En substance il dit que suite à l'apparition de certains projets gratuits sur le net (sans le citer directement il pense a HawgTouch), il trouve dommage de scinder plus la communauté et décide donc de rendre Helios gratuit avec la possibilité de lui faire des dons, et de le rendre plus ouvert aux développements tiers avec la création d'une API et dun SDK permettant de créer des gauges et autres interfaces autour de Helios.Helios Licensing Model Change
[INDENT] We are reevaluating how we approach this hobby. Which is triggering some changes around SCSimulations. Personally I have switched roles at my company and I'm enjoying my day job again, which means my hours are naturally increasing. In addition we have some other community projects which are recreating the work we have already done here. This in all honesty does not make sense for our community, which is small already and I don't want to see fragment.
In light of these current conditions I am changing Helios license model. Helios will move to donation ware where Helios is free to use for all. This means I'll be setting up a way for people to donate money for the work I do, which is used solely for development tools for Helios and to further my cockpit.
I will be exposing the API to write Helios plugins where the community can write new control types, simulation interfaces and gauges. My hope is that the community will take up and extend Helios to things like TeamSpeak plugins, new and better looking gauges and new control types and enhanced interfaces in the simulation. I will focus my time on enhancing the core engine with better more efficient rendering, full network support, better templating / theme support and better easier binding.
I will post an unlocked development build sometime today. I will finish my Black Shark gauges over the next week and then begin the work to remove some of the licensing code, separate and release the source code for the gauge packs and simulation interfaces. This will take a few weeks to accomplish.
For those who already purchased Helios, I will support you in exactly the same way I do today. Your existing donations are why everyone else has the tools they have and I hope you will feel good about your donations and what you have contributed to the community. I would never have launched on the several hundreds of hours to make a WYSIWYG editor just to build my pit, it would have stuck like TouchPal and Hawg touch with hand edited XML files. For those who think it was pricey and I was racking in the dough, think again. I've made less than $5 per hour of time spent on this project after buying some of the hardware (I needed a clean development workstation outside my pit for clean testing) and software tools I use to make Helios (I use NO pirated software). All of my net profits went into either my cockpit (extra external visuals, electronics, etc…) or toward running SCSimulations (materials for prototypes for Sheldon and I, web site, credit card processing fees, etc…). [/INDENT]
C'est une bonne initiative, qui va permettre je l'espère de fédérer les différents créateurs pour avoir un module de développement commun.
L'avenir nous dira...
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