Why Open Source????? A White Paper. FLAME away!

[WhiteTiger]

This site is full of people who work for nothing, monetarily speaking. All the assorted free plans and how-tos didn't come from nowhere. They are the product of people who do things for *other* than cash motivations.

Interestingly enough, I see there are some who are (gasp!) utilizing the free products in various levels of commercial enterprises. Again, who'da thunk?


Tiger

[Geof]

This site is full of people who work for nothing, monetarily speaking.Tiger

Nonsense. What they do on this site they may do for reasons not related to cash rewards but this is not their "work" in the sense of paid employment. I have read numerous posts in which people mention their employment activities such as medical doctors, financial advisors, machinists, purchasing agents and others; this site is their recreation or hobby. Go and find the Economist article and read it; I used the word 'often' because not all opensource ventures fail, however, the ones that do succeed such as Linux often seem to do so because some aspect of the venture tranforms into a mechanism whereby a level of discipline is set in place so it does not bog down in endless feature creep and where some income can be generated to provide customer service to people who want to use the product but do not have the knowledge or desire to become all involved in figuring out arcane instructions.

[WhiteTiger]

Time, effort and resources expended in the production of a desired outcome. This is work. Employment is a separate word, with a distinct meaning.

I stand by my assertion that many of those here *work* at least in part and on occasion for reasons other than monetary gain, and that the fruits of those labors are then in turn applied by others in at least hopeful pursuit of cash.

The parallels to the open source discussion seem obvious to me. King dollar isn't all there is


Tiger

[NC Cams]

I worked at an engineering job to pay the bills while I learned the trade and how to pound on valvetrains to within an inch of their lives for many years.

I used the money from that job to buy the tools needed to do cam designs and analysis and ultimately a cam grinder as a HOBBY with hopes of turning it into a business.

Having wore out my welcome at any number of well paying jobs, I 'm now using my HOBBY to eek out a living as a business- and coudn't be happier in the process.

My inital cam designs did wonders for the ego. They helped teams win and win BIG to the tune of nice budgets and nicer bonuses. I got a "thanks" and then they cut off my business the next year due to a free parts deal - "you got to understand, its just business".

However, the realities are that the house payment and taxes and utilities still NEEDED to be paid. I also do not have health insurance and a recent trip to the doctor resulted in a prompt call from the finance dept wanting to know how they will be paid. Forget the Hypocratic oath - the ******** want money your money.... too bad there isn't open source health care....

Yes, hobby use is great for open source stuff but if you're in business, you can't wait for some hobbyist or a message board to solve your issues. You're in business and things need to get done - and NOW.

I suspect the guys who did linux already made their fortunes in computers and can afford to be more "contributive" to the dissemination of infformation via open source. Sadly, I can't

Thus, the rest of us have to pay our way using commercial software as we don't have the skill or time to wait for open source whatever to catch up/satisfy our needs. Compare Mach 2/3 to AjaxCNC or Anilam and you'll get the gist of what I'm implying.

Don't get me wrong, Mach is great for many peoples needs. Sadly, it doesn't satisfy mine which is why I have to buy commercial. Haven't seen any open source system that satisfies my needs/supports my capabilities and I've looked at many in many non cad/non Cnc technical disciplines.

Linux is supposedly used for the following reasons -
1. it doesn' involve Bill Gates and/or Steve Jobs (that alone is admirable) and
2. Linux is supposedly impervious to virus attack (better reason yet) and.
3. It was created and supposedly abandoned as useless (no/insufficient profit potenail by the creator) and then developed a life of its own once it got out into the public domain (heresay but it wouldn't surprise me).

[pminmo]

One of my users has started a thread on my site and made available the source:
http://www.pminmo.com/phpBB/viewtopi...asc&highlight=

It's older technology, written in Qbasic, but hopes to use it as a match.

[WayneHill]

Linux is supposedly used for the following reasons -
1. it doesn' involve Bill Gates and/or Steve Jobs (that alone is admirable) and
2. Linux is supposedly impervious to virus attack (better reason yet) and.
3. It was created and supposedly abandoned as useless (no/insufficient profit potenail by the creator) and then developed a life of its own once it got out into the public domain (heresay but it wouldn't surprise me).

