OLC needs money, or is this just poor marketing?

Today on OLC there have been interesting comments from the OLC Team.

Basically OLC are complaining to all pilots for not supporting them and paying the 10 Euros to get a smiley

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0...l?dsId=3412529

Unfortunately this is in German, but I personally think it is disgraceful.

Surely it is up to the individual pilot to decide if he want to voluntarily pay or not.

Strangely there have already been guys jump camp to the newly formed Skylines.

https://www.skylines-project.org/flights/latest

These are also the guys that bring you XC Soar.
I am a neutral person in all this, never paid OLC, and never used Skylines, but I will be interested to see where it all goes from here.

OLC has done great job and their "competitions" are respected
by most pilots here. SkyLines project is more for flight analyzing
and sharing information with other pilots - even online.

Do not see that these two compete, and both are good. Got to
pay my €10...

At 21:14 29 October 2013, Romeozulu wrote:
Today on OLC there have been interesting comments from the
OLC Team.

Basically OLC are complaining to all pilots for not supporting
them and
paying the 10 Euros to get a smiley

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0...ightinfo.html?
dsId=3412529

Unfortunately this is in German, but I personally think it is
disgraceful.

Surely it is up to the individual pilot to decide if he want to
voluntarily
pay or not.

Strangely there have already been guys jump camp to the
newly formed
Skylines.

https://www.skylines-project.org/flights/latest

These are also the guys that bring you XC Soar.
I am a neutral person in all this, never paid OLC, and never
used Skylines,
but I will be interested to see where it all goes from here.

Looks like they only pinged the daily top 5 that don't have a smiley? Or maybe the first 5 to submit that don't have a smiley? Or, pressure from a club or flying site?

Interesting.

I use both...

I use OLC since the Albuquerque Soaring Club likes for us local guys to log
our flights to keep them in or near the top slot.

I use skylines because it has a **MUCH BETTER MAP** (are you listening,
OLC?) and it allows me to choose my units, i.e., knots and feet, and it
gives me a direct readout of flight time. One can also view two (perhaps
more) flights overlayed with each other. Finally, being open source, the
people are way more friendly.


"Romeozulu" wrote in message
...
Today on OLC there have been interesting comments from the OLC Team.

Basically OLC are complaining to all pilots for not supporting them and
paying the 10 Euros to get a smiley

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0...l?dsId=3412529

Unfortunately this is in German, but I personally think it is disgraceful.

Surely it is up to the individual pilot to decide if he want to
voluntarily pay or not.

Strangely there have already been guys jump camp to the newly formed
Skylines.

https://www.skylines-project.org/flights/latest

These are also the guys that bring you XC Soar.
I am a neutral person in all this, never paid OLC, and never used
Skylines, but I will be interested to see where it all goes from here.

Even Wikipedia time to time is asking for money to cover costs.
Only a few people are paying for OLC, and nevertheless the service is top
quality.
If you have 9 users on a day, like on october 12th 2013, it is easy to
provide a service at no cost.
OLC the same day provided the service to 188. But that's pointless, seen as
a special case.
On june 7th, OLC had to deal with 2396 flights processed. Skylines dealt
with 47.
I am not saying that innovative skylines cannot deal with bigger numbers,
only I dont believe it will be as easy as it is now.
Try serving a sandwich to 47 friends at a party, and to do it for 2396
people. Organization changes, a lot.
And money will help a lot to provide bandwidth, hardware, and maybe also to
grant someone is looking at the service in the weekend, instead of going
flying.
So I cannot blame anybody for trying to rise some funds to cover costs.
I heard that Skylines is rising 10k euro too. So what's wrong? nobody is
getting rich anyway for this money!!!
Nobody is even covering the time costs dedicated to keeping up the service,
not to mention the software.

Concerning maps, on OLC there are also google maps available, so I dont see
the real difference.
It is not the maps making the difference with Skylines, I would say. That's
secondary.

paolo






"Dan Marotta" wrote in message ...

I use both...

I use OLC since the Albuquerque Soaring Club likes for us local guys to log
our flights to keep them in or near the top slot.

I use skylines because it has a **MUCH BETTER MAP** (are you listening,
OLC?) and it allows me to choose my units, i.e., knots and feet, and it
gives me a direct readout of flight time. One can also view two (perhaps
more) flights overlayed with each other. Finally, being open source, the
people are way more friendly.


"Romeozulu" wrote in message
...
Today on OLC there have been interesting comments from the OLC Team.

Basically OLC are complaining to all pilots for not supporting them and
paying the 10 Euros to get a smiley

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0...l?dsId=3412529

Unfortunately this is in German, but I personally think it is disgraceful.

Surely it is up to the individual pilot to decide if he want to
voluntarily pay or not.

Strangely there have already been guys jump camp to the newly formed
Skylines.

https://www.skylines-project.org/flights/latest

These are also the guys that bring you XC Soar.
I am a neutral person in all this, never paid OLC, and never used
Skylines, but I will be interested to see where it all goes from here.

On Thursday, October 31, 2013 6:24:34 PM UTC+1, pcool wrote:
I heard that Skylines is rising 10k euro too.

Ah, very interesting! Who told you that fairy tale? Or did you just make it up?

The truth is: I alone pay for the SkyLines server. I refused all the money that was offered to me for it.

Total cost so far: about 200 EUR for one year and and a half. Yes, that's all the money that was paid for making SkyLines possible.

Hey that was a positive statement. Some cash to pay for servers or a better service or to pay for some students passing weekend on duty to check that everything is ok..
A friend told me today about daec (I think) going to endorse the service.

But if you don't want the money you can donate it to OLC you know.

On Thursday, October 31, 2013 11:36:06 PM UTC+1, wrote:
Hey that was a positive statement. Some cash to pay for servers or a better service or to pay for some students passing weekend on duty to check that everything is ok..

We don't pay developers/admins for their time (unlike the OLC). SkyLines is 100% voluntary and unpaid, like XCSoar, and we're proud of it.

A friend told me today about daec (I think) going to endorse the service.

Yet another fairytale.

I feel that, as someone having administrator access to the skylines infrastructure, I have some insight.
I also own a full backup of all IGC files by the way, because I ran into problems while dealing with OLC.
The same also applies to our local RASP files. Anyone interested in parts of the data, feel free to contact me.

Try serving a sandwich to 47 friends at a party, and to do it for 2396 people. Organization changes, a lot.
That is true. In terms of this party, the changes start when you cannot perform all tasks by yourself.
Or, in the case of computers, when you need multiple computers. Especially when you need more computers than you have components (database server,
webserver, etc) in your architecture.

The skylines server is rather idle on any given moment, so the point where one would need multiple servers is not near.

I heard that Skylines is rising 10k euro too.
Since the birth of SkyLines I have not witnessed or heard about any money being donated or otherwise obtained from third parties.
Given the fact that the source code of the whole system and its contents are freely available, I also find it hard to imagine how it would "rise" money.