Release 2023.02 Released

-- enh (dkulp) Add Warning about potential removal of Windows 7 support

that's hilarious , it was removed back in 2021 ver .28 or .29 can't remember now , edit: without notification

-- enh (dkulp) Add Warning about potential removal of FPP <6 support

bloody disgusting and @Mark_M I'd imagine it will the second option but without the word sorry
 
drakky said:
-- enh (dkulp) Add Warning about potential removal of Windows 7 support

that's hilarious , it was removed back in 2021 ver .28 or .29 can't remember now

-- enh (dkulp) Add Warning about potential removal of FPP <6 support

bloody disgusting and @Mark_M I'd imagine it will the second option but without the word sorry
Click to expand...
I don't know what's up with Dan.

  • Mac xLights is in a separate repository to xLights Windows/Linux, so Dan can do what ever he wants with the Mac side.
  • Mac xLights doesn't have xSchedule anymore.... yet it can have FPP....??
  • Mac xLights donation link isn't the same as xlights.org link (unless it has changed recently).
  • Now we have FPP licencing.
What's next?


On Falcon Christmas forum I asked what the motive was behind all this. Dan stayed quiet and Chris came in with no other explanation.

Literally one year after licencing and now forcing people to use v6 onwards is disgusting. Licencing is not for the people's/developers benefit if Dan is purposely removing support.

I think Dan has had these long term plans brewing for ages and there's more to come.


I'm happy to be proved wrong @dkulp .
 
drakky said:
-- enh (dkulp) Add Warning about potential removal of Windows 7 support

that's hilarious , it was removed back in 2021 ver .28 or .29 can't remember now , edit: without notification
Click to expand...

Not really. We still have people running on Windows 7, but then logging issue that various effects aren't working or the previews aren't working or whatever. We generally just close the issue and say update to Window 10 or something, but we should set the compatibility version in the manifest to Windows 8 and not startup at all on Windows 7 since we know it doesn't actually work. As it is right now, people try it, it "mostly works" so they think they are OK, and then when they encounter one of the things that doesn't, they log issues and such. Likewise for OpenGL 1.x.
 
Skymaster said:
Not if you're on a mac, because it's pushed out by the app store now, unless if you competely disable updates on the Mac (it's an all or nothing across all apps) then it'll always keep it at the latest version.
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Not entirely true. If you use Time Machine or similar (if you are on a Mac, you SHOULD be using Time Machine or similar), rolling back is very quick and easy. However, if you aren't using Time Machine, we also upload certain builds as needed to https://dankulp.com/xlights/archive/ so people can grab known good builds (or, usually, a build that fixes an issue while waiting for Apple's approval :( ). I've added a 2023.01 build there. We don't push builds there normally as it's a bit more work and more time for very little value to most Mac users. Plus, builds not distributed via the App store cannot benefit from the crash details that we get from the app store integration with Xcode. That helps Mac users as well as Windows/Linux users as many crashes have been diagnosed thanks to the extra details from the app store builds.
 
dkulp said:
Not really. We still have people running on Windows 7, but then logging issue that various effects aren't working or the previews aren't working or whatever. We generally just close the issue and say update to Window 10 or something, but we should set the compatibility version in the manifest to Windows 8 and not startup at all on Windows 7 since we know it doesn't actually work. As it is right now, people try it, it "mostly works" so they think they are OK, and then when they encounter one of the things that doesn't, they log issues and such. Likewise for OpenGL 1.x.
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you can't use OS fonts you have to use XL fonts on windows 7, wouldn't have thought that was a difficult thing to keep in there, but actually forced me to upgrade to 10 only computer I've ever seen run faster on 10 than 7, lost a couple of programs but nothing worth worrying about

personally I think this FPP thing is done backwards , leave FPP free and charge for Xlights , it's matured enough to be saleable , charge a minimal fee like $10, there's tens of thousands of users out there
 
