Why are we charging for phone control?

**bobs987** · 03-10-2005, 01:32 PM

i dont want to start a war in fact it realy doesnt affect me (nextel i730) but why is there a charge for phone control? just a question, sorry if i missed the answer i havent looked at this thread for a while.

**RoyN** · 03-10-2005, 02:50 PM

Because Zorro developed it on his own, he has costs involved, he takes time to give support, he wants to be able to develop it further, all this costs money, and it is the only way for him to get back the money spent (although he probably wont ever make up all the time/effort that was put in + research as he knows the AT/GSM spec better than anyone I have seen!) and it will give him money to be able to add more features, and possibly integrate better if he can ever afford the BT SDK.

Basically it is the same reason that microsoft charges, but of course on a MUCH smaller scale. Lets not start discussing this here. He gives everyone the option of using the older version for free, so I dont think there should be much discussion.

I hope this clears up misunderstandings, and I hope I'm not too far off, am I,Z?

**bobs987** · 03-10-2005, 02:57 PM

yeah, thats cool i do understand, i was wondering if he/phoneco was getting bigger. like i was sayin b4 it doesnt work with my phone, but when i first heard about it, i was reading the phonecontrol thread every 3 min, just havent looked in a while and was wondering if he/phoneco was under a bigger company, thats all i wanted to know thanks for the response

**RoyN** · 03-10-2005, 03:13 PM

Nope, Zorro is still a lone-programmer/supporter AFAIK.

I do know that he is expanding support for Symbian phones, and who knows maybe sometime nextel phones will get support also!

It just depends on the capabilitys of the phone itself or the possiblity of adding an app to handle Phoco options...

**zorro** · 03-10-2005, 04:08 PM

So far, I've put more than 2000 Eur in the development of PhoCo (only, soft- and hardware, not calculating the time I spent on it programming and supporting).
You may or may not know, that I'm a freelance software engineer which earns about 60 Eur/hour. So, every hour I do PhoCo, I'm loosing that money.
A fair calcutation would be, that I spent about 4 month fulltime working on it (as in 5 days a week, 8 hours a day). Now you do the math.

I know, I'm not giving the usual picture of a programmer on the forum here. I neither do this to learn how to programm (I'm doing that for more then 20 years now) nor I need to get famous anyhow.
I'm making programms because I know I'm good in doing it. And my understanding of doing something good is to get paid for (or to get laid - depends on who's requesting it

).

This project started because I wanted this application myself badly and once I finished it, I wanted to share it. But now it's getting more and more a business, since peeps are convincing me to do even more. Even things I don't need (for example: "Hey, if you don't have CDMA in Europe why don't you buy a ticket and come to states?" - this was a serious request).

Well, yes that means, I gonna buy me a flight ticket for $1500, get me a CDMA phone for ... what ever they cost, spend at least $50 / night for a room for about 2 or 3 weeks... just to please you?

I'm sorry to say you that guys: But that's not what live is about.

So, whatever I'm doing with the money I'm getting from the sales, it's not your business...
If I decide to spend it on beer and chicks, it's all up to me.

But since I love programming truely, it's more likely that I'll gonna spend it to improve PhoCo's features.

Any further questions?

**RoyN** · 03-10-2005, 04:12 PM

hahhahah amazing response Zorro.... And I thought it was all going into development! how naive I am! ehhehehehhe

**ddn** · 03-10-2005, 04:16 PM

Why are we charging for phone control?

Hah. The royal "we".

**zorro** · 03-10-2005, 04:24 PM

Originally Posted by RoyN

hahhahah amazing response Zorro.... And I thought it was all going into development! how naive I am! ehhehehehhe

Well, you're not that wrong... remember me telling about the $1500 SDK?

**FunkyMike** · 03-10-2005, 04:44 PM

I m just wondering if support for Symbian 7.0 is going to be implanted.

**zorro** · 03-10-2005, 05:24 PM

Basically there is not much difference between 6.2 and 7.0... except Nokia decided not to use mRouter anymore and switch to a proprietary OBEX protocoll instead.
Other Symbia OS phone (SE for sure) will still make use of it.