The Idea Exchange was created to give users direct access to R&D and Marketing to make suggestions and then vote amongst themselves which they thought were the most important. There have been tons of great ideas and we have even implemented some of them into our outgoing products. We do recognize those users whose idea does spark R&D development on a new feature by listing the new feature and their name in the LabVIEW Help documentation of the releasing version that has their inspired feature. This is all done in the spirit of a beneficial community and introducing such a large reward ($4300) for accepted ideas could potentially led to legal battles around duplicate and similarly worded but different posts. To maintain the sense of community and still maintain this great avenue of user feedback, we will not offer a copy of LabVIEW for an accepted idea.
I propose that NI award anyone who posts an idea (especially this one) which is eventually accepted receive a free copy of the LabVIEW Developer Suite as an award for their creativity.
I like that idea! However, how do you handle the case of duplicates? What about multiple ideas which are made into one big idea? What if we do a part of an idea? What if an idea is declined (heh) and then we later decide to do it?
And which version of LabVIEW? Base? Full? Pro?
And most importantly: if we decide to do it, does this idea count?
I'd rather have this idea implemented, which would make this current idea moot. 😄
What about an unpublished idea that was already in internal development before it got proposed here?
There could be some other incentives, but maybe not in the form of software. With this idea, there would be no real incentive for users that have corporate or academic license bundles. We already have the home use exemption. A free gift version should probably be for personal use anyway.
Here are some ideas:
x% Discount for NI week 😉
group lunch at NI week with all other idea'lists.
A framed certificate.
Have a floor (or ceiling, or wall) tile in the NI lobby with your name on it 😄
Have naming rights for the proposed element. (e.g. "Chandler loop" would sound soo cool.)
Good thoughts. I epecially do like the tile in the lobby and naming righhts. Maybe your avatar and link to your profile on the getting started window. Or in the "what's new" section.
While I didn't specificly say it the license would be a personal license. Almost anyone who has an idea already has access to LabVIEW - hopefully with a valid license which is probably owned by the company they work for.
But there are probably a lot of complications in addition to the ones already mentioned here. It would of couse be up to NIs discression.
You've clearly already got LV or you wouldn't be making suggestions. How about TestStand? Or Diadem?
Actually I don't have LabVIEW. My company owns the license. I am aware of the home use exception and take full advantage of it. But I am careful not to use the software for personal gain. Maybe NI wouldn't mind but my company would frown VERY heavily on that.
TestStand and Diadem? I suppose the idea could be expanded to include whatever products NI has to offer. I offer the suggestion as a general one and leave it up to you guys (or your lawyers) to work out the details.
But I am not sure that NI would really want to open this can of worms. You would have to run your own little patent office in a way.
I would like to add one more thing. While I like this idea (I posted it) I would support Altenbachs Home Use license over this one any day. If I were to ever switch roles in my company and no longer be the LabVIEW developer then I completely loose access to the software. I would never buy it because it is quite simply too expensive. I would disappear from these forums and move on to Visual Studio or Java. Maybe I could afford the entry level Measurement Studio.
But at the risk of hijacking my own idea it is in National Instruments interest to increase LabVIEW mindshare with some kind of home use license that is accessible to hobbyists. You would sell lots of low cost USB DAQ boards!
I just recently read an articel that major companies pay you for bug-reports. Well, all the security holes we have in our computer systems. Market driven, as there are 'grey' companies who pay for those to make their security suits worth the money (why spend money if the next week it's patched by MS). And of corse there is the black market for 0-day exploits.
There is a severe comunnity effort around LV that really pays off to NI (beta-testing, forum support, Idea Exchange). Why not give us some little extra motivation?
I would be really hard to deal with the duplicate posts. It would be a first come first serve but NI ultimately makes the decision on what posts are duplicates of others and sometimes users can agree that they are different. When free gifts are involved, I think everyone can agree that there would be a lot of arguments. I see that the copy of LabVIEW would start to become the sole reason why people would post to the Idea Exchange instead of having a direct line of communication to R&D to potentially fix or add a feature that you care about. I personally think that some sort of recognition is deserved but I think a free copy of LabVIEW might (I said might) start to defeat the purpose of the Idea Exchange.
