Many of us have committed significant amounts of money to fund the
upcoming software development.
Most of us think that you will eventually deliver on the major
promises you are implying re the 6N00 series, and perhaps on the
minor ones as well.
But concerning your announced upgrade policy, please remember: As you
said, the software "is" the radio. And we are paying for a complete,
working radio. You might not have it actually completed within 2 years.
I would, and I think most buyers would, be comforted if you committed
to delivering a truly working radio for the price we have committed
to pay. This might mean that the cutoff date for free "software
upgrades" is the date at which you deliver a relatively bug-free and
relatively full-featured product (your honest judgnent, not mine). I
am not asking for true "upgrades", only a genuinely workable radio
with at least the same software reliability and usefulness as other
Ham manufacturers provide for the initial purchase price. If the
initial version of the software is truly finished in the first year,
I probably don't need a second year, free or not.
True "upgrades" that add significant functionality or features are
not at issue here - charge/subscribe/whatever for them.
The model for responsibility for software product quality has been
well established: Microsoft charges me only when a truly new OS
version (98, XP. 7...) comes out. I don't have to pay yearly to
simply make the released version work properly - making it work was
Microsoft's responsibility from the time of initial release, and they
honor that.
If you are sure you can actually deliver a fully working, relatively
bug-free 6N00 radio within two years, you have nothing to lose in
re-stating your time-based commitment into a performance-based one.
BTW, I ordered my 6500 Sunday evening. It will be my third Flex
radio. I am still using my SDR-1000 as well as my 5000/rx2.
Jerry W4UK
At 10:52 AM 5/22/2012, Gerald Youngblood wrote:
Hi Jim,
We understand that charging for software upgrades is a business model that
has not existed before in ham radio. Other manufacturers have limited
capability for radically changing the functionality their radios through
software so it does not make sense for them to charge. Those other radios
are generally fixed function analog architectures that have only
a tiny fraction of the computational power of the FLEX-6000 series.
The software *is* the radio on the FLEX-6000 series. FlexRadio is a
software company ...
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