andypandy,
I am the creator of OrchidWiz and am answering your post. I started development of OrchidWiz in January 2004, a few weeks after my first son was born. My job at the time required extensive travel and I was looking for a way to work from home.
Initially I worked on it part-time, but by Summer I knew I was on to something and quit my job to dedicate to OrchidWiz full time. OrchidWiz was released in November, 2005, after 18 months of full time work. During those 18 months I did not get paid a dime, and I often worked 50 and 60-hour weeks. Since then I've been programming and improving the product every year.
There is a perception that what we sell with OrchidWiz is the data. This is wrong. As you very well point out, the data is free and in the public domain. Most of it can be looked up for free on the internet, if you have the time and patience.
What we sell is INFORMATION, not data. We sell the *analysis* of the data, cross-referenced against about 40,000 photos, 80% of which were donated by volunteers. We sell the ease-of-use in looking up this information.
I find it funny you accuse the makers of OrchidWiz of being greedy, and then when you scroll down you have a message from someone else saying they don't buy OrchidWiz because it's not available on the Mac. Well, it's not available on the Mac because you can hardly make enough money selling on Windows, which has 8X the number of users.
OrchidWiz is a labor of love. The market is tiny. Nobody makes loads of money doing this. This is the truth. The RHS published software like this and then quit because it wasn't making any money. The AOS doesn't make any money with AQ-Plus, after you factor in the salaries of all the people involved. Wildcatt makes little money, they did it out of spite against the RHS, and that is why they've done very little to improve their product.
I assure you I know a lot of people who have made comments like yours and then bought OrchidWiz because they saw their friends running it and realized what it was. This is the truth, believe me. There are no greedy people here repackaging data to make a quick profit. There is only hard work and value add. And great software that makes people happy.
Respectfully,
Alex Maximiano
President and Founder
OrchidWiz, LLC
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