Dale,

The issue I care about is the accuracy of its plate solves.

The issue you and others seem to most care about, is that it is free!

I would rather have slower, yet more accurate plate solves, so tracking rate modelling will be as accurate as possible. Until I can
run through a set of images to test accuracy I won't know.

-Ray Gralak
Author of PEMPro
Author of APCC (Astro-Physics Command Center): https://www.astro-physics.com/apcc-pro
Author of Astro-Physics V2 ASCOM Driver: https://www.siriusimaging.com/apdriver

-----Original Message-----
From: main@ap-gto.groups.io [mailto:main@ap-gto.groups.io] On Behalf Of Dale Ghent
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2020 6:54 PM
To: main@ap-gto.groups.io
Subject: Re: [ap-gto] #APCC APCC/APPM blocking issue with AP1100GTOAE

On Sep 26, 2020, at 9:24 PM, Ray Gralak <groups3@gralak.com> wrote:

Hi Dale,

I'm not saying this is the case here but surely you must know that open source does not necessarily mean it has

to be free, or

remain free?

The ASTAP code is licensed under a very tested and common open source license, and the code as it is will remain
free under the terms of that license. The only way that code could be made non-free is if all contributors to that code
all voted favorably to change the license to a non-open one. If that happened the code as it was up to that point
remains open, as it existed under the open license. Subsequent revisions will continue under the non-open license.
This still allows someone to fork the codebase prior to the re-licensing and continue developing the software on their
own, perhaps under a different organization or project, under the original open license. That's just how it works, and
why I say that the code cannot just disappear.

Believe me, Ray, it's not so common and certainly isn't as dire as a lot of people seem to make it out to be. Open
source licenses would be pretty weak things if they permitted this stuff and we would not see open source
frameworks, libraries, apps and entire operating environments flourish and end up in things from our home router to
our car infotainment to medical devices if this were a real fear. Another thing that seems to get people confused is
having an open source program but charging for support, which is a common model in the open source community
that is used to support development.

I was more concerned that this is just a beta and doesn't seem to be able to solve the images I gave to it.

The purpose for this test is to determine the accuracy of the solutioms.

Right, so I don't know what you got from the NASA server exactly so I passed you the list of things that make
ASTAP work well. It's designed to be a solver for imagers and so it's really geared towards consuming data that
would come from such an environment. Stretched, processed, and whatever else the NASA sky survey server
(slowly) regurgitates might not fit the bill in that regard.

/dale