The reality is that very little ham software that costs money is going to succeed in todays world. When computers first became available it was possible to write some basic ham software and charge for it, but today it is no longer as viable. There is so much superbly written free and even open source software in many categories. Not only ham radio, but for almost any use you can think of whether office suite, graphics, music, virus protection, etc. We even have the French site (Jamendo) that makes new artist's music available under the creative commons license. You make the decision whether to pay or not. It is a changing world indeed.
And when you have a specialty product that appeals to only a small number of users, you can not reach critical mass and have wide enough adoption. The reason that I won't even try RFSM8000 is that I know full well that 99.99% of other hams, including digital oriented hams, will never even consider it and if I want to use this technology, there will be almost no one to communicate with. If development on RFSM2400 does not continue, and you are expected to migrate to a fee based program, such as RFSM8000, then both will eventually fail for amateur use, unless there is some profoundly compelling reason that is just not available from any other program. My interest is primarily being able to use these new technologies for chat purposes (without errors), under the most extreme and difficult conditions, and have excellent throughput so that you could send other kinds of data if it was practical to do so. The secondary effect is that if the mode has widespread use, and can also scale for high speeds, it can be used for emergency use. And when you need it for emergency use, there will be a critical mass of other hams who will have it available and already have the skill to use it. As we are finding with dozens of digital modes, no matter how good the mode or software, if almost no one uses it, the value is very limited when you are needing to communicate with others. 73, Rick, KV9U John Simon wrote: > I saw that a couple of weeks ago Simon. "Shocked" is just one of the > words that I thought when I saw it. B-) > > > 73, John de VK2XGJ > > >
