Bc2000 (for the BCF2000 & BCR2000)

--- In bc2000@yahoogroups.com, "fas1piano" <fas1piano@...> wrote:
> Thanks very much for making this available 
> for free. I look forward to trying it out!

"You're welcome" is the polite reply here, I suppose...

But talking about the fact that BC Manager is freeware:
Maybe some 9 months ago, when I announced that I had started writing
BC Manager, someone in this group suggested that he'd even be
interested if I made it shareware. I have never really considered
this, for several reasons, all amounting to the feeling that it would
be more trouble than benefit: setting up a method for payment,
building in a registration method, trying to prevent piracy. Perhaps
most importantly: I would simply not feel comfortable asking money
from people I consider, in some abstract way, "my friends".
Relationships between me and the other members in the group would get
subtly "different". And what about the people who have (in whatever
way) contributed to the program? Royce for instance, or that German
guy who wrote the first report on the BCF/BCR's MIDI implementation:
shouldn't they get a share of the profits too? And people might get
more reluctant to contribute to the program in the future (pointing
out bugs or making suggestions for new features etc.), for in a sense
they would then become some kind of unpaid employees. Maybe I'm
exaggerating a bit, but I would find this all a bit unpleasant - so
that's why BC Manager is free.

Another, perhaps more interesting point related to the time it's taken
me to write BC Manager:
Some months ago there was a discussion in this group about Behringer's
lack of further development of anything related to the BCF and BCR.
Just imagine that they had ordered one of their employees to further
develop BC-Edit in such a way that it had got to the level of BC
Manager: considering the amount of time it has taken me, this might
have taken a full year's work, so it might have required an investment
(in terms of salary) of maybe 70.000 euros (i.e. over US$100.000
nowadays). They would have had to sell a lot of BCFs and BCRs to get
that investment back! I don't condone their lack of commitment, but I
do think that this clearly demonstrates the core of the problem: they
simply stopped all development once the allotted budget was spent -
it's just the way these companies work. Behringer may be a LITTLE
worse than most others, but they're certainly not alone: I've had
similarly frustrating experiences concerning my Boss GS-10 guitar
multi-effect processor: when I sent a list of bugs in the firmware and
software, I never even got a response back from Roland/Boss.
So I'm afraid we'll be left to our own devices, in all respects...

Mark.