Whilst I don't tend making use of it, I did not at all mean to slag the GFA decision to use the OLC platform for its decentralised competition and pay for it with some of my money - on the contrary! However, now that there may be an alternative it surely is worth exploring the options although I agree entirely with all of Tim's arguments. Whether Skylines or whatever it'll develop into will remain a "free" service or will end up with some sort of funding or go under or whatever is another question. Kym's comment is very appropriate in this respect although Mike (as much as I value his general input!) will no doubt have an acidic reply up his sleeve. Time will tell... Ulrich On Sat 14/07/12 16:10 , tshir...@internode.on.net sent: Back when GFA decided to use the OLC for it's Decentralised Competition, there was no alternative available. The OLC offerred a good (and at the time, innovative) way to operate a Decentralised Competition without the administrative hassles that previously existed. It was quite definitely worth the 4 euros per pilot per year for this service, and while there have been some difficulties (for example, not being able to have our own handicap list) in general it has worked out pretty well. If I had to pay the 4 euro myself, well that's about 10c per flight uploaded for last season. Won't break the bank. Of course, if there were competing services available then it would be worth looking at a change - we don't have any commitment to continue with OLC and it would be good to see some alternative services and also some other competition types available. I would like to see a competition for pure gliders, and a competition that required pre-declared tasks - both of which would redress the bias towards motorgliders. Whether "free" services are a viable alternative in the long term is questionable, however. One problem with volunteer developments of any kind, is that the "sexy" part is the development. There are always plenty of people willing to help with putting together something new and different. The problem comes with maintenance and support - not only bug fixing, but dealing with questions, complaints and endless requests for new features (which of course, no one is paying for so anyone can ask for anything no matter how difficult it may be). The number of volunteers willing to deal with the hard grind of keeping things running tends to be much smaller, and so the shelf life for these "free" services can be rather short. Users have no guarantee that the volunteers won't suddenly get sick of it, and there is no way anyone can demand a certain service level because no one is paying. Of course, paying for a service doesn't guarantee that it will be provided either, and doesn't guarantee that the business will continue. But at least the user has the comfort that they are providing something towards the upkeep of the service and at least has the right to expect something in return. There's no such thing as a free lunch. And if it sounds too good to be true, well... Cheers Tim ----- Original Message ----- From:usta...@internode.on.net "Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia." To:"aus soaring" Cc: Sent:Sat, 14 Jul 2012 10:27:32 +0930 Subject:Re: [Aus-soaring] Alternative to the OLC Like Rolf I've been following the OLC discussions for some time. It is sad to see how commercial interests and personalities have created this rift. Unlike Rolf though, I'm with the Skylines camp for the following reasons: The data uploaded to the OLC is owned by them (similar to Facebook etc) and once uploaded the user community can't easily - if at all - control what happens to it any more. The intent for Skylines is that the data remains public if I understand correctly. Downloading large numbers of flights from the OLC necessary for statistical analyses like thermal and wave maps is blocked I believe. The data may be for sale if someone is serious enough about it but given the relatively small number of glider pilots in the various regions or even globally, a commercial venture along these lines is going to be a tough business case. When I see how rapid the development of XCsoar is compared to its commercial counterparts then I can't help but think that this is the future. Open source can tap into a large resource cloud that a business, especially in a small niche like ours, cannot or will find very hard to match. So over the years I would not be surprised if Skylines (or a similar platform) overtook OLC in terms of the features it will be able to offer and especially the spin-offs that the promised unlimited data download and public ownership will enable. That in turn might win even hardnosed OLC fans over... It has also been proposed for Skylines to have an OLC upload function so if you choose your flight(s) would be automatically forwarded to the OLC as well (provided they don't block Skylines from doing so...). In that case you can have the best of both worlds. An open platform could allow any number of competitions (with different rule sets) to "plug in" and experiment with different formats. (Maybe the "lucky dip" of our Pylon Race would finally gain the global following it deserves;-)). The OLC team can't support diversity at such a scale unless the data is made public which may not be in their commercial interest. I believe that the competition won't hurt. Besides, Skylines is not the only alternative. There are a number of perhaps lesser known platforms already in existence, all exploring different feature sets and models. We as the user community have the choice and ultimately the extra features and spin-offs can only enrich the gliding community - no matter which platform ends up "winning". Time will tell... Ulrich On Sat 14/07/12 07:56 , "rolf a. buelter" rbuel...@hotmail.com sent: I'm following the OLC / Skylines discussion on segelflug.de. Max K., the main force behind the Skyline development is of the opinion that the OLC organisation is to dictatorial and possesive when it comes to the use of data they collect, i.e. IGC files. On top of that there are a few rules in the OLC scoring which don't meet the approval of all, e.g. motorgliders get no penalty applied eventhough they have a perceived advantage. The developers are also unhappy that the german decentralised comp is derived from the OLC, similar to ours and the DAeC pays for that admin too. The whole thing is motivated by a mix of personality, the genuine drive to do better and some local (german) issues. I'm with Pam and Stuart. Rgds - Rolf > From: s...@bigpond.net.au > To: aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net > Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2012 22:07:57 +1000 > Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] Alternative to the OLC > > I'm with Pam; WHY????? > > The wonderful thing about the OLC is that it brings most of us together - > this is why we find it so interesting? > > I'm not saying that the guys and gals developing the new site do not have > some innovative ideas - I hope they do > but by diluting the numbers participating erodes what we love about the OLC > - is that what we really want - I doubt it. > Can we see some collaboration? > > SDF > > -----Original Message----- > From: aus-soaring-boun...@lists.internode.on.net > [mailto:aus-soaring-boun...@lists.internode.on.net] On Behalf Of Pam > Kurstjens > Sent: Friday, 13 July 2012 3:55 PM > To: 'Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.' > Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] Alternative to the OLC > > Why would we need an alternative? I think there is great strength and > interest having worldwide flights in one place. > If you would like to see an alternative system, check out the BGA Ladder in > the UK: http://www.bgaladder.co.uk and click on 'daily scores' for example. > Yesterday, 39 flights in the UK were posted to this site, and only 5 of > those were posted to OLC. > People are regularly doing 750's and the rare 1000, which are incredible > flights given the size of the island, the airspace, and the weather, yet we > see few flights on the OLC so gliding in the UK goes largely unnoticed by > the worldwide gliding community > > Pam > > -----Original Message----- > From: aus-soaring-boun...@lists.internode.on.net > [mailto:aus-soaring-boun...@lists.internode.on.net] On Behalf Of Peter F > Bradshaw > Sent: Monday, 2 July 2012 9:51 PM > To: Aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net > Subject: [Aus-soaring] Alternative to the OLC > > Hi; > > There is an alternative to the OLC at: > > http://skylines.xcsoar.org/ > > IGC files may be uploaded and scored here. In addition it is planned to > implement a realtime tracking feature in conjunction with XCSoar (v6.4). > > Cheers > > -- > Peter F Bradshaw: http://www.exadios.com (public keys avaliable there). > Personal site: http://personal.exadios.com "I love truth, and the way the > government still uses it occasionally to keep us guessing." - Sam Kekovich. > _______________________________________________ > Aus-soaring mailing list > Aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net > To check or change subscription details, visit: > http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring > > > _______________________________________________ > Aus-soaring mailing list > aus-soar...@lists.internodeon.net > To check or change subscription details, visit: > http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring > > _______________________________________________ > Aus-soaring mailing list > Aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net > To check or change subscription details, visit: > http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
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