spencer gone. devnet gone too?

[Anonymous]

what\'s up with that?  Spencer only posted his goodbyes and now I can\'t get to devnet.

[lardman]

Yes I\'ve just noticed that too. What did Spencer say?


Si

[Anonymous]

He said that he was moving to california and that you might still be able to see him at the trade shows.  He also gave an email address to contact him and then the lights went out.

Hey ofrdgeek,
If their tearing down the devnet, maybe they can give the archive to you?

Yes I\'ve just noticed that too. What did Spencer say?


Si

[Anonymous]

I really hope they didn\'t shut down the devnet forums. But that would not surprise me either. I hope there is no need for the gloom and doom going on in my head right now. (Actually got to touch a Tungsten|E today. Sure looks good.)

dpeach

[Anonymous]

Actually, it may not be that bad. Since the whole Zaurus.com site is down, I would suspect they are doing maintenance or that something has gone wrong and it will be up again. It could come back up without the forums intact, but at least I hold a ray of hope.

Thanks for letting me post on your board.

dpeach

[tapjpa]

Well I hope your right dpeach and that it\'s just a real bad coinsidence.
At least we still have the ZUG here in the mean time.

Jim

[Anonymous]

Actually I always felt that the Devnet forum was maintained and seen only by Spencer - more like his own personal obsession / passion / interest whatever you call it.

I doubt wether Sharp even needs the forum or the view points expressed in the forum, since after all they never seemed to pay any heed whatsoever (except Spencer in his own little ways).

So I wouldnt be too surprised to see it go. Again after Spencer, who takes over as the Sharp spokesman, or is it now just us developers and users who get to talk their minds there ?

[offroadgeek]

Sorry all, I\'ve been out of commission for the last couple days wih the flu.  I didn\'t see Spencer\'s note on the devnet forums, but I have to say that I knew this was coming...

When I was in Vegas, he and I spoke for a bit, and he let me in on a few harsh realities... apparently there were a few changes in priorities in Sharp USA, his department was shrunk from 20 something people down to 3.  It seems clear now that they also aren\'t interested in supporting the devnet forums and the developers any longer.  I asked him if he was looking for other work, and he said yes.  I wasn\'t too surprised.  He also said that the devnet forums would probably be shutdown once he left.  That\'s why he was so supportive of the ZUG, and the documentation contest.

He also took some heat for the sl-6000 pictures I took.  He called me and said that Sharp Japan was pist, and he asked me to take them down for a short period.

If anyone took note of Spencer\'s new email, please forward it to me.  If he\'s already left Sharp, then I don\'t know if he can get us access to the devnet forums, for archiving purposes.  But I think it\'s worth a try.

I don\'t believe I could import the forums directly into the ZUG forums, as they are different boards.  But I could at least host an archive of the forums.

I truely hope the community doesn\'t disappear because of this.

offroadgeek

[Anonymous]

This is going on memory of a guy who needed a pda, but I think it was spencerhuang at yahoo dot com

[tumnus]

I\'ve been on holiday for the past week or so and missed all this.

Does IBM realise how little Sharp are prepared to support their product? I would have thought that all the zaurus.com stuff would have been really useful for even the commercial developers that Sharp/IBM hope to have for the enterprise market.

I\'m beginning to think my next PDA will be a Palm....

[Anonymous]

I\'d still take a clamshell linux device with a tkcrom or OZ.  The x11 is exciting too.  It might even lower development requirements (just a guess).

I\'ve been on holiday for the past week or so and missed all this.

Does IBM realise how little Sharp are prepared to support their product? I would have thought that all the zaurus.com stuff would have been really useful for even the commercial developers that Sharp/IBM hope to have for the enterprise market.

I\'m beginning to think my next PDA will be a Palm....

[Anonymous]

If this is the way the brakes are applied on the Zaurus support (and by inference Zaurus app development) I think I will put off my purchase of the C860 also. I mean a handheld without the application develeopment group is no goood for me. Might as well consider a Sony Clie (the clamshell maybe).

I wonder what is Sharp\'s priorities , particularly since they are still sticking to the Zaurus series in the US (with the 6000) ? How can a dissolving a vibrant forum and community help them in any way, even in the enterprise sphere. I thought it can only bring value addition.

Nilch

[offroadgeek]

Does IBM realise how little Sharp are prepared to support their product? I would have thought that all the zaurus.com stuff would have been really useful for even the commercial developers that Sharp/IBM hope to have for the enterprise market.

I actually think there is a big difference in supporting a consumer product vs. an enteprise product.  

With a consumer product, the only $$ the company gets paid for support is with the initial purchase of the product, unless of course they charge support fees, which I believe most companies don\'t for consumer/retail products.

On the other hand, with enteprise products, if a company were to buy a SL-6000 from Sharp, they would typically buy a packaged solution (software + hardware) from Sharp and IBM, and this would include standard maintenance agreement.  Which generally runs from 18 - 20% of the software costs.

With this partnership, I would imagine IBM would be taking up support for the software, and Sharp would support the hardware.  Either way, they would have maintenance dollars coming in each year to help offset support costs.

Just my thoughts on this...

offroadgeek

[tumnus]

I truely hope the community doesn\'t disappear because of this.

Considering this site seems to be the only community site that exists now I hope you don\'t give up on the Zaurus either.

zaurus.loveslinux.com died and zaurii.net quietly disappeared. It\'s hard to tell if zaurus.com is down for good. The whois database still lists zaurus.com as a registered domain, with Spencer as the domain contact. Yet because the zaurus.com host was also the DNS server for the zaurus.com domain you get DNS errors when you try to resolve zaurus.com now.

Maybe Spencer will drop by here at some point and give a few more details. It will definitely be a shame if zaurus.com disappears permanently, if only for the community.zaurus.com site. I know the ZUG has downloads, but community.zaurus.com did a bit more than host downloads.

I still think zarus.com would be a very useful resource for developers in enterprise projects.

[omin0us]

hmm, its a shame that Sharp no longer wants to support us. I really do hope they will at least get us a copy of the archive of the forum. So that we can have that for reference of old questions. I really hope this community doesn\'t die either. Now its all we have. Hopefully spencer stops by and gives us a little more info.