videos about my 6502/65816 boards. Who knows, but if I do I'd like to think that there is a world of knowledge wealth that can help people to take the load of me, trying to make a few pounds sterling while I get on with enthusing another generation with 6502/816 retro systems. Who knows. I do know that the active people here are probably not my target audience though - I suspect Ben knows the same, but you never know. I'd have bought a Ben kit if the US to UK postage, import duties and taxes weren't stupidly high.
So, personally, I think we should support Ben's customers, but only if we can. Only if we have the time and/or energy to do so. We don't have to and we can simply ignore it. We have that choice.
-Gordon
