As a relative LinuxCNC newbie, I can say that a more clear presentation of the capabilities of the system would have made it less daunting to choose LinuxCNC. As a hobby CNC user, I had been exposed to probably 20 half-baked open source CAM tools/packages and been impressed with a total of zero. As a hacker space, we were philosophically committed to open source and so pursued LinuxCNC, but given that previous CAM experience I thought it was going to be a "down the rabbit hole" experience.
I was greatly pleased to find out not only that LinuxCNC is extremely mature and stable, but that the architecture is well-thought-out and well executed, there are configuration generators for the most common use cases, a choice of clean functional extensible GUIs, and so many other "batteries included" that I absolutely was not expecting. Not to mention what others have said with respect to the helpfulness and openness of this support community. I'm now through two conversions and could not be more pleased: http://code.google.com/p/sector67-sandbox/wiki/3300MillConversion http://code.google.com/p/sector67-sandbox/wiki/ProjectSheetCake and would be willing to pitch in the documentation I have and additional videos, etc. to help more accurately represent the excellent state of this software and community to prospective users. My two cents, Scott On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 8:34 AM, gene heskett <ghesk...@wdtv.com> wrote: > On Saturday, March 17, 2012 09:05:00 AM Mark Wendt (Contractor) did opine: > > > On 3/16/2012 10:31 PM, Stuart Stevenson wrote: > > > Gentlemen, > > > > > > Just how do you 'market' a free item/product? The free LinuxCNC > > > software > > > > > > is not even a loss leader. The whole thing is free - all the time - > > > even the advice - even the help. > > > > > > Just asking. > > > > > > thanks > > > Stuart > > > > Stuart, > > > > Marketing is marketing, whether for profit or for non-profit. Even if > > free, you still want to be able to "give" it away. Like Kent mentioned, > > Case Studies and perhaps Testimonials are our "Free" advertising. > > That's the kind of stuff that needs to be in big, bold letters for folks > > looking at our stuff and wondering whether it's worth their time and > > effort to install the software, and become part of our user base. We > > need to show them what the software can do for them, how our support > > works, and how it all benefits them. > > > > Otherwise, if they see no benefit, they'll say the hell with it and > > become a Mach user. > > > > Mark > > While I tend to agree that we need to polish up our sales pitch and > material, one of the things I think we need to emphasize is the level of > support, I think it is fantastic compared to anything I've ever seen > before, where software packages that cost $2500/month, often have bugs that > don't get fixed till the next annual, send lots more money, update. That > is the usual situation at a tv station, where the software that handles > "Traffic", is the heart and soul of the business model. > > LinuxCNC with its random releases that to my knowledge have only once or > twice not been 100% backwards compatible, has amazed me. But I guess I'm > getting used to the Linux way of doing things. > > Take amanda, the backup program, where I have been playing the canary in > the coal mine for the bleeding edge development versions for nearly 10 > years & running it for 14. Only one, non-compatible update has ever taken > place and that was at least a decade ago. It gets broken by support > library changes regularly, most recently by a glib-utils update, but was > fixed in 3 days. That rapidity of fixing things we have no control over > means we get broken more often than an M$ product is, but we still fix it > 10x faster too. > > IMO, this rapid response to problems, should be quite near the top of the > list of advantages to choosing LinuxCNC. > > Cheers, Gene > -- > "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: > soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." > -Ed Howdershelt (Author) > My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> > Credit ... is the only enduring testimonial to man's confidence in man. > -- James Blish > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > This SF email is sponsosred by: > Try Windows Azure free for 90 days Click Here > http://p.sf.net/sfu/sfd2d-msazure > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF email is sponsosred by: Try Windows Azure free for 90 days Click Here http://p.sf.net/sfu/sfd2d-msazure _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
