I am an enthusiastic and devoted Amiga user and new developer currently working on several small applications for the Amiga OSs. I have spent the last year learning to program in an Amiga-specific language with the intention of creating nothing but Amiga software over the foreseeable future.
I have always had a problem with the Open Amiga site. Back when it was started I expressed my opinion that it should include all Amiga development, combining our efforts to develop new cross-compatible Amiga software and pushing the entire platform forward together, not just one small aspect of it (OS4). I was of course dismissed, and reported for abuse (on AmigaWorld) for daring to suggest that OS3, Aros and MorphOS should also have a place on the Open Amiga site.
I don't own and can't afford to purchase AmigaOS4, let alone the expensive custom hardware it runs on. It's not that I wouldn't like a Sam, I'd love one, but there's no way I could buy one. That still doesn't mean I wouldn't like to write new software for OS4. The software I'm working on can be compiled to run on all four Amiga OSs, it's original and native (not ported), uses common standards like Datatypes, Icon Tooltypes, Intuition Screens, MUI/Zune, system menus and everything else you would expect from real Amiga software. Over the last year or so I taught myself to program without any previous experience, no manual and with very minimal help online with no support forum. Despite the fact that Amiga development almost seems like a dead end, and everything I learn would be of no use if I were to start developing for a different platform I still press on, and won't stop trying to write new Amiga software.
At first I thought that I would simply hang around in Amiga development teams, betatesting, offering ideas, writing plots for games, design levels and do the easy work while the professionals handled the coding, graphics and music composition. But I soon found that the Amiga community was seriously lacking dedicated programmers, and the hobbyist ones seemed to give up or lose interest when real life got in the way. Even sadder is when someone who is a very dedicated, respected and inspirational Amiga developer, who works on software for all four Amiga OSs decides to abandon his work or only focus on a single system, or leave Amiga programming to make money with Microsoft and Apple.
That's something I would never do. I'm in it for the long run, 100% dedicated to developing for all Amiga systems. The software I will create may not blow any minds, but it will try to fill in the gaps in our software library. There are several applications and utilities we're lacking which I would use myself, and those are the ones I'm working on first, as well as a couple of small games.
Developing for other, non-Amiga operating systems and platforms doesn't interest me even though I use a lot of alternative OSs casually (which is good for research and ideas), so if I wasn't dedicating myself to writing new Amiga software I'd probably do something completely different with my life. It doesn't stop at wanting to develop software, I've also invented a few simple hardware designs that I would love to see hit production which would be well received by the Amiga community, I'm creating a fictional universe for the setting of an upcoming online comic series I'm penning which will include several tie-in games (for Amigas), writing guides and tutorials for an Amiga book I'd like to publish (which will be free to download), filming and editing a few (free of charge) promotional videos for Amiga hardware and software developers, and modelling for an Amiga Game Girls calendar for 2012. And that's only a few of the projects I'm involved with, I'm full of ideas and enthusiasm.
So, three years have passed that we could have been working together. How is the situation now? Was the decision to exclude three quarters of the Amiga community a good idea, or should Open Amiga have actually been true to its name from the start and been open for all Amiga development and support? How many fresh new developers have jumped onboard eager to learn to program for an obscure, expensive and uncertain platform decades after it had any chance of success?
I'll offer my advice again. Make Open Amiga a truly open community effort that includes OS3, Aros and MorphOS along with OS4 and actively promotes cooperation and teamwork within our community. Try to get over any biases you have against other Amiga systems and realize that we're in this together, our only chance may be to work together at last. I don't mean to force all projects to be cross-platform, but at least let us have the option to host projects that aren't specifically targeted at OS4. Anything started on one Amiga OS can always be ported to the others if there's enough support and encouragement.
So Open Amiga is asking for developers. Did they even think about where these developers are supposed to come from?
First of all, don't you think anyone who already owns OS4 and wants to program for it already knows about your site? Or do you think that someone who does not own OS4 or the hardware it runs on would spend months or years of their life writing software for you to use when they can't use it themselves?
What type of programmer do you want? Someone with no previous Amiga experience, who has only worked on Windows, Macs or some other non-Amiga platform, or would you prefer someone who grew up using Amigas and loves it enough to have stuck around, using one of the available options until now? Is a program ported from Aros so much worse than one ported from Linux?
I don't know where you expect to find new developers to join your effort, but I wish you luck. I hope that you will reconsider the purpose of a site like that and try being a little more reasonable.
