Lpc2000

I can only speak for myself.  I'm a professional programmer of 
vertical business applications.  I also consider myself a perpetual 
student.  My hobby is robotics and I take it seriously.  I consider 
the hobby to be preparation for an alternate career path.  If 
personal robotics ever takes off enough and can support more people 
in the field, then I would be happy to make a career move.  At that 
point I would be happy to pay for the professional tools needed.  In 
the meantime I'm always a student, even if I'm only sporadically 
taking courses at community college to refresh atrophied skills like 
linear algebra (for vision processing).

So I guess I'm saying that I don't see much of a neccessary 
difference between intense hobby and more formal student activities 
(regarding learning intent - I'm not talking about business 
models).  Not everyone into hobbies is retired.  I'm a member of the 
Dallas Personal Robotics Group, and only a couple of the guys in 
that group are retired.  The rest are like me - eager to learn, 
possibly in preparation for a career move, or otherwise hoping to 
hit on a commercial angle.  If I got lucky and built something with 
commercial potential I'd be happy to opt into a full commercial 
license for the tools I'm using.


--- In lpc2000@yahoogroups.com, "rtstofer" <rstofer@p...> wrote:
>
> 
> > So, tell me how can I be persuaded on this?  My leaning would be 
to
> > introduce a hypothetical "hobbyist license" at, say, £99 and 
> require the
> > user to sign an undertaking of no commercial use.  However, I 
> really do
> > need to be convinced that this is a good thing...
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > --
> > Paul Curtis, Rowley Associates Ltd  http://www.rowley.co.uk
> > CrossWorks for MSP430, ARM, AVR and now MAXQ processors
> 
> From a business point of view, a larger user base is a good thing; 
> any level of user.  Hobbyists probably break down into two 
> categories:  those who are working in industry in a different but 
> vaguely related field and may someday develop commercial 
> applications with the software and those, like me, who are retired 
> or working in an unrelated field and will never contribute to your 
> profits.
> 
> I don't see how it would make sense to provide a hobbyist license 
to 
> those who will never develop commercial applications.  But, if you 
> do, sign me up!
> 
> Richard
>