1. Build a better operating system and the world will be at your doorstep.

2. Linux is as vulnerable to attacks as other OS's. Windows is a bigger target to shoot at.

3. See #1.

[WayneHill]

Stepster is another open source DOS program for running CNC's

http://www.metalworking.com/shareware.html

[NC Cams]

WayneHill: I agree whole heartedly with the "better O/S" comment.

However, DOS is just fine for some applications. Works, doesn't crash and doesn't need much in the way of CPU to run.

Word for Win 3.11 will write just as good a letter as Word for XP.

Yet, you can't run the NASCAR simulator on anything less than a lightspeed fast XP system with umpteen gigawatts of speed and/or memory.

Clear case of "right guy for right job".

The trouble is that the folks at Wintel and Apple are all hell bent on creating a new O/S that has features that clearly are NOT needed when it comes to doing CNC. Once you develop it, how do you keep in business once you reach market saturation???

It is amazing how people make a darn good living selling repair parts for 1955-57 Chevies and/or the "muscle year" GM A body cars. Yet, GM today is near bankruptcy trying to sell their latest offerings. Don't see why "legacy" software couldn't be liscensed to create a similar sort of market in the CNC arena...

That could be the case if someone took a proven O/S that has a legacy, reverse engineered it and offered a "new" one that did it open source. Firm, stable platform, proven software, cheap and affordable. Something you wouldn't have to throw out all your pc's and buy new ones to be able to run.

yes, I'm sort of talking out of both sides of my mouth but I contend you shouldn't need to throw out the legacy stuff an invest anew to stay in business - especially when it comes to controlling a machine that is only trying to move a cutter from point A to B.....

[WayneHill]

DOS can have the look and feel of windows without the overhead.

What OS and language would you like?

I am a fan of BASIC or Delphi on a Windows or DOS environment.
SVG is something to take a look at.

( I had shoulder surgery (RC) on Monday and having trouble typing one handed. The pain..the pain.. Where's my meds?)

[Carel]

In the embedded world there is a general consencus that the intel PC-processors (Pentium, Celeron etc.) are not suitable for real time applications. For driving a CNC machine and then especially a stepper driven, a dedicated G-Code interpreter, without OS, would be the right choice. A Wintel PC is very suitable for supervising this, as you have the Graphical User Interface. I have such a system running, with the PC for programming, jog and DRO and the embedded processor digesting the G-Code and driving the steppers.

Carel

[NC Cams]

The F.O.C. (free of charge) "dosshell" found in dos 5 and above seems to be nice and stable - psuedo GUI and quite adequate for point and shoot work.

The point about real time use of DOS is a good idea - I'd stay clear of Windows as you don't need it grabbing hold of processor when IT feels like it. Besides, it (dos/dosshell) is darn near free. I doubt even the tight fisted money grubbing folks at M/S would harp TOO much if it had a resurrection. There are so many copies out there and it is stable, why not???

I'm told that a certain name brand "proprietary" CNC system is nothing more than DOS with imbedded proprietary code to handle machine control. They do 3-4-5 axis work which means it should be adequate for 99% of most DIY CNC coding.

You got to figure that some folks will used serial control, some will use parallel and some stuff will use either ISA or PCI slot interface boards.

My Bridgeport has a DOS based "Eztrak" system and it runs just fine and the screen is plenty fancy enough for even discriminating users. The BMDC (imbedded processor/machine interface)card ran in an ISA slot with a 486 - interestingly, it run/should run many G and M and S codes.

It theoretically could have run 4 axis plus motor speed plus coolant - and it was designed in 1995 but never fully developed due to concious and perhaps bad decisions at the defunct original Bridgeport Machine (now Hardinge who's now using Anilam I'm told) NOT to make too good of a system.

Imagine what the program could do if FULLY developed on a fast machine today. Simple, reliable, CHEAP and using a legacy O/S that costs peanuts that doesn't crash (mine hasn't anyway). Too bad nobody has hacked the Extrak system and done a properly reverse engineered yet copyright respecting/skirting knock off...

Hmmm, shades of the 55-57 Chevy idea floated previously, no???

[Carel]

NCCams, so consider your BMDC as your machine operator with or without a light proprietary OS, while you operate this card with your DOS OS. The processor activities are spread at where they at their best. Hard realtime at the card, soft at the operator side, communicating over the ISA bus. Using the same protocol, you can expect the same performance from WinXP. XP would perhaps break at drip feed.

Carel