QtiPlot "courtesy delay"
If you are seeing this page, it is because you tried to download a recent unofficial build of QtiPlot. Per request of QtiPlot's main developer (Ion Vasilief) I decided not to make public my unofficial builds of QtiPlot until at least 2 months after the official release.
S.Z. has kindly shared his own build QtiPlot 0.9.8.8 which I make available from my page since 2011/11/02 (in accordance with the 2-month courtesy period).
The latest full-featured unofficial build (for QtiPlot 0.9.8.3) can be obtained from here.
To release or not to release... that is the Question
Ion Vasilief contacted me and requested that I stopped releasing my unofficial builds because it undermined his main source of income (selling maintenance contracts). While I understand his point, I can't agree with it. QtiPlot is Open Source Software, which benefits from being so (e.g., by using Free/OpenSource code from third parties, and by getting voluntary contributions and support from the community). Of course Ion is in no obligation of providing binaries, but the Open Source nature of QtiPlot grants that right to anybody willing to do so... and I consider that if I took the effort to compile it myself, it is in the best spirit of Free Software and the community to share it.
How to solve this conflict of interests?
Fortunately a compromise solution is possible: unofficial releases can wait a "courtesy" delay of two months after the official release.
Why delaying the unofficial releases?
I consider this to be fair because it addresses the two confronted interests:
- On the one hand, ProIndependent (Ion Vasilief's company) gets some temporary "monopoly" over the latest releases of QtiPlot binaries, which adds value to their maintenance contracts.
- On the other hand, the whole community still get the unofficial builds for free.
Compilation instructions
If you decide to try to compile QtiPlot yourself, this how-to may help you.
Contact information
If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, feel free to contact me.
