Anyone who has participated in the development work on SpinRite's new drivers over in the GRC Newsgroups should come away with a clear sense for several things:
I'm working toward the next SpinRite about as hard and diligently as is humanly possible -- seven days a week, never taking a day off, about 12 hours per day. Anyone who doesn't know me, or who hasn't been participating there, might take this as a complaint. But they would be wrong. I'm doing this by choice and because I truly love the work. On the first date with the incredibly tolerant woman with whom I'm now living, I said:
“I only need one thing from you: I need you to let me work. If you will let me work, I'll be glad to have you around. But no relationship that prevents me from working will succeed."
A number of people who have been observing the process have kindly commented that they now understand, having witnessed it for themselves firsthand, why the results of my efforts always stand apart from what this industry typically produces -- with its constant patch cycles and bug fixes. In today's heterogeneous computing world it's surprisingly difficult to produce complex low-level hardware-interacting code that works universally for everyone. But so far, albeit at great expense of time and effort, we are achieving that. And despite the tremendous investment of time and effort, I'm giving it away -- at no charge -- even to people who purchased SpinRite v6.0 sixteen years ago in 2004. People respond to that, saying “I'll gladly pay for it if I can have it now!” But I don't have it now to sell, even for a gazillion dollars.
Mike asks for a broad timeline for SpinRite v6.1. Elsewhere, Paul (
@PHolder) mused to someone else that they shouldn't expect to see SpinRite v6.1 before the summer of 2021. That seems quite far off, so I hope he's proven wrong. And I'll be doing everything I can, every single day between now and v6.1's release to get it done. But Paul is also correct in observing that I do not work to a schedule because I cannot work to a schedule. Externally imposed
“schedules” ARE the reason why so much of today's software is crap. Users want it both ways: They want high quality software, and they want it now. The high quality software requirement I can meet. But “now” = “as soon as it's done” and I truly have no idea when that will be. But it will be as soon as possible.
