[hpsdr] Books on SDR

[Chris Albertson]

On Apr 30, 2010, at 11:56 AM, Jeremy McDermond wrote:

> *
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> I can only speak for myself, but getting cash isn't going to really encourage me.  I wrote MacHPSDR because it scratched an itch I had, and I enjoyed writing it.  To a large extent, for me, the cash actually is counterproductive to that role.  The cash makes me feel responsible to people to write things, and there's an implicit contract there.  This makes it no longer "fun" but "work."  I didn't get into ham radio to work.

I'll second the above.  Another trouble with contributing cash is that people are totally unrealistic about how much to contribute.   Years ago when for the first time I worked out some cost estimates for a small project.  My boss showed me what to include and the numbers to use.  I was coming up with multimillion dollar figures  I was shocked to see the result..  But it's true.   A simple SDR program paid for at the going rate would cost on order of a million dollars. I figure about 200 people might want to use it  Will each of them contribute $5,000?     Ok so we try and reduce the $1M cost by skipping things we expect from a commercial package, no well edited user manual.  We let the users themselves test the software and we skip the slick user interface and keep the feature set focued.   So maybe the cost goes down to $300,000.    Will the users contribute $1,500?   

So, unless those contributions are four digit figure don't even think of hiring out the work.  Offering a software engineer $0.25 per hours is not much motivation as he is used to working for $50 or $80 per hour.   

The way this stuff gets written is because some one wants to write it and thinks it's fun and just does it.    One good way to motivate any programmer is to offer to help.  OK so you don't know much about computers or software.  But you can write and edit a user manual. you can  test the various functions and maintain a bug list and track the status of bug fixes and which versions of the software fixes which bugs.  You can answer user questions on a support forum or email list.  And of course you can read some books and in time learn enough to actually help with the software.   With that kind of support you will find the software people putting in many hours of work but with out it they loose interest and quit.

What's really going to have to happen is that if hams want  projects then a bigger number of them are going to have to learn 21st century technology.  


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