Elecraft

Re: Elecraft Digest, Vol 124, Issue 10

Classic

List

Threaded

5 messages Options

Andrew White

Re: Elecraft Digest, Vol 124, Issue 10

>
>
>
> to quote Wayne from 7/10/2014 7:55 PM
>
> <quote>
> Hi all,
>
> Our firmware task lists are sorted by priority. Determination of
> Priority is democratic to some degree (Squeaky Wheel and other industry
> standard methodologies). But in practice it involves
> crystal-ball-gazing, head-counting, arm-wrestling-over-a-beer, and a
> healthy dose of what-we-have-time-for.
>
> It is not practical for us to publish the lists.

That is nonsense. There are plenty of tools to easily track issues and
feature requests in a way that is no burden on your time. The best thing
you could do is open source your firmware on GitHub and let other people
start working on issues.

> They change daily and
> contain a lot of firmware-speak. We'd rather spend time actually making
> changes than on sanitizing lists for public consumption.
>

That is a job all in itself. It is called Product Management. If you don't
have anyone that does that full time now you should hire someone to do it.
If engineers are doing that now they should most definitely not be doing it.

>
>
> On 8/14/2014 4:55 PM, Sam Morgan wrote:
> > I doesn't have anything to do with one of their new products, so there
> > is no reason to waste electrons asking or commenting.
> >
> > They will get around to it when and if they ever decide to, or are
> > allowed to, work on something P3 or K3 related, and no amount of asking
> > will change that.
> >
>

No actually your premise is completely wrong. It will change that. Products
live and die by the feedback customers give to the company. With no public
issue tracking service offered by Elecraft of course it is going to look
like a black box when in reality the lack of transparency for change
requests is hurting the product.

People are making their own 3rd party products for Elecraft (for the KX3
for example) because "crystal-ball-gazing, head-counting,
arm-wrestling-over-a-beer, and a healthy dose of what-we-have-time-for"
doesn't scale.
______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to [hidden email]

Raymond Sills

Re: Elecraft Digest, Vol 124, Issue 10

HI Andrew:

Well, we all can have our opinions about "list priority"... but in the
end, it's up to Elecraft (Wayne and Eric), with feedback from
customers and employees.

With regard to Elecraft "open-sourcing" their firmware.... don't count
on it. Especially if you like to have the current level of support.
Let's see how Ten Tec fares with their open source rig.

As far as I can see, Elecraft is quite responsive to feature requests
and bug fixes. People often point to a -lack- of response from other
manufacturers... including fixing -known- issues. They just continue
to make the same broken products.

In the end, things have been working quite well for Elecraft from a
business perspective. I doubt there would be any desire to change
anything that "isn't broken" from their perspective, and from the
perspective of most customers.

73 de Ray
K2ULR
KX3 #211

On Aug 19, 2014, at 3:33 AM, Andrew White wrote:

>>
>>
>>
>> to quote Wayne from 7/10/2014 7:55 PM
>>
>> <quote>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Our firmware task lists are sorted by priority. Determination of
>> Priority is democratic to some degree (Squeaky Wheel and other
>> industry
>> standard methodologies). But in practice it involves
>> crystal-ball-gazing, head-counting, arm-wrestling-over-a-beer, and a
>> healthy dose of what-we-have-time-for.
>>
>> It is not practical for us to publish the lists.
>
>
> That is nonsense. There are plenty of tools to easily track issues and
> feature requests in a way that is no burden on your time. The best
> thing
> you could do is open source your firmware on GitHub and let other
> people
> start working on issues.
>
>
>
>> They change daily and
>> contain a lot of firmware-speak. We'd rather spend time actually
>> making
>> changes than on sanitizing lists for public consumption.
>>
>
> That is a job all in itself. It is called Product Management. If you
> don't
> have anyone that does that full time now you should hire someone to
> do it.
> If engineers are doing that now they should most definitely not be
> doing it.
>
>
>>
>>
>> On 8/14/2014 4:55 PM, Sam Morgan wrote:
>>> I doesn't have anything to do with one of their new products, so
>>> there
>>> is no reason to waste electrons asking or commenting.
>>>
>>> They will get around to it when and if they ever decide to, or are
>>> allowed to, work on something P3 or K3 related, and no amount of
>>> asking
>>> will change that.
>>>
>>
>
> No actually your premise is completely wrong. It will change that.
> Products
> live and die by the feedback customers give to the company. With no
> public
> issue tracking service offered by Elecraft of course it is going to
> look
> like a black box when in reality the lack of transparency for change
> requests is hurting the product.
>
> People are making their own 3rd party products for Elecraft (for the
> KX3
> for example) because "crystal-ball-gazing, head-counting,
> arm-wrestling-over-a-beer, and a healthy dose of what-we-have-time-
> for"
> doesn't scale.
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:[hidden email]
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> Message delivered to [hidden email]

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to [hidden email]

Jim Brown-10

Re: Elecraft Digest, Vol 124, Issue 10

In reply to this post by Andrew White

On Tue,8/19/2014 12:33 AM, Andrew White wrote:
> That is nonsense. There are plenty of tools to easily track issues and
> feature requests in a way that is no burden on your time. The best thing
> you could do is open source your firmware on GitHub and let other people
> start working on issues.

I think most of us are pretty happy with how Wayne and Eric run
Elecraft. I certainly am. Perhaps you might start your own company
building radio gear?

73, Jim K9YC
______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to [hidden email]

K4YJJ

Re: Elecraft Digest, Vol 124, Issue 10

I too am happy with the way Elecraft currently operates. Their products
are top notch, and their service is second to none in the industry.

Eric's good presentation at HamJam <http://hamjam.info/index.html> 2011 on
"Starting a Radio Company" shed light on some of the management decisions
they have made and helped us walk in Eric and Wayne's shoes re their
operating approaches,philosophies and forward looks into the market. As a
result I am a big supporter of Eric, Wayne and their products.

Bill k4yjj

On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 10:47 AM, Jim Brown <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> On Tue,8/19/2014 12:33 AM, Andrew White wrote:
>
>> That is nonsense. There are plenty of tools to easily track issues and
>> feature requests in a way that is no burden on your time. The best thing
>> you could do is open source your firmware on GitHub and let other people
>> start working on issues.
>>
>
> I think most of us are pretty happy with how Wayne and Eric run Elecraft.
> I certainly am. Perhaps you might start your own company building radio
> gear?
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:[hidden email]
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> Message delivered to [hidden email]
>

wayne burdick

Re: Elecraft Digest, Vol 124, Issue 10

Administrator

In reply to this post by Raymond Sills

We take input, review it, and implement features and fixes we think are best for customers overall, while not introducing unwanted side-effects. We manage this process very carefully.

Open-source projects work a lot better if one has essentially unlimited code space, as with PC applications. This is not the case with the embedded processors used in compact, power-efficient transceivers.

Wayne

Ray Sills <[hidden email]> wrote:

> HI Andrew:
>
> Well, we all can have our opinions about "list priority"... but in the end, it's up to Elecraft (Wayne and Eric), with feedback from customers and employees.
>
> With regard to Elecraft "open-sourcing" their firmware.... don't count on it. Especially if you like to have the current level of support. Let's see how Ten Tec fares with their open source rig.
>
> As far as I can see, Elecraft is quite responsive to feature requests and bug fixes. People often point to a -lack- of response from other manufacturers... including fixing -known- issues. They just continue to make the same broken products.
>
> In the end, things have been working quite well for Elecraft from a business perspective. I doubt there would be any desire to change anything that "isn't broken" from their perspective, and from the perspective of most customers.
>
> 73 de Ray
> K2ULR
> KX3 #211