Talked to Jonathan!

[b...@acuitydesign.co]

Hello All,

Just wanted folks to know I tracked Jonathan down and got him on the phone this morning.  He's alive and well, just very busy and only working on KISSlicer when he finds time.  He's actually plugging away on new features involving overlapping sub-meshes and support for more extruders.  

Anyhow, he said it would be fine if I passed on the good news (his aliveness).  He also plans to make this group into the quasi-official support forum since his own got completely overrun by spammers. 

That is all!

Ben Malouf

Helix3D / Acuity Design

[toranarod]

That is fantastic new. He is Well and in good health.  A good programmer will always be very busy.   

Thanks for the post  

[toranarod]

Is this an April fool joke  noticed every body else is being very conservative about a response.  don't know how i feel about that.  person as admired as Jonathan.  maybe not good taste.   hope its just bad timing.      

On Tuesday, 1 April 2014 04:39:49 UTC+11, b...@acuitydesign.co wrote:

[funBart]

April fools!.. didn't cross my mind, but that would put this one in the category 'black jokes' and only for a selected audience to appreciate.

For now I assume the message is true though.

You are right, I hadn't the urge to react as well, even assuming the message is true. What's the point? At first I was glad he was alright, immediately followed with being upset he wasn't willing to give a sign of life by himself. This despite the fact various people were worrying about him. 

After that, I realized I had all that emotions for a virtual person I never met and decided to make a better distinction between real and virtual life from now on.

Back to business: as we don't know the plans of "Random Virtual Jonathan" (RVJ) regarding Kisslicer it leaves us at the same point as earlier about the development of KS, but without the worries regarding Real Jonathan.

For me, this forum is grown much bigger than expected. I assumed we were with 20 grumpy old men by now. It's nice it's now grown to a platform for discussing other developments regarding Cura, CubeX, Simplify3D and so on. For me it can stay a Refugee Camp for all that nice side-kicks.

To help others with specific Kisslicer problems is for me not a priority anymore, until RVJ makes himself clear again about his plans with Kisslicer. The first goal of this forum was to keep KS alive until he surfaces again. Now he did (I assume) it's his job again.

VirtualBart

[Peter Gregory]

I for one am glad to hear he has resurfaced.
Hopefully we'll see a post asking for issues / features that need work.
KISSlicer is a great program and I use it all the time.
There are some bugs that need attention.
There are features users of the program need.
I understand being busy, so I'll wait for the post from Jonathan declaring "I'm back and ready to get a new version out there!"
Hopefully some time will free up soon.

[Daid Braam]

If it is, I guess the lovely thing to do would track down the poster of this message, and kindly rip out his guts.

I hope this is real, and just bad timing.

[Ryan]

I sure hope he is still alive and updating Kisslicer!  I want to know before I purchase the PRO version for my Cubex.  The free version has produced me some quality prints recently.

[b...@acuitydesign.co]

Not an April fools joke!  (Kindly leave my guts in place.)  I didn't consider the date when I posted the message, just wanted to let people know right away.

My motivation for tracking Jonathan down was business related.  We build 3D printers and KISS consistently delivers better prints than any other software (Simplify 3D included).  I needed to know whether KISS was effectively dead or alive so we could decide if we wanted to recommend it for our customers.  Pretty excited that it's the former! 

On the other hand, I think those of you with the tougher questions have every right to ask them, but you should reserve judgement until Jonathan answers.  As someone running a startup, I know first hand how quickly months can disappear and communication can fall behind.  From our conversation, I got the impression that Jonathan really had no idea how big this community was let alone how many people were worried about his well being.  That said, he knows now.

Anyway, just wanted to dispel the April Fools speculation.  Hopefully we'll hear from Jonathan himself soon.

Ben

Helix3D

[Davide Ardizzoia]

IF this is not an april fool, then I can breathe a bit better now.
There are no software out there that can match KS reliability and quality.
VERY HAPPY to hear that Jonathan is alive and still working on KS.
Wish he could earn more money from KS to justify more frequent updates.

Best Regards
Davide Ardizzoia
3ntr

[funBart]

Thanks Ben, to clear this up! And thanks that you have token the effort to actual reach him.

Well, I suppose we all can forgive him being a hermit the past time. You can't have it all, I assume, being a genius and empathic at the same time.

But it would still be nice to hear from himself and his plans for Kisslicer.

Daid, I will put my questions regarding Cura from now on even more polite ;-)

NoGutsBart

[toranarod]

Thank you What a relief. 

 I have never met the guy and probably never will. I had a some correspondence with him back on his forum in the day. But I totally respected his work.

I like most when i first found KISSlicer I down loaded the free trial version and after 24 hours realized the potential and awesome quality of this code.

Have done some programming my self I know how much work can go into a program.  This program is way out side my pay grade. I wasted not a second longer and purchased the licence. OMG what a bargain why was he almost giving this away. he had my attention from then on.   this was enough for me to feel you must care about some people even if you never met them.

This is great news. 

   

On Tuesday, 1 April 2014 04:39:49 UTC+11, b...@acuitydesign.co wrote:

[Jeff Schaber]

I feel a little bit better about buying the pro version now.

[Jaime García Villena]

If this is an april fools' joke, you can tip your fedora. I definitely bite when I shouted "HELL YEAH BACK TO BUSINESS" when I read your post.

I consider this slicer the best for various reasons, and as soon as Jonathan includes certain features on the software (just details) I am ready to slap my money right on his counter.

I hope he's fine.

