Hi Bill,
Just another one of these SDA developers piping in..
I think the lack of any product for the last two years says a lot more than those gamecards do.
Where have you been? On Mars or something? Amiga Inc have released product in the last two years - look on the amiga anywhere web shop, or in CompUSA. Rest assured, this is just the start. We've put in way too much time and effort into this for us to just throw our hands in the air and walk away from it all. I've got one product in the web shop now, I've got a rewrite/upgrade of it nearly ready to be published, another game very close to being ready (the ice hockey game written in conjunction with Onno Scheffers), I have a DE specific Java API that has quite a lot of functionality that has been released (in beta form) to the other SDA developers, and I have several other projects in early planning stages. I know there are quite a few other projects from other develoeprs ongoing, too.
What have Amiga Inc's added to intent to make it worth signing their draconian SDA agreement?
Various APIs have been added to intent, which makes things a lot nicer. But that isn't what the SDA is about. Yeah, we get earlier acess to the various APIs because we have made a serious committment to Amiga, but they have also made committments to us in terms of support (and we have excellent support from Amiga Inc employees, they do their best to answer our questions and help us sort out issues as they arise), distribution of our software, beta testing, certification, and so on. Not to mention a very generous revenue model considering all the other stuff they do for us. Then there's also the SDA developer community, which is a great bunch of people.
If you have honest issues with the SDA, and you are considering publishing for the Amiga, then I strongly suggest you contact them directly and see what you can work out.
You can't decide when it goes on sale
Well, Amiga doesn't set a publishing deadline. Amiga will not publish until a developer is 100% happy to give the go ahead to publish. As to when Amiga publishes it after the app has passed QA, well, I would expect that they'd publish it as soon as practically possible, after all, the longer Amiga delays publishing an app, the longer it is until Amiga themselves receive any revenue from it...
you can't decide what licensing to release it under
Uh... yes, you can. SDAers are currently releasing both commercial stuff, and free stuff. There is nothing in the SDA preventing this.
you can't decide how it should be sold
Um, the purpose of the SDA is so that I don't have to think about how it should be sold. If I wanted to do that, then I'd do the distribution and marketing myself. As it is, I'm happy to leave it up to Amiga to do that. That's one of the reasons I signed the SDA.
you can't even realistically decide how much money you'd like to make out of it
Again, not true. The developer sets the price, not Amiga. Amiga does make suggestions, but final decision is up to the owner of the product. Amiga never owns the product, ownership always remains with the developer. So, *I* set the price of my apps (whether they be free, or some amount of money), I know upfront what Amiga's cut of the money is, and so I know exactly how much money I stand to make per unit sold.
they are entitled to hold your software back indefinitely until they feel it would be a good time to release it, even if that means years
Well, no again. The SDA is *not* an indefinite agreement. It has a definite term, can be renewed or not depending on whether or not the developer is satisfied with Amiga's performance. There are other conditions under which the SDA can be terminated early by the developer, too. (e.g. Amiga breaches the agreement). Amiga *cannot* just indefinitely do what they please. That is why there is an *agreement* that is signed by both Amiga and the developer.
well, if you don't like the deal they are offering you, there is nothing you can do about it.
Well, don't sign the SDA. Or, if you've already signed it (by which time you should know what deal Amiga is offering, otherwise why would you have signed up?) then if Amiga breaches the agreement you terminate it. Or you just don't renew when the agreement's term is up.
But no, the only way to find out what you are getting is to sign the NDA & SDA first.
Or, you could email Amiga and ask, or get feedback from other people who've signed the SDA. Come on, it's not that hard, is it?
My only message to Amiga Inc and anyone else singing the praises of vapour technology is this: "Put up or shut up. Show us the results of your
work or stop talking about it."
We have - many of us who've signed an SDA have work already published, with more on the way. Amiga has - they have published the DE Player, set up the Amiga Anywhere web shop, have a deal with MS to sell cards for the Pocket PC. There's more to come.
Regards,
Gabriel
