Will you use the "new" Sharp devnet?

[DrWowe]

Decided to make my last followup into a poll.  Not enough polls around here.     :twisted:

[bluedevils]

Most would agree sharp support in the US has been terrible.  They take down the site without warning, kept their source under wraps has not shown one trace of evidence (after the launch of the 5500) that sharp USA cares about us.  Spencer was the only one who cared and he left Sharp.

[Mickeyl]

Same with EU support. The whole PDA team has been moved to other positions in the company. Which is a pity because we had good contact to them... they even sponsored Opie appearance on CeBIT 2003. But then again, even Sharp Germany didn\'t got information out of japan, i.e. we weren\'t be able to get the source code for the lousy sharp camera driver... yeah pretty mission critical stuff which has to be closed source. Same with libsl and much more. :-(

[Mitch]

Why couldn\'t Sharp EU and USA follow the lead of Sharp Japan to market and support the Zaurus?
An amazing thing which they left to die, thank God for ZUG, Cacko and the OZ teams.

[amrein]

Spencer was the only one who cared and he left Sharp.

 :?  He was a great Zaurus Community Relation Manager.

When a company doesn\'t do what everyone is asking for, it\'s mainly (I should say only) because their decision-makers think that the expense versus income is not interesting. Improve PIM, add more features or even modify a web site in 3 minutes have a cost. They think that their workers have better thing to do to grabe money in other area.

Decision-makers are sometimes wrong but when it\'s happening it\'s hard to open their eyes. Sharp won\'t die tomorrow, the Zaurus service could.

So the good question is: why doesn\'t they think that the Zaurus has a chance on the PDA/Palmtop EU/US market? If you answer that Zaurus can survice here without problem, then somewhere you miss their point. What say you?

[offroadgeek]

I\'ll switch over to the devnet only if they can promise that they will never have an outage due to lack of domain re-registration...   I think it would be totally bullshit if some idiot let something like that happen...

[dh]

I\'ll switch over to the devnet only if they can promise that they will never have an outage due to lack of domain re-registration...   I think it would be totally bullshit if some idiot let something like that happen...

Ha Ha! At least ZUG should be around for a year at least now, or did you register for longer?

Actually I enjoy the mix of developers, technical people and regular users that frequent this site. A more developer oriented site would not be of as much interest to me personally.

What is Sharp anyway? Oh, I remember, back in ancient times they were involved with the Zaurus.

[zbones]

I\'ll switch over to the devnet only if they can promise that they will never have an outage due to lack of domain re-registration...   I think it would be totally bullshit if some idiot let something like that happen...

Hey,  at least you sent out emails saying why it was down and that it would be back soon.

I\'m still waiting for my email from Sharp.

And your outage was an unplanned accident, wereas the Sharp one appears to have been planned or at least known about in advance of it going down.

If you ever decided (god forbid) that you no longer wanted to host the ZUG, would you

a) Try to find somebody else to host it with the minium of  downtime/delay, and ensure that data was not lost.
 Warn every body that it would be going down and why, and then pull the plug.
c) Just pull the plug without any warning at all or any effort to preserve a service for the 1000\'s of people who depended on it.


PS this is a retorical question as I know it would be A.
Sharps sudden drop out also took down the comunity site hosting lots of source/binaries to several projects, it wasn\'t just the loss of the forums.

IF they do it once, they could do it again.  I would probably only post on their to answer the ocasional question, and that\'s only if they keep my account, If I have to re-register then I probably won\'t bother.

[tapjpa]

I\'m betting against a \"DevNet\" appearence any time soon. I love this place and we have a great bunch of regulars here besides having a great leader, well an almost great leader but I\'\'m sure he\'s punished himself enough over the \"small\" opps  :wink:

[offroadgeek]

Ha Ha! At least ZUG should be around for a year at least now, or did you register for longer?

I paid for two years this time.. so we\'re safe for a while!  

If you ever decided (god forbid) that you no longer wanted to host the ZUG, would you  

a) Try to find somebody else to host it with the minium of downtime/delay, and ensure that data was not lost.  
 Warn every body that it would be going down and why, and then pull the plug.  
c) Just pull the plug without any warning at all or any effort to preserve a service for the 1000\'s of people who depended on it.

The only way C would happen is if I get hit by a bus and someone doesn\'t continue to pay my AmEx bill

I would never, ever, ever just pull the plug.  If the costs ever get too high, or I lose my job or something, I would definitely let everyone know and try to find someone to transition everything to.  But that won\'t happen...

As usual, I will continue to be open and communicate my intentions for the ZUG, and provide the community an opportunity assist in the decision process for all things (growth plans, advertising, etc.)

[n8a]

I absolutely reward trustworthiness.  Not only is this site trustworthy, the webmaster/mods are open to the point of self-deprecating humor.  You gotta love that!   I can certainly relate.  No matter what they offer on their site, they won\'t get me (or anyone else I\'d bet) back.  So much good info went down with that ship needlessly...

[padishah_emperor]

Will you use the \"new\" Sharp devnet?

No, I\'ll tell em to stick it where the sun don\'t shine!
ZUG is my primary Z site.

I paid for two years this time.. so we\'re safe for a while!  

We should have 6 monthly or annual fundraising to cover the costs.  Maybe send gentle reminders by email and on the login screens of ZUG, I\'ll be happy to send a donation to the paypal account on the front page.

[amrein]

Something like a money meter that go down each time someone contribute down to zero (or positive number for extra .

[gizard]

Well everyone here has been very helpful to me and when I was thinking of buying a Z this was the best site I came accross for info. So I\'ll stay here.  - I have never used pay pal before and I\'m usually very suspcious of putting credit card details online! what\'s your average donation (that helps)?

[gizard]

Oh forgot to mention - I was really worried when this site went down for a while - I was think help help - I don\'t have a clue how this thing works and zug is lifeline what am I going to do! - so I did a howis on the site and found offroadgeek\'s email address and thought - what the hell I\'ll send him a mail and ask - and he replied and explained what was wrong - thanks again!