SpatialDB Advisor

A new shop has been created that makes available, via a consistent interface, all the free code and products that I have generated over the year. Show your appreciation by getting behind the new adventure.

Over the past 13 years I have made available on my website code samples, packages, installers, jar files etc that presented the results of thousands of hours of algorithm design and implementation.

This work has been made available via blog articles and free code available via free download.

The blogging will continue, as will the free code, but no longer will there be a free download.

Why?

Thousands of downloads have occurred from this site using a download form that looks like:

Please provide a short description of your intended use.
Be respectful and not enter ‘aaaaaaaa…’ or ’12345678…’ etc
I have put a lot of work into the code you are about do download so please spend 10 seconds writing something meaningful
You can be anonymous if you are so concerned
Always feel free to contact me with any issues you have with the code you are downloading
>
>
>
>
>
SUBMIT

Even though I wrote “Be respectful…”, around 15-20% of all downloads included exactly this type of single character repeat.

Those who wrote in foreign languages, I used Google Translate to get the gist of what the words meant.

When a customer description of their use of the code looked interesting, I wrote to the downloader and asked for feedback on that use or suggestions for improvement. The response was pretty well nothing.

Less than 1% of all downloads generated a thank you, via a donation, or an email.

All the above is very disheartening for the person who has put all these thousands of hours into free code.

I admit the original download forms were poor; this is because Textpattern does not have the sorts of packaged functionality that occurs with WordPress Plugins which make building things like a Shop (eg wooCommerce) possible for HTML neophytes like me.

So, all these things transpired to cause a new beginning, summarised as follows:

A new dedicated Shop Website has been created;
The download functionality at the original website has been removed – that site remains a blog site (its content will be moved to the new site over time);
Links are provided to jump from one site to the other;
The Shop website is now the only place where downloads are possible;
All code remains free (installers are being revamped and improved);
However a donation, proportionate to the complexity of the download, is required before the code is available;
The newer code is being systematically put through extensive unit testing which will improve over time;
New mentoring and SQL support “products” are available;
Training videos will start to appear over time.

I hope you all understand why it is that I have taken the steps I have.

Please keep downloading, but let me know how you use the works I make available as it is mainly the thank you that keeps me interested in continuing.

Regards
Simon Greener
29th September 2018

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