Linuxcnc pro/paid?

NitroCH3NO2 wrote:

now you get 10 of each membership and now you could reasonably devote 15 hours a month

The first problem here is that I don't think anyone is going to pay you for "priority" so you can be available for 15 hours a month.

The next problem is that the user base is not large enough to support this type of service. To make a real paid service you would have to be available for 40-70 hours a week 52 weeks a year. There are only 7272 total registered users on the forum. I am guessing that 5% at most would want to continually pay for priority service so that means 370 people might pay for priority service.

The next problem is that the person(s) providing priority service must be very, no extremely, knowledgeable about LinuxCNC. Nobody wants to pay for tech support and not actually get the support you paid for because the tech does not know about the question being asked.

The next problem is that the LinuxCNC user base is world wide. So now out of those 370 people half will be awake while the tech support is open and the other half will be sleeping. So now you only have 185 people that will pay for a 1 person 1 time zone "priority" service system.

If you were to get 370 people to pay for service, and you had 5 extremely knowledgeable persons on a rotating scheduled to be available 24-7. You would have to charge $70.00 a month per subscription to provide the service assuming a 60K a year salary including benefits for the workers. This does not even cover any additional company expenses. (all numbers are just for an example calc to show the basics of trying to make this an actual business)

Ultimately I think it would be a very difficult to impossible sell to sell "Pro" service without actually having a "Pro" service to sell. Especially when you have a large base of extremely knowledgeable people on this forum and mailing list that are willing to help for FREE at a slightly delayed response to what you would get with a "Pro" service.

I understand for mainstream businesses that use LinuxCNC it would be good to have some sort of priority support but just my first glance at this shows that the market for this business is not great enough to support the business at this time.

If we were to look at this as a 9-5 job then yes you are correct it would be a challenging scenario. I am thinking more in terms of available when needed. For example I spend about 8 hours a day in front of my computer. I am self employed so during the time when I am at work I could often stop to do something else. In fact I have the live chat setup on my website just like that. If a customer has questions the chat window pops up and I can help them instantly. If I am not around or as I often do forget to log into the chat then their question will go straight to my email and I respond as soon as I have time.
I have to imagine that there are people who wouldn't mind having that window open while they are browsing the internet or working at the computer for a few hours a night.
Even if the response wasn't instant, for example the $4 and $10 options if someone responded within 4 hours it should be pretty acceptable. Or for that matter the forums could still be the first point of contact and one or two people could actually be paid to go through the forums, say an hour of time twice a day to answer questions and if necessary setup a time for a call or live chat for paying members.
The people doing this wouldn't need to be all knowing. The biggest key would be setting up a network. Maybe find one or two developers or expert users who could be called on from time to time. 90% of the questions would likely be pretty basic. so the main responder would just filter through those and then take the challenging issues or bug reports or whatnot up the chain. The less subscribers you had the less people would be trying to get help. The more subscribers you had the more income you would have and the more you could scale up the operation. The goal would be to find people who had time, needed money and wanted to invest their time into trying to turn this into something they could do long term with increasing income. Had you caught me three years ago when I was just starting my business and was looking for any source of income possible I could have put 20 hrs a week into this and would have done much of that without pay in hopes of building it up to be a serious source of income. 3 years later and my business might be supporting the Linuxcnc and DIY cnc community instead of the 4AGE and MR2 community. Now I am too busy to make that kind of commitment but I would still be willing to put some effort into something like this. Whether it's financially driven or not. hell if we could come up with something similar and do it for free then awesome but if there was enough people interested in doing that then there would be people pouring through the forums jumping on new threads with enthusiasm.

TroyO wrote:

"For me though it would have to be worth my time. The way I see it is $5 here or $20 there isn't worth making yourself available all the time. "

I was actually thinking the exact opposite. It wouldn't be one person, but rather an open ended pool of people, and the 5 and 20 were just for-instance.

An example:

I could use help setting up automatic tool length probing. I have the probe, it is hooked to pin 12. Can someone take a copy of my relevant files and add the parts needed, in 72 hours? I am willing to pay $30.

Of the 20 or however many people in the pool, Joe Blow is the first to come back with "Hey, I have some time, and I could use that $30. I'll do it." Or.... No one goes for it. So, 24 hours later I up my bid and say "ok, now it's 48 hours, and I will go to $60". And so on.

At some point the money involved (or donation to LCNC) balances out and folks will be able to gauge if it's a $5 or $60 issue. That way no "one" is on the hook all the time, and when/if you need it you could pull in some $ on "free time" if you wanted and ignore it if you didn't.

Anyway, it's certainly not a fully developed idea, just a notion. It probably has holes ones would drive a LCNC controlled truck through....

