O my. Even if each of the people who signed their names under the petition spent 1000$ last year buying things on amiga market (and that, may I stress, is the only way of keeping it alive) (and, of course, they didn't spend this much, but let's assume they did), even then they would have only pumped less than half a million dollars into amiga-related companies. The sum which current owners of the Amiga paid is a couple of millions.
What we see (when watching the whole petition bussines) is a bunch of people who risk nothing and will lose nothing if Amiga fails on one side, and a group of people who invested their own, BIG money and can lose their jobs, reputation and a couple of years of life.
Guess who is critisising whom?
While it is possible that the whole POP community would gain a lot if amiga OS ran on all the machines, I don't see a reason why on earth should Bill McEwan sponsor a ceirtain part of (mostly) linux community with his own, hard earned cash? And, belive me, if you risk so much and are a succesful entrepreneur, you can count - I am sure that folks at amiga know what they are doing - their future is at stake!
We may not like it, but AInc can't become a charity company.
And more: we don't want another free, open system like linux (linux is hard to beat when it comes to commercial support, eg. drivers). We need to be different to stay afloat. And the only difference can be made in one point, which is one of linux'es biggest weaknesses: user friendliness. I consider myself a man with a good understanding of computers, I use amiga daily but sometimes I have to use a PC (not mine). I tried linux, but had to spend a lot of time reading manuals, downloading latest "stable" versions. And guess what? I discovered that windows could do everything I wanted without half the fuss.
And why is that? because windows are closed and kept standard, and linux is kept open, and everyone is pulling it in a differen direction. Did you know, that there is no good HDrecording system for linux? To use one, you have to have a specialy patched kernel! (of course the patch doesn't work on the distributions I tried). Did you know, that burning a CD rom on Mandrake requires recompilation of the kernel? One that my friend (working as linux administratorfor the biggest polish internet company) couldn't commence in two hours? That open ofiice doesn't work on KDE, god knows why? That using HPdeskjet on Red Hat requires an internet download and recompilation of the driver? Belive me: installation of linux IS a nightmare (unless you only want to use very limited features and can do with a standard installation. Much less functional than Windows).
The bottom line is: you can have user-friendliness and standard sollutions that work. Or you can have a platform that you let anyone use on their computers. You can't have both! If amiga let's just anyone use their OS on their POP machines, we are going to see a number of programms, that are machine specific, for example run only on an IBM POP (because, let's say, the developer gad such a machine). Then we're going to see patches that make an amiga program amiga-compatibile. Then we are going to see an article in Slashdot: "amiga boasts about their platform-abstraction, yet doesn't seem to be compatibile ith itself". Then we are going to see, like many times before, a heart warming news that amiga has been bought once again, and in just two months we are going to see miracles...
What do you think?
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