I am accepting beta testers. Please send me your email address to jtroyer@gmail.com with the subject SOTA Activator Beta to join in the beta testing. I plan to charge an annual subscription fee of $5 to support consistent new features and releases. Anyone who participates in the free beta program will receive the first year for free when the final release comes out.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Thanks! Hope you all like the app. I have many exciting features planned.
AF7QD
How did you think all these servers were paid for ? The magic money bunny?
There’s load balancers for the dual SSO and dual API servers, the DB server, the maps server, SOTA cluster, SMS spotter and there’s this forum. I don’t have the forum costs to hand but the other stuff is running around $160/month right now.
And you swan up here and advertise your app without consulting the people running SOTA and seem surprised to find we have to raise money to pay for all of this. So what’s our cut going to be?
My sincere apologies for offending you, Andy. My response was asking for information so that I may personally donate to a wonderful radio game that I have enjoyed for several years. I looked again at the main sota page the reflector and the database and did not see where I could easily donate.
I am not trying to profit from SOTA. I am sorry if you feel like that is what my intention is.
I am a mobile application developer in the real world and I thought I could give back to the SOTA community, and learn some new things by developing a nice modern android application. I hardly think asking for the cost of a cup of coffee a year is profitable, considering the hours spent just to basic functionality and the cost of the mapping server backend. The intent was to motivate the magic money bunny and keep him from becoming jaded and cynical about volunteering time. I would be happy to share in “profits”. What do you feel is reasonable?
Please do point me to where I can donate to the SOTA Fund.
I agree, the donation link is a bit hidden and it’s not easily found. I usually donate twice a year, one in summer and the other in Christmas. From one time to the next one, I sometimes forget how to get to the donation link and I need to search for it.
I think there should be a donation link visible on every SOTA site.
73,
Thanks for the link - I have been over to the shop and made a donation (and will continue to do so in the future on a regular basis), as well as buying one of those nice SOTA flags.
Regarding the app - I can understand payment for apps for developers (although I am a firm believer in open source code), and I also appreciate those who give back to their community by making resources and sharing them for free. What really winds me up is having to pay for software by subscription payments. In my opinion, it enables the developers to do nothing, but to continue to take money. Subscription payments should be to cover ongoing costs, such as the server costs referred to earlier. The biggest offender in my book is Microsoft with their Office 365 offering. Anyway - shan’t get on my hobby horse - life is too short!
As penance for this - I will now go and see if I can find a local summit to go and activate later!
