Hugo, I only reply to your post because of the final comment, which I'll get to. My post applies to all comments in this thread up til this.

I'm going to be brutally honest. Looking at my sig shows what I am willing to pay for. Please nobody waste everyone's time discussing the difficulties of Japanese on the empeg; I think everyone is pretty clear on the difficulties. I'm simply stating, very clearly, what interests me development-wise, and that is being able to have my music not only correctly tagged on my home system, but on the empeg as well. And that is worth $350US. Minimum. Nuff said.

As for interest in additional financial contributions for development, I'm sorry, but I don't know that I'd be in. A few things would have to change.

First, the "circle-of-friends" thing would have to come to a dead stop. If I put down currency to help development, I wouldn't want to be told "well, you weren't at the meet, so ha ha ha. Just wait 6 months." Yes, I know it was to keep peoples decks from getting pooched. Yes, I know nobody was paying at the time. My point is that if I do pay, I want to get releases (alphas, too) as soon as anyone else. Period. I'm a big boy and can take responsibility for screwing up my player if it comes to that. But I won't pay to be made feel like I'm second tier because I can't afford to take time off of school and fly to Europe for fun.

Second, I honestly only have one thing other than crossfading that I want to work, and I've already discussed that. Unless what FireFox spoke about (and I've also mentioned from time to time) regarding locking down the closed source portions of the codebase and making everything more modular to allow the community to produce its own software. Beyond that, what would I be seeing for my money? I have no interest in the specialized receiver builds, etc. I simply want to sort MP3s, play MP3s, and view MP3 tags. I don't need FLAC or OGG support, etc. etc.

Having a way to design custom info display modes via an XML schema, in line with what FireFox said (ie. hooks)? That I would pay for. I know you can do it with emphatic, but the slowdown on my system is just too much (can't force myself to turn off visuals and burn-in )

I hope everyone understands, I'm not trying to be negative. I have more respect for the empeg guys, the Build Brothers and pretty much everyone in this community that I could ever say. I just can't justify:

a) paying a ton of money for features I really don't have a need or desire for, while not getting the features I want and need,

b) paying a ton of money for features to be implemented in the "Amersfoort Club" alpha release that I won't get to try for months. I'm not implying this would continue, just that it happened.

Especially with as much money as I have out on the fascia project. (Meeting later today, BTW, to determine just where we're at on that.)

As soon as the Japanese thing gets figured out (or released to us, as I remember someone discussing the appearance of a Japanese capable empeg at a meet), let me know. I'll throw the $350 and maybe more, because that is something that, for me, is a huge usability clusterfsck. HUGE. Till then, I'm going to need convincing that I'm going to get something out of my contribution.

Sorry if that sounds selfish and crappy.