Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] "GNU Radio is crap" and GSoc

[Jeff Brower]

Martin-

> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 09:11:19AM -0500, Clark Pope wrote:
>> Without a monetization strategy I don't see how the gnu radio project gets 
>> much past its current state. The problem
>> is the functionality of a prototyper or student is implemented in about 20% 
>> of the effort for a full application.
>> The documentation, testing, deployment, and maintenance of a real 
>> application needs a lot more work and that work is
>> not educational or enjoyable. So without something like an app store where 
>> developers can get reimbursed for that
>> other 80% the applications will stay stuck at the cool demo stage.
>
> First, "cool demo stage" is already a pretty good stage.
> Second, I'd like to point out a very successful OSS project not unlike
> GNU Radio & the USRP: the Arduino.
> By itself, it's useless--it's a hardware/software development tool.
> Sounds familiar?
> If you read sites like hackaday.com, the Arduino comes up *all the
> time* with posts like "Look what X did with an Arduino". On this
> specific site, GNU Radio comes up 3 times, the newest article being from
> February 2009.
>
> Some coverage of cool hacks using GNU Radio certainly wouldn't hurt the
> project.

All understood.  Demos that highlight GNU Radio's tremendous progress are 
crucial to its long-term success.  But
nevertheless Clark makes a crucial point.  GNU Radio is owned by National 
Instruments and I might guess their sales
guys are not too happy with this thread.  They can't sell "cool demos".  
Progress must be made to create
revenue-producing applications.  Like Clark says, most of that work is not fun, 
and it eats a lot of time and effort,
but in the real business world, there isn't a choice.

-Jeff