MorphOS - YOU should try it too

[LoadWB]

Finally, with Mac OS or Windows I can stick in my OS CD and install the OS on any machine I have.

I cannot speak for MacOS, but I can for Windows.  This case is only partly true with Windows, provided that you did not purchase an OEM copy of Windows -- the kind that comes with computers purchased from Big Box or a system builder.

While you may have the technical ability to install your OEM on any other machine, your licensing does not legitimately allow doing so.  When your OEM computer dies, your OEM license of Windows dies with it.

Purchase a retail copy of Windows and you can move from machine-to-machine, you just have to jump through the activation phone call at times if using XP or later.  XP Home Edition used to run between $169 and $199 retail, so you pay about the same as MorphOS for about the same situation, relatively speaking.

Windows 3.x, 95, 98, 98SE, 2000, and ME do not suffer the WGA activation, so you can plug away on those all you want.  Hell, for that matter even XP is loosely controlled these days (only loosely since it is still a viable alternative to 7 if you can get drivers.  I have had to re-activate my XP x64 once or twice due to hardware changes.)

[LoadWB]

The point of the MorphOS license fee is not that of paying the value of the product, it's more like an entrance fee to a cry party
The devs are more or less developing MorphOS for their own pleasure, they're really not that interested in growing a new plattform or gaining more users, as that requires lots of work and resources that are not available.

I never quite got the MorphOS bashing.  From my perspective, as a user and AmigaOS enthusiast, MorphOS has everything I need, and supports plenty of software both native PPC and via 68k emulation.  I have yet to see anything which represents a stumbling block to me doing what I want, and it targets a number of machines which are easy to obtain inexpensively.  While it may be an unintended side-effect of their work, that represents value to me.

Yeah yeah, the argument about cheap Atom machines, ARM, etc.  There's always AROS for x86.  Classic PPC machines?  OS4.1 Classic.  Several different approaches toward the same end.

I have no issue with the MorphOS team wants to protect their investments into the operating system.  I see it as a niche product with a currently limited user-base -- limited only by the growing list of supported hardware -- but a user-base nonetheless.  A user-base in which many openly and brazenly express the desire, wont, and fully justified penchant for piracy.

Additionally, you can get a fully operational product to try all you want in 30-minute stints before it goes into a low-performance mode.  But it still performs.  So it is not 30 days of full operation before whacking out, but still an operational trial period.  Just another angle on try-before-you-buy.

And the argument that anything can be cracked is facile at best.  You can kick in my French doors, but I still lock them.  I do not begrudge anyone the ability to ensure that the product of their labor is not abused.

So to not be understood, I get your point about the "cry party" and this is not meant as an attack on you.

[LoadWB]

1. Makes life harder for end users

Minor inconvenience?

2. Waste of time for the developers, doesn't actually improve the OS

Which is the greater waste of time: protecting your investment or having it taken from you?

3. When development stops, your OS is dead when that machine breaks

Please give independent developers a little credit.  While it is true that some developers just drop their projects and ignore potential users (like Holger Kruse), many Amiga developers released a universal key when development of a product stopped.  Others have released a universal key or un-protected version in later years when asked.

I was keeping an eye out for a cheap Mac to run it on, but I have to say that this puts the nail in the MorphOS coffin for me.[/qoute]

Then you might not be the target demographic.  Why not find a cheap MacMini and just give it a try?  It won't kill you, I promise, and you could probably resell the MacMini if you aren't happy.

Who knows when it will be unregisterable, it's not like they have Microsofts staying power or the will/legal standing to release a key generator when they eventually go away.

This is a poor comparison.  Like Microsoft has EVER released any of its major products for free, or for that matter any key generators, at the end of a commercial product life-cycle.  See my comment above.  Sadly, a lot of FOSS developers follow the same route; there is a particular module for Apache I would love to have but the developer stopped developing it several version ago, is uninterested in updating the patch, and only commercial Linux releases have continued working on it.

In any case, I can't see that disparaging comments like yours motivate such a release.