Why real time kernel is needed with board like MESA?

If you use open source, you have to share the derived work at the source level. So you might as well contribute it back so others can improve your work... and shoulder some of the support...

rodw wrote: If you use open source, you have to share the derived work at the source level. So you might as well contribute it back so others can improve your work... and shoulder some of the support...

Yeah we can surely use some little group crowdfunding for developing small projects and then merge in to main branch.

Little helps can add some speed. I am not talking $$$, just some $.

I also feel money have corrupted every part of our lives. Phillc54 is right we can keep money out of here. Solving other people's problems without any money profit feels good.

Lets put the $$$ idea in the bin.

I want to congratulate you on your attempt to protect yourself from the influence of money. It's such a good dream if we could be hippies ......
I hope you understand that maintaining the independence of the main branch and ensuring rapid development (keywords) is associated with the creation of products to be given to people with money. My opinion !
You didn't answer me about the examples with Arduino and Raspberry? We can't say that these are bad private ideas, can we? This, however, must continue, if in fact the Western world still has the initiative.
Although I already doubt it. We don't want to produce anything anymore. Young people do not want to think about business, technology, machines. They look all day on their Chinese phones and Chinese laptops and see the world much pinker than it actually is.
And in so many European cities, there are already Chinese customs warehouses!

But these are just sad thoughts.

No one bothered (because I think the maximum here is 4 axes) to upgrade the TurboDos platform with today's Free Dos capabilities. He could also work with Orange Pi for $ 12 + Bradboard for $ 8!
I mean as LinuxCNC, GRBL (which unfortunately do not collaborate in any way) there is no separate FreeDos project .Is not clear why it is not interesting for us as it is interesting for the Chinese!

I dont think we need to put the money idea in the bin.

I think the way Phill has pointed out that to get a team together, write a scope of what needs to be done, find a source of funding and hire a developer to write the code, do the required testing and put the resultant work back into the open source project would be a way forward.

I myself plan on doing that very same thing in the next couple of years, just working on developing a source of external funding that does not rely directly on the result of the work is the hardest part for me.

I am open to the idea of using FPGA's and such if the end product is cheap, reliable and most importantly fully open source. My six axis robots have taught me about the horrors of vendor lock in.

Also I think as an example of what can be done, just look at Tormach PathPilot. The project used LinuxCNC as the base, hired paid programmers to write what they wanted and released the work back into the open source space.

It really is a shining example of what is possible. They have recently released a CNC plasma machine that also uses a version of PathPilot, tormach.com/machines/plasma-tables.html

Well if you really want to use DOS as an OS and a parallel port, there's always TurboCNC.
Which although it is shareware, the source is apparently available when you pay your registration.
Though I think many would be put off by the DOS interface.