AIR MANAGER

[Robertfm]

I get that but selling their product to a larger market place overall should be what any business wants.

[SurferTim]

I get that but selling their product to a larger market place overall should be what any business wants.

Oh, they were very receptive to get a new market. No problem there. The tech had already set up a Skype account to show me how to do it.
Then he discovered I was just a forum member. They want to deal with the people in charge.
Who is that here?

[Hooray]

In the past, this kind of thing would usually be handled by "someone" (i.e. YOU) actively offering to contribute product/vendor specific work back to the FlightGear project, often by receiving free hardware in return (donation).

To be honest however, this has rarely worked out "directly" - i.e. what would usually happen is that some contributors receive such hardware (usually for free) and then they actively talk/post patches for weeks/months, but sooner or later things will calm down, without anything significant having happened necessarily.

For some background info, refer to the FSWeekend talks in the devel list, where some of the senior project contributors received hardware from Saitek - but it's mainly "talks" and "ideas", not necessarily much in terms of a concrete ROI (patches/code) for the donor of said hardware, to see for yourself, refer to: https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/ma ... l_list=all

In other words, you could definitely be the right person - it doesn't seem to make much of a difference if the recipient of such donations is an active project contributors/core developer or not - it seems more important to have related skills and spare time. Other than that, there's no reason to feel bad about it - you only need to look at the backlog of patches that were contributed to the project, that were never really accommodated/accepted. So, there's that too.

And there's actually a pattern to that, i.e. you can find other examples, where significant hardware contributions were received by individual contributors, solely based on being actively involved in the project - your role (if any) doesn't seem to have much bearing, see for example: https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/ma ... l_list=all

However, the common theme is that recipients of such hardware share their gratitude by posting on the forum, the devel list, the newsletter/changelog or the wiki in general favorably referring to the donor company - at some point, there also used to be a dedicated "Thanks" file that would be shown as part of the help/about dialog, but other than that, the project doesn't have dedicated protocols or channels to deal with the situation at hand.

Subject: Free aircraft helicopter simulator Flightgear vs Oculus Rift

The problem with basically all expensive bits of hardware is that most developers don't have them and nobody is supplying them for free - then it's kind of hard to add specific support. Basically this thing only happens if a developer wants expensive bit of hardware X himself, buys it and adds the code.

Realizing that probably explains a lot (like how can we miss so many AMD or Intel chip graphics issues - it'd not happen if someone pays me a couple of different computers with all sorts of graphics hardware so that I can test on all of them, these issues wouldn't occur - but I sure won't spend a lot of money myself).

If in doubt, it'd be best to reach out to the devel list, or the people usually acting as spokesperson of the project - namely Curtis Olson, Torsten Dreyer or James Turner - the latter of whom has been acting as the de facto project lead and primary core developer for the better part of the last decade anyway (nature and degree of activity/involvement, hats he's wearing, community reputation etc): https://www.openhub.net/p/flightgear/co ... an=30+days

search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=saitek+fsweekend

[SurferTim]

I don't mind doing that. That is why took up the torch with Air Manager and Logitech.
At least Air Manager didn't threaten me with legal action if I hacked their firmware.

I see their point. How do they know I'll share? What if they do all this, and I hoard it.
I think they want some assurance that FlightGear will support this effort. I can't guarantee that.

[Hooray]

As a project, we are not very good at this kind of thing - it touches the challenges that involve having a proper structure/organization if you will - for the same reason, the project never managed to get even just an application for crowd funding, google's summer of code, or becoming a charity to receive tax-deductible donations. Also, you only need to look at the devel list archives to see that some of the most senior project contributors literally had to tread very carefully whenever it came to doing commercial/proprietary work or anything involving NDAs or compensation for controversial work (think obfuscated modules etc).
There is a long history of challenges surrounding anything involving commercial aspects of the projects, which is to say that the project is primarily a spare time effort, and the people involved in the project don't want to put up with the legal/groundwork for anything else.

Again, if in in doubt, raise it on the devel list - just don't expect any kind of consensus, even the really long-timers have made controversial decisions, and if they were accepted, that was often only the case because of their reputation - for instance, putting ads (Google AdSense) was originally a rather controversial decision among some long-term contributors, such as David Megginson - who instead offered to donate hardware/money directly.

These days, hosting has become a no-brainer, but the point being - don't expect any kind of "consensus", you only need to look at the events surrounding the donation of hardware from Saitek or other companies.

Other than that, FlightGear as a project strives to support such hardware obviously, but we're not very good at getting our act together when it comes to the fine print, i.e. actually implementing such "long term visions", beyond just saying "we want to support XYZ".