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Minor updates and code changes occur every day. Only significant or noteworthy updates are shown here. Updates shown with a gold background are (or were at the time) only available to Advanced HOPS members.
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| Update 286 17 February 2015 | Hello Some users may not realise that, apart from a small number of advanced features to some specific railways, the HOPS system is provided to railways totally free of charge. And always will be. The demands of delivering HOPS support to railways has steadily grown in proportion to the usage of the system, but my ability to provide that support has remained constant. Unfortunately it now way outstrips the time I have available to provide it in a timely manner. I am aware that a number of enquiries have received poor or no responses recently, and I am now running about a backlog of several weeks of support enquiries in my inbox. Railway HOPS Administrators can help this situation by raising things to do with the operation of the software that other Railway HOPS Administrators might be able to help with on the forum provided for the purpose (Accessible only to railway HOPS admins, permissions 106 and 110 required). Many of the same queries come up on different railways and have been solved or answered before on there and a number of railway admins are happy to share their experience with pride! Anything personal or specifically to do with your railway I am afraid will have to wait in the queue. (I normally /read/ everything that comes in to make sure any emergencies are dealt with). Unfortunately I have a "real" day job to attend to, and only have evenings and weekends for HOPS. I also run the shop, which helps pay for the expenses of HOPS's services. In order to help the situation from my end in the long-term, I am looking into devising a support licensing system. This will guarantee a service level agreement (and off the back of it some long-awaited future developments). Several HOPS railways have indicated their wish for a scheme such as this to be community-funded in the same ethos that HOPS exists for the community. As small crowd-funded investment in this context could return value a great deal more than the sum of its parts. I envisage that the scheme will provide a full-time employed person for HOPS maintenance, support and further development or operational and commercial components of the system. HOPS has grown into a great tool for the operational management and governance of heritage railways (and other heritage organisations) all over the UK, Europe and as far afield as Australia - like any developing system it has to take some painful steps as it matures, and hopefully this next step in the development of the HOPS system will facilitate a strong future of support and developments for railways. Please don't be think that I am about to pull the rug from under HOPS's 'free' status. Railways who wish to continue to use the software without joining the support licensing scheme will be very welcome to do so. More info will be circulated to Railway HOPS Admins when it is available! Thanks Danny Scroggins |