Christopher Dutz (Christofer Dutz), creator and Main Developer of a set of free libraries for industrial automation APACHE PLC4X , Hat Apache Software Foundation Post of the Vice President, who oversees the Apache Plc4x project, presented Ultimatum corporations, in accordance with which he expressed his willingness to stop developing, if he cannot solve problems with financing their work.
discontent is caused by the fact that the use of Apache PLC4X instead of proprietary solutions allows corporations to save tens of millions of euros On the purchase of licenses, but in response from companies does not receive due assistance to develop, despite the fact that the work on Apache PLC4X requires major labor costs and financial investments on equipment and software.
Increased by the fact that its development is used by the largest industrial enterprises and there are a large number of requests and questions, in 2020 the author of PLC4X went away from his main work and dedicated all his time to the development of PLC4X, intending to be earned due to the provision of consulting services and refinement Functionality to order. But, partly due to the decline on the background of the COVID pandemic, everything turned out to be not as expected, and in order to remain afloat and avoid bankruptcy had to be interrupted with grants and single jobs to order.
In the end, Christopher tired of spending his time without receiving proper returns and aware of the approach of emotional burnout, and he decided to stop providing free support to PLC4X users and will now provide consultations, training and support only on a fee. In addition, from now on, it will develop only for free what is required for its work or is of interest to conduct experiments, and the work will be carried out only for users or corrections. For example, he will no longer develop drivers for new programming languages and create modules for integration.
To implement important new features for users, model, resembling crowdfunding, in accordance with which ideas to expand opportunities
Apache PLC4X will be implemented only after a certain amount of development financing is collected. For example, Christopher is ready to implement ideas on the use of PLC4X drivers in programs in Rust, TypeScript, Python or C # /. Net after 20 thousand euros are collected.
If the proposed scheme does not allow to get at least some financial support for development, then Christopher decided to minimize his business and stop providing support to the project for its part.
Recall that Apache PLC4X provides