Further development of ml_iPod...

[abu]

Hi everybody,
although you might not even be interested: I just wanted to tell you that I'm really a bit disappointed. The latest version of ml_iPod (2.01) has been downloaded more than 54,000 times now, in only one month. So I guess more than 50,000 people have seen the appeal for donations, which is shown after installation. Exactly 14 of these 50,000 responded (if you are one of those, thanks a lot! Please stop reading here!).

I'm surprised. I really expected it to be an easy job to raise the money for a 5.5G iPod this way, just to make further development possible. If only 1 in 100 donated a dollar, it would have been enough for this goal....

Of course, ml_iPod IS feeware, and it will always be. Neither me nor anybody of the other guys who are contributing to this want to get "paid" for it. It's kind of fun to do it, but it takes a lot of hours and days. Probably you can't even imagine how much time it takes.

To see that people want to see new features all the time (sometimes they sound as if they've got the "right" to get this or that), and at the same time this lame response, that's kind of frustrating.

Sorry if you get annoyed by this sermon, I just had to whinge a bit today. I'm just not very encouraged at the moment to continue working on ml_iPod...

So, if anybody wants to take the lead, contact me.

[frnzy]

Hey man, I'd encourage you to not give up hope. The work you've done since the plugin changed hands has been substantial, and I know it's been a great help to me, at least.

As for the donations, I would suggest you give the people a little more feedback. Right now, the donations say that they're going towards a 5.5g iPod. That's fine, but they also have no idea where you stand on the funds, or how it is coming. I have a feeling more people would feel compelled to do something if they could see both what your goal is and where you are now.

Perhaps a bar showing how many donations (in number and in monetary value) have been received, and how much more is needed until the goal is reached? If not a bar, at least updating these stats on a page with numerical values. Beyond that, once the next stable release is done, I had planned on telling several forums about the Last.fm support and encouraging people to donate if they find the feature worthwhile.

So... yes. Thanks for everything you've done so far, Achim. I know that I, at least, hope you continue.

[DrO]

Of course, ml_iPod IS feeware, and it will always be. Neither me nor anybody of the other guys who are contributing to this want to get "paid" for it. It's kind of fun to do it, but it takes a lot of hours and days. Probably you can't even imagine how much time it takes.

that's totally understandable. from personal experience, people generally won't donate unless they're one of the nice set who understand the effort such things do involve. for the large plugins i have which have the donation pages, the main jtfe has been the smallest on the donation stakes (despite it being the most distributed as a gratis item in the winamp distro) so i can understand the frustration on such matters.

however i can understand why people don't donate in the majority of cases seeing as winamp is free, so why not have the plugins be the same. some projects do deserve certain levels of donation and ml_ipod is definitely one of those (especially seeing if people can afford an ipod i'm sure they can afford some sort of donation towards the project - as was definitely the case in the earlier days). the real problem is that too much is placed on people getting renumeration of dev time put in (as seen by some other free plugins changing to shareware/nagware which just doesn't fit in with normal winamp usage).

really the main problem is that with a free player, people expect free add-ons, etc and i think that's just too ingrained into people (well is how i see things to be). thankfully i don't have to make my living on my plugins (otherwise i'd have been homeless a few years back, heh).

frustrating as it maybe, really the best approach to go for is to code for what you want and if you want to then what others want but there's no point in coding something you don't use/need/understand. users demanding stuff is just one of the things that has to be dealt with, and with ml_ipod since the code is available, if it's that much of an issue, you can always inform them of the fact that the code is available and if it's so important to them that they can implement it themselves (usually keeps most of them quiet after that though there's always a few that'll moan more but that's just people for you)

-daz

[abu]

Thanks for your understanding and good advice, DrO.

Actually this is my first "real" project (besides a little help here and there) in the OpenSource world, so maybe I've got to learn a bit.
I'm used to use a lot of OpenSource tools (I've been a pro in SW for more than 15 years now, responsible for the tool chains for a development crew of 150+ developers), and regularly do support those projects by donations. But maybe that's just my way of handling it, because I know personally how much work is involded in these things.

I'll take your advice, daz, and stick with the stuff I personally want to see in ml_iPod. The rest of my spare time should be dedicated to my kids

[DrO]

Originally posted by abu
I'll take your advice, daz, and stick with the stuff I personally want to see in ml_iPod. The rest of my spare time should be dedicated to my kids

just don't pass the angry users on to me, that's all i ask and if available time is tight, it makes more sense to do what you're going to benefit from (just about balances out the effort put in for new things i guess)

-daz

[abu]

Originally posted by frnzy
Perhaps a bar showing how many donations (in number and in monetary value) have been received, and how much more is needed until the goal is reached?

Good idea, added this to http://mitglied.lycos.de/bursian/ipod/

[Yawg81]

Payment Details
Transaction ID: 7FX17436KC500805N
Item Price: 3,00 EUR
Total: €3,00 EUR
Item/Product Name: Winamp iPod support ml_iPod
Buyer: Frederik Claes


/cheers

keep up the excellent work!

[abu]

Nice, but my Paypal account doesn't accept credit card payments

[Civil44]

I would honestly consider contributing if my Ipod hadn't been erased for the second time after an update. Its bugs like this that really irk people and make them wonder if contributing is even worth it.

[abu]

Acually, if I had such problem, I wouldn't donate anything. Contribution is for those who are really happy with the SW...
I'm sorry that I can't help with that problem