A-EON Technology Acquires Amiga.org

[Kesa]

Earning trust should be priortised as there is very little of it in the  Amiga market/community and this is made even more important as it is  small.

My suggestion is to make this forum transparent in how it is doing things especially when it comes to money. For example how it is payed for and where donation money goes, etc. Also any issues/conversations that are going on behind the scenes between mods and owners could be made public to allow forum users a chance to debate/participate in the running of the site.

This also applies to AEON as well. AEON is arguably the leaders in the Amiga market/community. The problem with the Amiga market/community is a complete lack of trust and faith that involves any corporate activity. For example C=USA. I think the best thing AEON could do as market leaders is to gain the trust of the community by offering as much transparency as possible.

[wawrzon]

Seriously guys, we are open to suggestions on the forums structure. We want to encourage a wide range of "Amiga" interests.  Personally I would like to have a developer forum with users sharing coding tips and helping each other with problems. I don't see that much on here.  The German forum A1K.org is a good template for the forums on this site.

amiga.org and even aw.net has been once a place where you could discuss projects and developments to certain extent, but a forum is only as good as its members. a1k and eab are amiga hardware oriented sites with a number of knowledgeable active members, few of them were posting here too, but why should they resign on their own forum to move over here? i think its hard to expect as long as their forums are still online.

once there was utilitybase, all in all a rather os4 oriented site, but it had good members and lots of ressources, both as documentation and if you checked discussion threads. there was no moderation necessary, but its gone due to malware and no maintenance.

then olaf opened his amigacoding site and rescued some of utilitybase content, but as expected very limited public attended, lilely because the most actove devs are gone anyway.

all others have their own sites and mailing lists like aros exec, aros dev ml, amigans and morphzone and what not. even mikej who used to post here went his own fpgaarcade forum. there is limited interest to support concurrent platforms all along, which is rather understandable because the development of the own one has a priority of choice.

so how exactly do you want to encourage people to come here for technical discussion? because as it looks like most people that come here do it because they ever did or do it for some coffe house style chat.

[Duce]

Thanks for the comments, new owners.  Didn't mean to grill you on financials, heh.  That being said, when one can host a forums for $15 a month with no limits on anything (eg; Hostgator Business class, who provides DNS for A.org), some transparency is needed to keep people contributing, which I truly hope they do here at A.org.

That being said, it's always been about the Amiga here, but don't lose the coffee house style areas.  Perhaps have them not pop up on the "fresh posts" lists, but a lot of people do come here to just (pardon my french) "shoot the %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!" about other topics that aren't entirely Amiga related.

[Lurch]

Here in Germany you can reduce profit (and thus taxes) when you buy something company-related (f.e. a new computer, software, something for the office, new machines), the only question is if you can do it immediately the full sum or parts of the sum in a couple of years). I assume that it is the same where you live and I also assume that a-eon is a company.

Surprised by the answer as it's similar here in New Zealand. Most businesses like to appear that they are also running at a loss ;-)

[amigakit]

@Duce

I would like to upgrade the Amiga.org web hosting in the nearer future, probably bringing it in house.  I have been really busy recently with development of AMIStore and setting up the associated servers, so once AMIStore is out and finished I will turn my attention to Amiga.org.  I just don't have many hours left in the day at the moment

@Olafs3 @duce

There is a place for general discussion and Amiga.org has had a lot of off-topic subjects over the last few years, but it will be nice to encourage more in-depth Amiga specific topics- maybe with tutorials and series of articles around themes of topics throughout the year.

I view Amiga.org as the potential for becoming a modern digital magazine for the Amiga community.

[Niding]

Here in Germany you can reduce profit (and thus taxes) when you buy something company-related (f.e. a new computer, software, something for the office, new machines), the only question is if you can do it immediately the full sum or parts of the sum in a couple of years). I assume that it is the same where you live and I also assume that a-eon is a company.

Out of curiosity;

Is that the sum of the purchase of this site, or does it also include the running cost of the site?

If its "just the purchase" that is covered in the tax return, then the donations can be attributed to the "running cost"?

Either way; donations is a voulenteery thing, but transparency on the issue will obviously ease minds.

Overall comments; Trevors Blog about what Aeon, Amigakit and their associates are doing, planning and dreaming about has been from my point of view been quite refreshing.
Even small comments about development status is very good to see. Update(s) about hardware/software that might have been expected to be finished by X date, but due to "complexity" or whatever reason is delayed is helpful.
Ofcourse there is a limit to how often and much a few people can keep the info flow going when they have their hands full with developing a buissniss.

The point is; keep doing what you have been done so far. Keep the info flow coming, be it thru the blog or assosiated forum(s).

[LiveForIt]

then olaf opened his amigacoding site and rescued some of utilitybase content, but as expected very limited public attended, lilely because the most actove devs are gone anyway

You don't get user feedback by hiding in developer forum, yes its nice to have place you can go ask questions and get answers, Amigans.net has tags you can use when posting questions that will format source code correct.

