Linuxcnc pro/paid?

Hypnotoad wrote: As a complete beginner I found the forum to be extremely responsive. Most of my issues were hardware related.

Most (all?) open source development is managed with mailing lists. It would probably be useful to have someone feed things asked in the forums frequently to the dev mailing list.

It's true though, LinuxCNC could see a lot of industrial use if someone offered paid support.

I have had mixed responses. I have only had to come here for support a handful of times and sometimes it has been quick and helpful. Other times I have waited days for a response. If this was a hobby machine that wouldn't be a problem but when I have a project sitting on the machine for 5 days that I need to get done one starts to see the value of instant support even if it costs a little bit.

yoshimitsuspeed wrote: I have had mixed responses. I have only had to come here for support a handful of times and sometimes it has been quick and helpful. Other times I have waited days for a response. .

If you do not want to subscribe to the mailing list then I believe that you can post to it through the web interface:
news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.emc.devel
There is an option to post in the top-right drop-down.

You will have to return to that page to look for replies, however.

If you want a chance to have instant support - go to the IRC channel #linuxcnc. It is mentioned on the Community page of the website. There is a web client here: webchat.freenode.net/ and there is a client built into thunderbird - and there are plenty of other clients as well.

cncbasher wrote: i do at times take on paid work , depends on whats needed etc ,

Would you or anyone else be interested in trying to start up a paid/more supported channel of linuxcnc? I know that many developers have jobs and work in their spare time but if we could find a couple people who were interested in trading more time for more money it might be worth putting in some effort to see where it could go.
Even a crowdfunding campaign to see if it could get enough initial funding to start it up and pay for someones time. If it falls short then oh well.
I have seen some ridiculously lousy CNC type projects do way too well on kickstarter and the like. Little machines made out of MDF and plastic cut out on another little ghetto machine that brought in bucketloads of money. Of course they had good videos and marketing and that is one other thing I am not good at.

I am not even set on the paid thing but just doing something to bring more accessibility, more ease of use and hopefully even more development to linuxcnc. I think with small changes to the format that linuxcnc could be more popular. More popular and a more open energetic community means more people involved. More people involved means a shared workload. Experienced community members answering questions instead of only moderators feeling obligated to do so because they are the only ones there.

The DIY cnc scene is blowing up right now. Why is linuxcnc lurking in the shadows?

I and many others on here want to help when we can. The problem is that most all of us users also have full time gigs elsewhere. That combined with other life makes it hard to respond to every post on here or through the mailing list etc.

If your question is not getting answered and you need a response be sure to keep posting about it and nag us so we know how urgent it is.

I sometimes look at a post and think that I could help with that, but life gets in the way and I don't ever get back to the post.

As you see today once it was made clear that you needed an answer right away you had three very capable users helping right away to get the problem solved.

yoshimitsuspeed wrote: I know that many developers have jobs and work in their spare time but if we could find a couple people who were interested in trading more time for more money it might be worth putting in some effort to see where it could go

I would refer to trade less money for more time, so I am not your man.

The DIY cnc scene is blowing up right now. Why is linuxcnc lurking in the shadows?

As a moderator I get an email every time someone subscribes to the web site / forum. It is about 150 new people every month. (and 4 so far today).

LinuxCNC isn't so far in the shadows that Autodesk don't supply a postprocessor