On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 09:15:56 -0700, Andrzej Kobus wrote:

Aren't they setting a stage for a subscription service as a result of
providing temporary backward compatibility since from that point on the
motivation for free is out the window? It sounds like it. I see Paolo's
point very clearly now.

I didn't read it that way, though I suppose anything is possible.

In fact, some of the text on the revised website could be read as a hint
that, at some point in the future, "Classic FLARM" support could be
chopped and everybody forced onto PowerFLARM.

I read the stuff about free FLARM updates vs expensive TCAS ones as
boiling down to:

"We only build and support two binaries: one for PowerFLARM and one
for Classic FLARM, so your hardware's software environment must
match our binary's requirements *exactly* as we specified.

This means that we can afford to provide free updates because, unlike
TCAS systems, we don't have to support different sets of hardware or
multiple operating systems".

There is also a third binary: the one for older Classic FLARMs that don't
have SD-cards. However, my guess is that this is just the Classic FLARM
binary packaged with a Windows loader that installs it over a serial link.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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