Snappy Driver Installer is dead.

So the guy on FB still denies that he is anyone but BadPointer. Sounds like his problem with fake postings isn't someone from DPS but is with his own partner. Explains why Dr.Lector doesn't know the guy quit. Hard to know when partners have a fight and are not speaking to each other. Bet ya the project is brought back under a new name. If you are giving money to this project I would halt it right now. Wait until the drama settles.
 
I haven't been handling the recent events well and made many mistakes. My resignation wasn't exactly planned and I wasn't in the best state of mind. It's no excuse. It's an explanation.

There's no fight or drama among our contributors. He couldn't believe that I was such a coward and gave up so easily even though my identity was never revealed. Either way, it's better that someone else pick the project up. SamLab is still in the difficult financial situation and he doesn't want to be forced to make his driverpacks exclusive to DPS.
 
Porthos said:
We want you. You are an AWESOME programmer. We want to see you succeed as well as SamLab.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I also don't understand the need for anonymity. This is a legitimate program performing a legitimate and legal function. Anonymity has done nothing but create trust issues that being public with a verifiable ID would have prevented.
 
I'm not sure if Patrons received a notification about the new post. Anyway, there's it

Despite the earlier announcement, the fundraising campaign won't end.

SamLab has been making driverpacks all these years and he can't go on without the funding from this campaign. Therefore, all money raised from this campaign will go straight to him to ensure that he can keep his driverpacks free and non-exclusive.


  • Updated driverpacks are likely to continue being pushed via internal torrent client.
  • Hopefully a volunteer will step forward to take duties of coordinating localization effort.
  • As for the software itself, it's mature enough and doesn't require constant tweaking to keep it working correctly. The reliability of SDI won't degrade significantly over next months or even years to come, and SamLab can always modify his driverpacks to work around newly discovered defects.

My departure was sudden and it takes time for project contributors to adjust to it, but hopefully they'll be able to provide uninterrupted service after all, despite the lack of active development.
 
As far as I know as of this moment, the whole situation was organized by a third party which just wanted to see the world burn. It's no secret that I don't approve of DPS ethics and they can't stand me but they aren't involved in that debacle. The third party played me, I made mistakes. I don't really know how to right the situation but I don't want all contributor's effort go to waste.
 
I must stay with the project till I pass it to someone else.

Back then I used to work as PC technician but now I'm a professional programmer. It's something I always wanted but I don't have as much time as before and I don't need SDI myself. I've been considering to quit SDI eventually but not like this.
 
Should I delete the posts on Patreon and say "Disregard earlier announcements, everything stays as before"?
 
BadPointer said:
Should I delete the posts on Patreon and say "Disregard earlier announcements, everything stays as before"?
Click to expand...

No, I'd write up something like "There are multiple people involved with SDI and the driver pack projects, and one of them was primarily responsible for software development on SDI. His life has moved on and he no longer has a need for SDI or adequate time to devote to working on it, so he's leaving that project but announced it poorly. The projects still need your support for driver packs, hosting, etc. and your patience is appreciated. Your support and donations are greatly appreciated and do go directly to funding the continued availability and development of driver packs and SDI updates - that will not be changing."
 
as @fencepost suggests. Also @BadPointer I would add, where ever you have seen postings on the net about you leaving the project, and or dismissals of this (as has been seen on your facebook group page), I would publicly state what has happened.

Even if it means losing your anonymity. Just so that this Dr Lector, can not announce he is you, and post as coming from you. As it currently stands, it is leaving a very nasty taste in the minds of current subscribers, and donators.
 
I already talked to Dr Lector and asked him not to answer on my behalf like that. He started the FB page and I only recently become the second admin of that page but I don't do much there myself. It's a shame that FB doesn't show who writes community posts. At least community posts in vkontakte can be signed by their authors.
 
Well, I can't support this circus of chaos. People are all flying by the seat of their pants on a wave of emotions. I have withdrawn my Patreon support.
 
BadPointer said:
You were talking to Dr.LECTER, not me. He runs the FB group and uploads the torrent on a torrent tracker.
The post on Patreon is legit but there may be a follow up announcement soon, so stay put.

No accounts were hacked during the whole ordeal.
Click to expand...

Hey @BadPointer - what does it take to keep Snappy Driver installer alive and well for us techs?
At least give our tech community the chance/option to keep this alive

A malware / adware free alternative to the scams out there for us techs is invaluable
For any tech that doesn't appreciate the time saved looking for drivers please stand up!

You've supported us, we have not just a moral/ethical but business essential reason to support you and the development of Snappy Driver Installer!

My own testimony is that I did not jump on board with Snappy Driver Installer right away, even with testimonials and support from Technibble, the reason being their were so many scam PuP's out there that that i distrusted all of them, I started with Driverguide back in the day when they were good but they eventually incorporated to much rogue advertising for me to be comfortable with as well.

So please tell us, what is required to keep Snappy Driver Installer alive and well so that we may have the option to keep it going even if your out!
 
We need to repair the damage that I caused.

The original announcement was interpreted that SDI would fall apart without me. That's not true. For example DPS 16.x(not to be confused with DPS 17.x) hasn't updated since 2013 but it still holds up rather well. SDI should last even longer and won't degrade significantly over time.

In order to provide uninterrupted service someone has to prepare and do initial seeding of torrents. I actually have a volunteer who does most of these duties and he can take the full control of the whole process.

Someone has to coordinate the localization effort on Transiflex, so that translators' work could be incorporated into the latest version.
Each language has its own coordinator but they usually know much about encoding, codepages, how and where strings are displayed, their context.
They also rarely check if strings can fit without being cut off. This is why all languages need to be managed by a global coordinator.

Someone should take over the development, so that I could assume the role of technical consultant.

As for driverpacks, SamLab said: "The fate of SamDrivers is up to users".
 
Programmers usually know many programming languages and they can easily pick up a new one and master it in a rather short amount of time. Over time I worked with BASIC, Pascal, Java, C/C++, Assembler, JavaScript, PHP, shell and many others. One can become fluent in any of them. It's not like human languages where no matter how hard you try, you'll become fluent in the second language.

In order to give you an idea of what can be improved in SDI, I list some things that are on the ToDo list.
  • 32-bit version of SDI needs a new memory allocator so that it doesn't runs out of memory due to the limitation of 2 GB per process.
  • Some options in the settings dialog don't take effect right away.
  • Some people reported that they managed to crash the app by right clicking on specific spots.
  • The support for right-to-left scripts isn't completed.
  • The screenreader support isn't completed.
  • Some people have proposals for extending the markup language for themes.
  • The estimated download time isn't very accurate.
  • Some elements aren't redrawn properly when the window loses focus.
As you can see most of these task are non-essential but there's a lot of them, so I have to triage them. The project won't fall apart if no one is working on tasks like these.

Most of contributors are doing work which doesn't require programming skills. But testers must know how to use SVN to get the source code and how to compile it.
 
I just started using SDI too. This is bad timing. I'd like to support your project, but I'm not a programmer. Are you still accepting support via your patreon page? Or do I need to support Sam Drivers?
 
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