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drakky said:
personally I think this FPP thing is done backwards , leave FPP free and charge for Xlights , it's matured enough to be saleable , charge a minimal fee like $10, there's tens of thousands of users out there
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I cannot imagine what kind of uproar that would incite. The FPP licensing affects less than 2 percent of the FPP instances and everyone goes into sky is falling mode. A very very very large majority of the people using FPP are completely unaffected by the licensing stuff, yet the ones that are seem to be the most vocal. Something like that that affects everyone would be horrendous. I don't think anyone would want to log into facebook or the forums or check mail or anything for quite a while. :(
 
drakky said:
charge for Xlights , it's matured enough to be saleable , charge a minimal fee like $10, there's tens of thousands of users out there
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I wouldn't discourage anyone who uses xLights to donate their $10 at the home page... https://xlights.org/
Once you consider pixels, controllers, sequences, electricity, etc., maybe it's worth more than $10 to some of us given the value it provides... I mean it is to me anyway.
 
dkulp said:
I cannot imagine what kind of uproar that would incite. The FPP licensing affects less than 2 percent of the FPP instances and everyone goes into sky is falling mode. A very very very large majority of the people using FPP are completely unaffected by the licensing stuff, yet the ones that are seem to be the most vocal. Something like that that affects everyone would be horrendous. I don't think anyone would want to log into facebook or the forums or check mail or anything for quite a while. :(
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The 2 percent part is part of what has frustrated me. 1 in 50 people are now funding the development for the other 49 people who could also potentially be contributing to the development but they have no requirement to pay to use. Of my own boards that I sell I have no idea how many people have bought a license. I do know that I have had people reach out to me via email, messenger and phone asking about the requirement to have a license with FPP6 but not FPP5.5. Charging for the new features added in FPP is fine. Every time that features change I get inundated with a fresh round of support emails. Now FPP users are being forced to move to the latest version because of planned changes in Xlights which means that legacy users get fresh bugs to contend with and when it gets to time to connect up their Halloween or Christmas shows they will now potentially get forced to do upgrades. I personally aren't using any FPP instance newer than FPP3.5 as I don't need to. The older versions all do what is required of them, are bug free doing what I need them to do and as they aren't broke I don't fix them. I don't use remote mode on anything so I could theoretically be running FPP1.x in bridge mode on all my FPP instances.
IMHO breaking backwards compatibility of FPP in xlights really will be a sky is falling thing. The forums and facebook will be absolutely flooded when late in the year people at the last minute find that they have to upgrade FPP in order to do what it has been doing already for the last several years.
 
dkulp said:
I cannot imagine what kind of uproar that would incite.
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I consider removing support for v5 as showing no empathy to what annoyance licensing as created.

A button for "legacy FPP v5 connect" too hard? Yet implementing licencing was easy?
Don't leave it half done.
 
licencing was a money grab and a setting the system up for a bigger money grab in the future.
Hence why they have never said there full intentions of fpp in the future.

There are so many ways they could of handled it better.
have 2 products,
FPP free player, supports all fpp versions.
and a controller FPP that could be licence to the sellers of products.
but instead they wanted to take this path an disable so many people's working shows.

Like i have said before,
By 2025 FPP will be like LOR, an charge for every little extra bit.
(Lets hope im wrong)
 
SmartAlecLights said:
FPP free player, supports all fpp versions.
and a controller FPP that could be licence to the sellers of products.
but instead they wanted to take this path an disable so many people's working shows.
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That's pretty much exactly how it is. The player is completely free. Any one using the player parts is completely unaffected. The controller parts are licensed (but ONLY for the Beagle and DPI outputs). PiHat's, matrix hats, etc... are completely unaffected (and still free). And even using the DPI and Beagle based outputs is free for DIYers.

Chris DID (and still does) offer bulk pricing for vouchers to the vendors at a substantial discount so they could offer their customers vouchers with the purchase of the boards. I honestly don't know if any of the vendors took up the offer or not.