I look at it like insurance.
Not everyone will have the same needs. If that happens 4 times a year then you are invested $240. In comparison $10 a month for relatively unlimited support looks pretty good right?
Now sure there will be people who go years without needing help or maybe only need a a couple minutes here or there. Maybe not as good a deal but it's good insurance.
Take it to the extreme and look at high end CAD. Companies pay $1000 to $2000 a year just for product support. That is basically updates and some tech support. If your licences computer crashes and you don't pay that yearly subscription then you might just pay $2000 for them to install your new licenses and get your new computer running again. Now I totally believe this is ridiculous but many people still pay it because it's the safer, quicker option.
So I mean if you wanted to pay an hourly rate I guess you could but I still think it would be better all around if it was a monthly or annual subscription. I know personally I would rather pay $120 a year than $60 every time I needed help.

The biggest obstacle to getting answers, is often the question.

Incomplete, vague information, an assertion that " the problem is X and how do I solve it", or "the solution is this, how do I achieve it", rather than a description of the totally of the situation.

eg. "I just upgraded and I get an error and linuxcnc shuts down"

Upgraded from what to what, on what and what is the error text?

Sometimes it is like pulling teeth.

This can be down to lack of knowledge on the part of the person asking the question, but if asked specifically for information, if you don't provide it the person trying to assist will soon lose interest.

The particular issue that led to this thread was I think in no small part down to your post...

If I go out and mess with it today I'll see if I can get a screen grab where you can se, with expectations exceedinge the toolpath starting very far away from the part.

Which would lead anyone reading it to expect a further post and a screenshot if you had not fixed it yourself.

I think the current situation is probably as good as you are going to get, between all the other users on the forum you have a wide range of knowledge and past experience.
This is not likely to be enshrined in one individual.

Anyone setting themselves up as a paid 'Linuxcnc guru', for systems that they had no part in designing or setting up, would probably not have an easy time of it.
Not something I would be interested in, for sure.

regards

Yep, The more I think about it we have the best support in the all knowing wizards that are on this forum and email list. And for the most part questions are answered pretty quickly.

Once again I think the best bet for someone that needs help immediately is to let the forum or email list or both know that it is a huge priority. Someone will likely be ready to go out of their way to help. In fact many people will likely go out of their way to help.

Andy,

You bring up a good point about not accepting donations or other monetary contributions. How are things like web hosting for this site paid for? I have wondered this for a while now.

Now that I think about it. I use some CAD software products at work. I pay a yearly "Subscription" to the software. I don't even get immediate support when I pay multiple thousands of dollars a year for a subscription. All I have for support is a forum just like this one. You have to pay even MORE for phone support and then it is not immediate. Luckily it is pretty well sorted out and I don't need much support with those products.

I do have some high end simulation products that I pay an even higher subscription to. I do get nearly immediate phone support for those products and it is sometimes needed so I guess it is somewhat worth it.

Yeah, I was wondering if the board might just not wish the headaches involved in any of the above. I wondered about the Donation thing too, LOL. I understand about the freedom involved in NOT having financial obligations involved.

I think the subscription system on a lot of the software is bogus and morally questionable myself. I can see for user questions, etc but bug fixes should always be free. If they sold you the software as doing X, Y and Z then it should do Z,Y and Z correctly. Having to pay extra to get what you already paid for is unfair.

Upgrades and new features and support for questions I can see charging extra for.

I do ask for much help, but I do have many other questions answered completely or partially just by searching the existing posts and replies. It can take me awhile to read along to keep up, but a wealth of knowledge available, kind of instantly, depending on the search.

I also see the point of having no obligation, but I keep seeing the same members answering questions for what seems like years.

I don't see why these two things have to be viewed as so mutually exclusive. If some people don't want money and want to volunteer then there is nothing wrong with that.
At the same time if someone came on here and said they wanted to make this their full time gig and was looking for say 50 people willing to pay $10/mo so they could get started down that path I would totally jump on board if it meant that it would accelerate development, improve quality and add functions.
Money can be a good thing if used properly. It can accelerate growth and increase interest.

The other thing that seems odd to me is the lack of vendors on this site. It's been a long time since I looked through the board rules. Is there a strict no vendors policy here or are there really just no vendors interested in this community?
On most the forums I am on there are vendor rules but vendors are welcome as long as they follow those rules. Most of the forums I am on you have to pay to be a vendor. More than the revenue of that I think it's mostly a way to separate vendors invested in the community and general spammers and to keep some sort of order and regulation.
On most of the forums I am on that do have vendor subscription requirements I haven't paid in years. I think they realize that the MK1 MR2 scene is so slow and I make so little money off of it that a. I can't afford to pay for the ability to market and b. I spend hours a week on the forums answering questions because my visibility in the community generates revenue for my business so it's a small win win. The forums get more activity and someone knowledgeable answering questions and increasing activity and through that I get some small compensation for my time from increased visibility and picking up the occasional customer.

I have actually wanted to branch out into the DIY CNC market for a while now. Particularly with a focus on metric components and tooling. I am a huge proponent of metrication in the US and would like to help make it easier for people to go fully metric. This is my facebook page if anyone wants to join. It's slow too. I would love to get more activity on it.
www.facebook.com/groups/1467252280183795/

I have not had as much time as I would like to put into this but if I get around to branching out in that direction a similar situation could be mutually helpful here. The opportunity for visibility causes me to want to spend more time here. More time here means I learn more, can help more and can answer more questions.