I have to confess to being somewhat disappointed in your post. First off: I organise the Amersfoort events for fun, plain and simple. In order to make it sucessful, I have to make it attractive enough for people to want to attend. Don't forget, I am in competition with TV, football matches, F1 races, and, believe it or not, exams and even national holidays!

Thanks to the good graces of the empeg team, one of the pulling points so far has been new builds of software for the player. However - and bear this in mind - this is software produced in their own time, for an unsupported product. The last two "Top secret" releases done for the Amersfoort meets were not meant to be "secret" or "limited" or "just for the club" in any sense, other than to limit it's circulation to prevent a mass software failure stretching through the whole community (you will perhaps note that just about every member of this community has been able to get hold of this stuff given time, regardless of circulation restrictions placed upon it by Rob). This software can only be released as Alpha, never Beta (think about it, heh?) and the very fact that it has been released at all is a pretty good thing. It speaks well for the team that they think with enough responsibility to their former customer base that they are still trying to ensure that people's machines don't get hosed by some lurking nasty that they have insufficient time to test properly for. Read the label - it says quite clearly - "Use AT YOUR OWN RISK!".

I rather resent the imputation that you feel that the people who come here have formed a cliquey "club" just because they can afford the ticket price and the cost: that's not the case. You are also quite welcome to come as well. If you have problems with the date of the 2005 event (are you looking at the calender?) due to exams, then let me know NOW and I'll see if I can adjust it - I have done this for several people several times now to make sure that as many people as want to come, can come. Money a problem? Well, I can't help much with that I'm afraid - but I do try to make it fun for everyone who can't attend, even going so far as trying to arrange webcams at the event, and this year an attempt was made at videoing it for a limited "Best of..". For various reasons this hasn't happened - sorry.

I realise that at each event, there has been a fair amount of post-event ragging about these releases with an "We know something you don't know!" element to it. Perhaps this is a mistake - but it's only ragging, nothing else! There's nothing intentionally nasty about it!

To labour this point somewhat - when I made this current proposal, I was NOT proposing that partially-directed versions be released to a limited crowd who have paid to "join the club". This was the last thing on my mind. The proposal was going to be firmed up along the lines that the people who paid up front would be entitled to regular updates during development, intermediate test builds, so forth - to act as a kind of voluntary A-test team, much the way as I did with the original release test team. Then eventually, everyone - having paid or not - would benefit from a free, Beta upgrade. So why pay at all, then? Why not just sit back and wait for a new sausage to pop out of the pipe? Well, that's what's been happeniing so far (with diminishing frequency), in case you haven't noticed - and the people who have benefitted from this approach have been ...

...yup, you guessed it, the people who came to the Amersfoort meets. And yes, some of them DID pay - like Rob Riccardelli who paid a h*** of a lot in air fare to come over for what was, in the end, just a boozy party with a few hamburgers thrown in for good measure! Does that not sound like "paying" for a priviledged release? It was his choice to do so, nicht wahr?

I am also a little bothered that you have attached conditions to what you are prepared to contribute to. While I understand why you want what you want, you are - as other posters here are also doing - Completely Missing The Point. I am Not talking about, nor am I interested in doing, (in a limited time with limited funds) adding new functionality , only making what has been described as an unstable release into a Stable one, with a pre-selected list of fixes to certain bugs that will provide the maximum benefit to the entire user community. If you wish to be partial, and only contribute to directed development that benefits only yourself and no-one else (I don't see anyone else clamouring for Japanese ID3 support here - do you?), then I would prefer that you withdrew and did not offer funds as I will not be able to do what you ask - there won't be the opportunity. Sure, there are about a dozen new things I would like to build into the the player software but I will have neither the time, nor funds to do this.

I suspect saying it this way will upset you: I sincerely hope not, as I do not wish for this to happen - your posts and contributions on this board are enjoyable and I enjoy reading your thoughts. But as you say yourself - I have to be brutal about this: I will have very little time to do what I propose. I am not even sure I will be able to do enough: I will be taking a huge financial risk on your behalf and to be anything less than totally focussed on what is practically achievable is without any doubt in my mind, POINTLESS.

If you all want this to happen, then you have a very small window of opportunity to consider what you want, pool your funds, and make a concrete contribution, for which I promise you will be rewarded with my greatest efforts. But if it's not important enough for you - well, why should I commit to the risk?