and now for something completely different...

[MarkHaysHarris777]

(03-18-2015 08:49 PM)BarryMead Wrote:  I have seen this pattern repeat itself over and over. It seems we as human beings have an instinctive tendency to OVER SIMPLIFY things that we are familiar with and DISMISS the unfamiliar hard work of others. The truth is that the WP-34S project is a VERY SIGNIFICANT piece of HARD WORK contributed by many people and is deserving of a great deal of respect for what it is.

I agree with most of what you are saying, and in the face of the obvious we all might end up saying, "what's the point of redirection?" I am usually against forks of any kind, but having said that, some really great innovations have come from otherwise benign forks!

I think we need to keep in mind what is really happening here. At the whim of HP, I mean this respectfully, the 20b (also 30b), hardware is going to be "no more" and the 'hard work' of the community is going to be for naught "unless" we can come up with different hardware. Heckfire, if HP were to announce (and stick to it) that they were going to produce an open hardware "shell" like the 20b 'forever' we would not even be having this conversation, nor would I be spending my hours developing an alternative open hardware platform to take the place of the 20b. I welcome all comers to the table who want to investigate this idea and move forward with an HP-less open hardware platform for scientific hand-held computing.

Having said all of that mouthful, I too am not in favor of stepping all the way back to BASIC. Holy guacamole, those canisters of avocados sailed years ago!

We take it for granted that someone (HP is one of the best) will build PC hardware that we can load our open software into... gnu/linux anyone? But, do we have the same opportunity to purchase an open hardware platform for hand-held computing from some commercial venture? The obvious answer is NO. So, we're going to need to build it ourselves... and market it too! Yes, we can.

Cheers,
marcus