[Scid-users] Scid CD-ROM and Donations

[Shane H. <sha...@pa...>]

Hi all,

I'm writing to the scid-users list to let you know in advance of a new
thing I'm planning for the Scid website. Comments and feedback about it are
welcome.

Since developing Scid is taking a lot of my time (which I'm happy to do
whenever I can), and since my family's only current source of income is
from unrelated software I'm developing which doesn't come close to paying
the bills, I plan to more actively encourage small donations from Scid
users. Now don't panic: Scid is a free open-source application and will
remain so. I have no plans to change that. But I really do need more
frequent donations if I'm to keep up with the Scid roadmap (see the What's
New page at the website) and develop Scid actively.

I don't expect something for nothing, so I am happy to send a Scid CD-ROM
to people who make even a fairly small donation (around USD$20). Along with
all the usual Scid stuff, the CD will include a very high-quality database
of over 1 million games which I spend a lot of time cleaning and correcting
to standardize player/event names and remove duplicates. The emphasis is on
quality over quantity, so I never just grab big databases and merge them
in. I update it each week from TWIC and several other sources. The database
is of far higher quality than any large free games collection you'll find
on the net. I have no plans to make the complete database available online.

Details can be found at the website, on the pages
   http://scid.sourceforge.net/cdrom.html
   http://scid.sourceforge.net/scidbase.html

The new pages are not linked from anywhere else yet; I will add them to the
site contents so all users can see them within a week, once readers of this
list have had a chance to provide feedback.

Cheers,
Shane