Application fatigue...
(Apologies for typos, etc...)
13-09-2026.
Why do many excellent applications get abandoned by their author[s]?
Sound eXchange for example, this has not been updated since version 14.4.2
several years ago.
FS-UAE is now in the same boat.
This is from my personal experience with AudioScope.sh...
There are several reasons:
- OS "Major Upgrades" and often "updates"...
Oh boy, does this wind me up! The *NIX ethos, "Everything is a file".
Well on my AudioScope.sh three major things happened:
A) First, my APPLE MacBook Pro there were two major changes to my
AppleScript capture code from OSX 10.7.x to my latest OSX 10.15.7.
This is one of my pet hates, modify the scripting language which breaks
earlier versions.
B) Second, GNU/Linux Mint Cinnamon, from version 19.1 until 22.1, after
installing the SW to create '/dev/dsp', '/dev/dsp' did not work. I
didn't mind the fact that 'oss-compat' was needed for it to work, that
is in the OS's SW Manager and my manual, but surely the developers of
their OSes test the *NIX ethos to make 'Everything is a file' when
third party SW is installed.
C) Third, GNU/Linux Mint Cinnamon again, current as of the above date.
PulseAudio has been replaced by PipeWire and it looks like my multi
platform 'Audio Function Generator' which I was going to put up on
here is now broken. The irony of it is that I have uploaded it to
AMINET, and because that OS has not changed in decades, it works fine.
( It is 'dash' compliant and can be found here if you feel like trying
it out:- Aminet - dev/gg/AFG.sh.zip )
D) Boredom! This was probably my reason because although I have snippets
to add to AudioScope.sh, (e.g. true RMS, wideband logarithmic 10Hz to
40KHz audio spectrum analyser, which I uploaded here sometime ago,
other capture modes and more), I just can't get the impetus to carry
on with it.
E) No appreciation for the man hours put into a project by sending say an
email, even if it is just a bug report, to acknowledge said project.
This statement does NOT include the guys on here that gave considerable
help my way during AudioScope.sh's evolution. Without their input
AudioScope.sh would never have gotten off of the ground.
F) Obsolescence. New technologies creating much more powerful platforms,
both HW and SW, that are not easily backwards compatible to older
systems, making the applications that they have been coded for on
these ageing systems difficult or even impossible to transfer to
current systems.
G) Licen[c][s]ing. The vast majority of my stuff is Creative Commons CC0;
that is, Public Domain. I give nearly everything, SW wise, away.
There are so many of these, patents, copyrights, trade-marks;
commercial, and F[L]OSS licences, that are available. This is unreal.
I can understand Intellectual Property rights, etc, but come on, are
so many F[L]OSS ones needed?
H) Being inundated with trivial bug reports that the user could solve
if [s]he wanted to and create a solution. Every platform and its HW
have very subtle differences to its neighbours that a developer cannot
keep track of it all.
For example, I use this laptop daily and the GNU/Linux Mint Cinnamon
UK KB layout is missing the backtick character. Big deal, for the
amount of times I have used it, (almost zero), over the years I
created a one byte file backtick.txt; load it into this text editor,
copy, and paste it as required. A simple cure that has saved the Mint
developers a load of man hours trying to map a Dell XPS KB to UK mode.
Any comments, guys and gals?