Timberwolf Progress Update

[buzz]

Yeh. usual amiga attitude. Do the bare minimum when it comes to sourcecode releases. (either no source, or as little as they can get away with) if everyone did this of course, there would be nothing to port to the Amiga. I realised I made some similar comments in another thread, but the source thing does keep coming up.. The attitude sucks.

[buzz]

Well why don't you sit down and port it and release all sources then?

If this is the only way we get "firefox" then so be it.

Clearly I too would prefer the source code to be released, but there's no point bitching about the fact it hasn't.

Furthermore it is worth pointing out that if there are no developments released within a period of 12 months, then the source code WILL be released.

Seems reasonable to me.

Your first remark is part of the point. why not? because what a waste of time have people do the same stuff over and over again (ignoring the fact, that it's an incredibly complicated thing to port, and quite probably beyond me for sure, and that I personally have no interest in running it on any Amiga). My point was regarding the fact very little software on the Amiga is open, and Amiga users are the first to take from the open source world, and give back as little as they can or nothing.

I think there is a point discussing it. Perhaps people will change their minds and see that it would benefit all of us.

I didn't know about the last point. Well, I suppose that's something.

[buzz]

Well not sure how to field the statements above but I can tell you that when I used to have a nice studio in nyc a lot of graphic designers, motion gfx guys, 3d guys, audio, musicians, etc saw my amiga and pegasos setup they were blown away

what specifically were they impressed with? I'm just curious as such people would no doubt want to see some graphics software no?

also "blown" away and then not interested because of no modern web browser, makes me think they weren't that blown away anyway. then they find out there is no modern graphics software, or that they can run blender but it's way slow compared to their mums £200 pc ;-)

[buzz]

I too am not a lawyer, but I would think that writing a browser based on the Firefox code would not apply as listed in the LGPL.

I believe the Mozilla license allows new sources to be close/private. But it isn't particularly in the spirit of things.

[buzz]

And yes it is the single most important piece of new software coming to an Amiga near you soon - unless of course you know something we don't.  If that is the case please do enlighten us! :p

personally, I'm far more interested in the next Amiga demo release.

[edit]. porting it is an impressive feat of course, and I respect their abilities. But I guess my interests in the Amiga don't include browsing the web (Which my pc does perfectly well). For those that "only" have computers with the "Amiga" brand, im sure it will be useful. (you loons!).

[buzz]

The creator(s) of any software have sole ownership of their project, and it is absolutely their choice whether they decide to release their work as open or closed source.  

I'm getting the impression that you're one of those people who believe that software writers have an obligation to release their work on an open source licence and that to do it any other way is somehow incorrect, unfair and unacceptable.  Would this be a fair summary of your feelings? You're not alone.  Lots of people seem to think this way.  Software development is the only sector that appears to attract this attitude, for some reason.

not at all. my point is not the license that people choose for their own work, but that Amiga developers love to utilize other peoples open source, and do their best to avoid releasing the changes. in this case, they are using a clause in the mozilla license to not release their "new parts". yes it is their decision to make, but it isn't in the spirit of things, and especially since Amiga developers benefit so much from all the open source available, it seems crap they never manage to give anything back (or to share code with the other amiga platforms). and we are also talking about a commercially dead platform here (in any real sense, im sure many will not agree) where people quite often ditch projects and are never to be seen again, so I do think open source can help in some cases.

[buzz]

That's a big investment, I think you'll agree.

Sure - and I am actually a developer who invests a LOT of his free time in open projects. (almost all actually!)

[buzz]

That being the case, why do you care about the licence it is released under, if you wouldn't care if it had never been released?

Because I put a lot of time into developing on open projects, benefit greatly from open source in general in the software I run (and have the ability to fix it), and dislike the general attitude with amiga development, excluding AROS, where the others do their best to not share any code. There have been plenty of things in the Amiga world that if they had been open source, the situation would now be better. From Filesystems to tcp/ip stacks, to browsers.

[buzz]

But does this mean they should give it away for free? Remember, they've just committed a huge amount of precious time to the project.  If they can make a tenner from it, or a few hundred, or a few thousand, as a tiny amount of compensation for their efforts, then should they not be allowed to do that? And should we not be greatful?

Because they are using code that others put 1000x more time into and managed to release the code which they rely on or there would be no browser x y and z, and so it makes no sense to keep the "Amiga" bits closed, for the reason I think so other "Amiga" platforms can't benefit from it.

[edit] + ^what fab said

[buzz]

Well, that being the case, anyone else is free to invest their own time on the project and make the licence decision for themselves.

yeh, well that's how it would be in Amiga land. let there be 3 different Firefox projects then.

[buzz]

I posted regarding the source thing, because it's something that concerns me when it comes to Amiga software. I am neither an OS4 user nor a MorphOS user. if something needs criticism or discussing then it should be (This is a forum, not a place of worship). Perhaps the real issue is, a lot of stuff happens regarding OS4 that perhaps deserves critique.

[buzz]

Awesome post and I love the parenthetical

I just had to look up parenthetical on Wikipedia ! ;-) (my brain wasn't working, i see now. parenthesis/parenthetical.)