[Andrew Diehl]

I have been including kisslicer with our printers for months, and have $$ for the man if/when he ever shows up... I also have a lot of bugs and improvements from customers... 

Still after months with no updates its better at slicing than anything else... 

[Jaime García Villena]

Is it clarified if this was an April fool's or what? what evidence do we have?

[b...@acuitydesign.co]

Can't exactly give you evidence of a phone call, but it was NOT an April Fools thing.    

Ben

[frozen...@yahoo.com]

I very much hope so, even with the development delay, KS is still the best slicer out there.

[Boris Camelo]

First, Thank you for this greats news. Kisslicer is the best Slicer!. For convenience of our community, Jonathan should take 5 minutes to write  a hopefully message. No news in 1 year it's very difficult for us. If Jonathan wants end Kisslicer, He can be directly confirm. But if He continue his development, he can say this message to Kisslicer community.

I hope that Jonathan read this message.

Thank you  .

[Jaime García Villena]

It has been a week since that said talk, and Jonatan didn't show up to say hello in this forum. It doesn't add up.

The chances of this being a bad taste april's fools are about 98% to me. What do we do with this thread?

[funBart]

I just got an email from Jonathan (in...@Kisslicer.com)  were he quoted: "I'm alive, and slowly emerging from my work-based cocoon". 

We have to reply to his questions about this forum though, but to me he is virtual real now ;-)

Bart

[DDME-Marc]

Hi Bart,

I see the KISSlicer website reflect the changes you mention, in so much that the forum link has been revised directly back to this site.

Once again hats off to you Bart for having the foresight to create this forum. And should everything fall back into place I certainly look forward to continued development.

(Cheers Ben for putting yourself in the firing line re Jonathan also (and great looking printer development by the way).

Marc 

[frozen...@yahoo.com]

All great to see, but still haven't been able to get a reply back on re-sending my Pro-key.

[PenskeGuy]

There is no reason why the original forum cannot be revived. If it cannot be cleaned out (a few well crafted SQL DELETEs based on date would do wonders), nuke the database and re-start it. I find this format seriously not as easy to use than the Simple Machines forum that he has. It may be broken but it can be fixed.

[PenskeGuy]

Can't edit posts in here, for one thing. I'll still entertain his comments when (if) resurfacing but consider myself to be disrespected; when I thought that we had at least something of a friendly relationship. Direct emails were ignored—for months. How can anyone not know how large their community is or imagine that those of us who were VERY active just might NOTICE THAT HE IS GONE and be concerned. Away for a couple of weeks is one thing. Complete effective stiff arm for months on end is another.

[toranarod]

Hey HI.. PenskeGuy long time no see.  great to hear from you. how is the 3d touch going.

Rod. 

Yes.   What I think there is a link between absolute genius and social skills. Its not really Jonathan fault. I would imagine he on the spectrum. 

 

His algorithms skill are amazing the coding in this program. if it was easy lots of people would write a slicer after all there is money in this. How come KISSlicer is the best one out there. It take a software house and a team of programmers to do what he done. Even the the Cura guy said he needed  help .

I know from our point of view its Odd not to follow up with emails of people who you thought where becoming friends. I would say in his world Its not even a concept. 

Just a hunch. But I have know lost of brilliant programmers and electronics genuinenesses.  They never come over for dinner al go out for drinks with you.    

[PenskeGuy]

Hey. Good to read you, too. Yeah, I'd wander over here from time to time to see what's going on, or not. Decided to check the original forum today and same ol', same ol', so came by to check on things. As time passed with zero word, I pretty much lost interest in KS. Most of that was from the disrespect. SW performs as always but with no chance for getting some of the bugs fixed, it wasn't worth my time to keep checking as often; so just use the two main versions I have as is; depending upon what I need.

Haven't done much lately with the 3DTt, other than print ongoing copies of stuff we already sliced. Roof beacons for the Police Box Refrigerator is the most of it, now that the molds for the chandelier are complete. Got some ideas for new products but, until the big job is delivered, they'll remain back-burnered.

Can't express how much I dislike this format. Very limiting, but I'm glad that funbart set it up and copied some of the threads over to archive them or we'd have zilch. I just can't stand the way this [doesn't] work. Not enough flexibility or extensibility. Can't locate threads based upon topic, no editing of posts...

FWIW, I'll set up a forum on one of our WordPress Multisite installs on our dedicated server if Jonathan isn't interested in getting his own forum back in order. We're running 5 sites and a forum on them now. Spam is simply not a problem, because I take steps to eliminate it and take care of business when new exploits come along.

[bob cousins]

Good to know that Jonathan is OK!

Unfortunately with any successful one-person project the internet can become like a firehose, impossible to handle. It's tough when you have a project that eats up loads of time yet is not quite enough to go full time on. Quite possibly his employer laid down the line and insisted he give them priority. When I decided to try Kisslicer this sort of thing was always a risk versus an Open Source project, but I was quite fed up with Skeinforge.

Anyway, the interesting thing is what can we do going forward. It's good to know that Jonathan is still doing some development, but I wonder if he would consider a path where he can retain control of the source but share some of the workload on development by opening up to some community support - not necessarily open source, but perhaps a private repo under NDA/CLA, or perhaps dual licensing arrangement.

I wouldn't like to try to reproduce KS from scratch in an Open Source project, but there will be a time possibly soon when KS no longer has the features I need, and I guess in general people will drift away from KS.

I'd like to see KS continue successfully, so the question for me is how best can we support that.