LabVIEW vs. Nokia Qt

[F._Schubert]

I'll also strongly vote for a very cheap/free hobby license. I've seen NI doing an agressive marketing here in germany be giving out LV 6 for free in the c't (the most significant computer magazine) as well as for students.

There are those professionals without a job or currently seeking a job which might fill our ranks, as well as the free guerrilia-propaganda you get through geek-hobbies using it.

It also would put more preassure on companies of maintaining an SSP or buying an upgrade (if you get the 7.1 from your company, but would have 2009 for personal use, you definitively will place some comments at work).

One more of the pro's is, that a hobby developer thinks that his/her hobby-project is a way to earn some money, so starts a innovative start-up which spends the first bank-loan to get a set of new dev-suits with SSP.

And of course, I'd like to have it.

Felix

PS: But I fear we won't get it, for one specific reason. NI has a base version and seems to get money for it. This is a bit of incompatible with getting software developers using it for Open Source, they would need at least the power of the FDS (Events) for their project + the Application Builder (so actually they need the PDS version with SCC)... it is just a too huge shift to expect from marketing and high management...

[UAVChris]

Of course it would cost NI nothing to make such a free hobby-level version available--the costs would only be the opportunity costs of people who would have otherwise bought the commercial version.  Solving that is really a matter of getting the balance right: if the distinctions between the hobby and pro versions are crafted well enough, you can hugely expand your installed base with the hobby version and still provide enough added features for the right price in the pro version to have enough people convert to that.  It's called "freemium" (and yes, I wrote a book about it ;-))

[altenbach]

OK, the Idea is up. Please comment and add ideas or modifications 😄

[Todd S.]

Thanks for the great discussion and please keep it up.  Your interest sparked several good conversations here last week, and while I'm by no means saying that we're moving towards a noncommercial version, I think this is a chance to really flush this idea out in the open and help advance it from "free LabVIEW" to a specific list of features that the community would want in a free, hobbyist version (yes, I realize I just opened myself up to a brief, "free LabVIEW" response from UAVChris...).

In talking with upper management last week and this morning, the recurring question is "what would it include/exclude?"  What pieces of LabVIEW are essential to hobbyists and which parts are unnecessary?   The point is to not just re-brand LabVIEW Full with a "home-use" watermark, but instead to potentially create a more open-source, collaborative piece of software for the DIY world.  Off the top of my head I'd think that graphical programming, structures and functions, and access to standard PC peripheral IO would be must-haves.  What else?

Use the thread altenbach started over on the Idea Exchange to flush out what you'd want to see in noncommercial LabVIEW.  Also, what role to you see the web playing in this new version?  

Thanks again for all the passion and discussion.  I think we've made huge improvements in listening to your feedback and implementing those ideas (13 user-submitted ideas are part of LabVIEW 2010!!!), work with us on this idea and let's see what we can create together.

Regards,

Todd

LabVIEW Community Manager 

@toddsierer

www.AnEngineeringMind.com 

[Mark_SAI]

Having helped develop some code for the UAV Groundstation project that Chris started and seen the response from the community, I can understand why Chris would consider this decision- its not a case of preference, more a case of economics. If a free, not-for-profit version of LabVIEW became available, I would happily help migrate the groundstation code to this version.

I personally think LabVIEW is the way to go, but I'm in the privileged position of being able to use it every day.

[GregFreeman]

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altenbach wrote:

This is a huge untapped market! Home tinkerers controlling or monitoring their model trains, weather stations, climate controls, blinds, BBQ meat thermometers, etc. on ultracheap networked, embedded targets all over the house, and all running LabVIEW. 🙂

(compare with e.g. SunSPOTs or Ardunino you mentioned.) 

In todays economy, there are probably quite a few unemployed engineers that could even use it to learn new things and improve their programming skills.

Kids should be able to use all aspects of LabVIEW. Nobody loses if they don't like it, but every kid that later finds employment in the industry can bias company policy on what development system to use. I guess that's the argument for the pricing of current student edition. But yes, the limitations are significant. Maybe if they would allow building applications with a watermark to prevent commercial use?

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I think you may be on to something here. Someone actually just mentioned to me today that he wanted me to give him somewhat of a LabVIEW tutorial and that he thought it would be fun/cool to set up a program to control multiple things within his house. Maybe this isn't too common, I am in a pretty dorky environment ;), but who knows if NI will take it in this direction. Afterall, they are a business and making a profit is important.

[JackDunaway]

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for(imstuck) wrote:

Afterall, they are a business and making a profit is important....

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...which is why this idea should be so appealing to NI. Have you ever noticed that your dry cleaners gives out free newspapers? That's job security... nothing dirties up white shirts more than newsprint. And there's nothing like a free/low cost development software to whet the appetite for hardware, advanced toolkits, and commercial versions.

[Eugen_Graf]

Hi!

Since last week I try to learn Qt. Download->Install->Ready to programm in 10 minutes. I was very amazed, that there is a library, IDE and compiler for free (under LGPL), which can do the same as LabVIEW.  I found all the controls/indicators, functions and other possibilities as in LabVIEW. Qt is fantastic tool.

Why I shouldn't switch from LabVIEW to Qt?

Regards, Eugen