And to be clear on one thing: this is not a "money grab" by me. NONE of the voucher money last year (or FPP donations) went to me and I completely expect the same for this year.

With the amount of time folks have spent on this thread and on the facebook thread, they could have updated all their FPP instances and had them tested. That said, we're pretty much giving a 8-10 month notice. It's not like this is being sprung on people during crunch time. You have plenty of time, use it wisely.
 
SmartAlecLights said:
licencing was a money grab and a setting the system up for a bigger money grab in the future.
Hence why they have never said there full intentions of fpp in the future.
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Forgot to address this.... We have talked about this. It's in the FAQ:

Will other features be moved to require licenses over time? – Shop.FalconPlayer.com

shop.falconplayer.com

A couple of the FAQ entries are slightly out of date as there are actually three output drivers that are now licensed. The DPIPixels, BBB48String, and BBShiftString. I don't have access to update these.
 
dkulp said:
The controller parts are licensed (but ONLY for the Beagle and DPI outputs).
Click to expand...
It's the fact v5 was the last 'completely free' FPP version for 3rd party capes.
It's inferring that you are forcing those people to upgrade (and pay) by removing support so quickly.
 
dkulp said:
That's pretty much exactly how it is. The player is completely free. Any one using the player parts is completely unaffected. The controller parts are licensed (but ONLY for the Beagle and DPI outputs). PiHat's, matrix hats, etc... are completely unaffected (and still free). And even using the DPI and Beagle based outputs is free for DIYers.

Chris DID (and still does) offer bulk pricing for vouchers to the vendors at a substantial discount so they could offer their customers vouchers with the purchase of the boards. I honestly don't know if any of the vendors took up the offer or not.

And to be clear on one thing: this is not a "money grab" by me. NONE of the voucher money last year (or FPP donations) went to me and I completely expect the same for this year.

With the amount of time folks have spent on this thread and on the facebook thread, they could have updated all their FPP instances and had them tested. That said, we're pretty much giving a 8-10 month notice. It's not like this is being sprung on people during crunch time. You have plenty of time, use it wisely.
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So your giving everyone 8-10 months notice, to disable old versions of FPP?
So your forcing everyone to a dodgie FPP ver 6, all because you want it all liceance controlled.

Like i said why not split the product in 2,
Therefore leaving the people alone that have working fpp 3.5+ setups, that use xlights to send there files to fpp.

Because your latest FPP software runs realy realy bad on older hardware,
But the older versions of FPP works great on them, with no hickups in there show)
So while the User interface of FPP has gotten better, it now chews more resources on the older rasp pi's.

So why force people to upgrade there hardware? (During a time rasp pi hardware is still pricey an hard to get easyly)
What do you reckonmend now rasp pi4?

I would guess only 35% of people in this hobby do play an tinker with there systems all year,
The rest set them up in nov,
They get annoyed when things dont work when they did the year before.
I know this, Cause i help out a couple of shows that use FPP v3.5 still

I stuck on FPP5.5 due to all the licencing issues everyone was having last year with things not signed or verified etc.
I use fpp controllers that was made back when FPP first started, and no eeproms and such, and lack of helpfull information on how to get things fixed
So i stayed away from FPP 6 like the plague.

Xlights builds/create's a show. It doesnt matter if it crash's. (well it does but...)

FPP needs to run the show every night solid for a month, so its 100% important this product is not a Beta. eg. testing out your licencing.

FPP V6 offered alot of issues an no real fix's from older versions.
So do you blame people for not wanting to update to your latest version.
So now your Forcing everyone in 8-10months, to use Buggy fpp6

How about making FPP a solid tool like it used to be,
An stop thinking about this licence stuff till you have it perfected.

At least keep FPP v5.5 going till you work out the v6 kinks,
Till FPP v6 works nicely again on a rasp pi 3, instead on now needing a rasp pi 4.
 
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