What is happening with Oshonsoft?

[Roger Harrold]

Does anyone know what is happening with Oshonsoft? When Vladimir went to an annual subscription model, I willingly went along with it, partly to help out someone who had made it so easy to work with PICs, partly because I was interested in any new developments. Sadly, after renewing my subscription every year, I’ve seen virtually nothing new, and the only contact from Vladimir is a regular begging email, which may be automated for all I know. Has the whole project collapsed?
I’ve just completed a substantial project for a 2.4GHz garden railway control system with DCC-type facilities, but I must say that if I were to embark on anything of similar size in future I’d have to look at Great Cow Basic as a compiler that’s ‘alive’ rather than moribund.
It would be a great shame if Oshonsoft Basic simply declined and faded away.
If anyone knows what is happening, I’d love to know.

 

[sagor1]

Hi Roger. I too have posted about "how is it going" with Oshonsoft development, quite a while back. No difference so far. Even a bug report I made long ago has not been fixed (in both versions, IDE and subscription Basic compiler). We all know Vladimir has some health issues, etc., and has also not been able to keep up with new PIC developments. I think he may have "bitten off more than he can chew", trying to do it all with a "one man show".
I too have looked, and tried GCB. It has it pros and cons as well, as far as the coding goes.
I suspect Vladimir went to the subscription model to raise more funds, assuming people would renew. I bought into it as well, but after a couple of years with no results, why would anyone keep paying a subscription with no upgrades or bug fixes? The business model for Oshonsoft seems to be failing.
I still like the IDE version, use it often. But, most of my projects are small ones, using regular older 12F and 16F chips, for which Oshonsoft is good enough.

I'm not sure what the solution is for Oshonsoft. My thoughts are to keep it as a low level/entry level compiler and IDE product, and leave the high end chip development to products that have multiple developers and large resources. People who use the real high end chips are usually for professional or commercial use, and those people can usually afford to buy a commercial product for development. Oshonsoft, in my opinion, is a hobby focused product, and should remain as such. Focus on fixing things, make it better. The IDE version is what gave it it's strength compared to other low cost or "free" compilers.

I'll leave it at that. I'm sure most of use have wondered about the future of Oshonsoft. Only time will tell how it will unfold.

 

[camerart]

Hi,
I've just received a newsletter from Vladimir, and I noticed reference to 'open source like' Does anyone know what this means. I imagine it might mean that some of the clever prgrammers among you could help develop Oshonsoft for the better of all, or am I on the wrong track.
Anyway it's good to know it's still being workd on.
Cheers, Camerart.

 

[Roger Harrold]

I don’t understand his ‘open source like’ comment at the moment, but of all the additions I might like I think that block comment/uncomment was somewhere near the bottom of the list! A ServoOut command that actually works properly would be near the top, or Do[Until]...Loop[Until].

 

[Roger Harrold]

Further to my post above, I tried the block comment/uncomment, and it screws up all of the spacing & tabbing of all the code. Take care if you try to use it.