Just an update on my thoughts on Kipware...
After a number of people bought the software based on my suggestion, I contacted Ken with some suggestions. I mentioned that some of the people were very frustrated by bugs, frequent crashes, and illogical operation of the software. I suggested he needed to have NON-USERS do some testing on his software and do a total quality and usability review. Basically he went full apesh-t on me, flipped out and raged about how "people never contact ME about problems". Well, dude, people have other things to do besides be your software beta tester and QC. If someone is in the middle of trying to get an urgent job done, you really think they are going to take the time to document the bugs in your software and email you? No, they are going to find a way to get their job done, and lose faith in your product. I know from personal experience at the one customer's site, I was able to repeatedly crash the program. Now I'm sorry, but in the year 2023, NO program should ever completely crash and just disappear or lock up. That is inexcusable.
Now I regret that I ever suggested people to look at his software. It has the potential to be a really useful tool. But if the developer can't listen to constructive criticism from someone who WAS a FREE booster of your product, then you don't really deserve anybody's money.
I keep hoping the open source community will come up with something similar that works better... although I guess soon computers will just be writing all the G code while we smoke dope and play video games, so it doesn't matter.
My two cents.