The problem whit utilitybase and amigacoding is that developers go there to ask questions, once they know the answers there is no point going there.

All the developers are in their own forums anyway.

The Amiga wiki pages that Hyperion has spent time setting up is better source for developer information, things are better explained then what you can get from a few posts in a forum, and there is example code, there so you don't need to go looking for it.

[amigakit]

We try to be as transparent as possible as long as there is no commercial disadvantage.  A few years ago we discussed the concept of Trevor's Blog and since it's inception he has used it to keep everyone informed of our ongoing projects as well as his own personal activities.  I am sure now Amiga.org will feature in it far more prominently going forward.

As far as tax is concerned, Amiga.org is regarded as a Company Asset and the purchase cost is not written off against tax unfortunately.

[OlafS3]

Out of curiosity;

Is that the sum of the purchase of this site, or does it also include the running cost of the site?

If its "just the purchase" that is covered in the tax return, then the donations can be attributed to the "running cost"?

Either way; donations is a voulenteery thing, but transparency on the issue will obviously ease minds.

Overall comments; Trevors Blog about what Aeon, Amigakit and their associates are doing, planning and dreaming about has been from my point of view been quite refreshing.
Even small comments about development status is very good to see. Update(s) about hardware/software that might have been expected to be finished by X date, but due to "complexity" or whatever reason is delayed is helpful.
Ofcourse there is a limit to how often and much a few people can keep the info flow going when they have their hands full with developing a buissniss.

The point is; keep doing what you have been done so far. Keep the info flow coming, be it thru the blog or assosiated forum(s).

both, the running costs immediately reduce taxes, bigger investments must be splitted over f.e. five years (depends on tax laws)

[OlafS3]

We try to be as transparent as possible as long as there is no commercial disadvantage.  A few years ago we discussed the concept of Trevor's Blog and since it's inception he has used it to keep everyone informed of our ongoing projects as well as his own personal activities.  I am sure now Amiga.org will feature in it far more prominently going forward.

As far as tax is concerned, Amiga.org is regarded as a Company Asset and the purchase cost is not written off against tax unfortunately.

Is A-eon not a company?

[OlafS3]

You don't get user feedback by hiding in developer forum, yes its nice to have place you can go ask questions and get answers, Amigans.net has tags you can use when posting questions that will format source code correct.

The problem whit utilitybase and amigacoding is that developers go there to ask questions, once they know the answers there is no point going there.

All the developers are in their own forums anyway.

The Amiga wiki pages that Hyperion has spent time setting up is better source for developer information, things are better explained then what you can get from a few posts in a forum, and there is example code, there so you don't need to go looking for it.

for user feedback you need a user forum. Or you have a specific product forum

[amigakit]

@Olafs3

Yes it is a Limited Company, so running costs can be put against tax but the purchase costs are an asset, so different tax rules apply to them.

[LiveForIt]

So how exactly do you want to encourage people to come here for technical discussion? because as it looks like most people that come here do it because they ever did or do it for some coffe house style chat.

On the other sites like Amigans.net and Amigaworld.net it seams that most of the coffee house style chats has moved to Facebook. I think mostly because that can't stay on topic get in trouble whit moderators sooner or latter.

My impression is that Amiga.org has been less strict on moderation.

Etch of the forums has served its own use, generally little activity on all forums.

I guess part of the reason for that is Hyperion support forum, so now people go there if they have problems, and go to Facebook when they what a chat and post wallpapers.

[itix]

The problem whit utilitybase and amigacoding is that developers go there to ask questions, once they know the answers there is no point going there.

UtilityBase used to be good forum until owners gave up and abandonded it. I wish AmigaCoding.de had more traffic but new Amiga developments have declined in last years.

[OlafS3]

We try to be as transparent as possible as long as there is no commercial disadvantage.  A few years ago we discussed the concept of Trevor's Blog and since it's inception he has used it to keep everyone informed of our ongoing projects as well as his own personal activities.  I am sure now Amiga.org will feature in it far more prominently going forward.

As far as tax is concerned, Amiga.org is regarded as a Company Asset and the purchase cost is not written off against tax unfortunately.

What I do not like on other forums is that moderators are like gods. They ban people how they like and if you say something you can be banned too. No transparency, often it seems like they do what they want, if f.e. two persons are discussing one person is banned and the other not (and both are equal guilty) without any justification. Amiga.org has TOS too but they were much more tolerant than most other sites (expecially those from the NG community). Now here are the same moderators than on those sites, that I have the fear that the moderation here will be the same than there is hopefully understandable.

[OlafS3]

@Olafs3

Yes it is a Limited Company, so running costs can be put against tax but the purchase costs are an asset, so different tax rules apply to them.

Ok, must be specific. Here in Germany laws are different