First I must say I have been a humble supporter of the
Amiga community since I bought my first Amiga model way
back in 1987, and I have also been working as an editor
of a national Norwegian Amiga fanzine since 1992 and also
been in the leadership of a national Norwegian user group union.
First of all I wish to say that I am proud of the Amiga community! I am proud for the way we stick together, I am proud for the way that we all help eachother when it comes to fix problems.
OK, the community has got some people making a little noise, but hey: We surely could not live without that extra excitement, I guess...
Second, I want to present a recent idea I just got, kicking
this ball into a hopefullly fruitful discussion in the Amiga community, and also maybe starting a kick-off for the Amiga name that we may all be proud of, and what may be heard of in the world of computing as the way that got the Amiga rise again. (Hopefully that is...)
Ok, now I got excited. Sorry
Let's get on to hard facts and the basics of this idea.
I want to distribute my idea down into these following points:
1) The Amiga name has always been known for its widely spread piracy
2) The Amiga community is a community of pride
3) Even if one does not consider religious beliefs, the statement "Thou shall not steal" still is a part of most countries laws
4) The computing world of today surely could need some honesty in certain ways of acting
Ok, above are the basic facts for my idea - let us call it the "Amiga idea", or even "The Amiga license"...
What is left of Amiga today, I keep asking myself. 10 year old classic machines based on slow, but still ok CPUs. A ton (more or less) of old software. An already existing modern, PPC based, expensive main board. And last, but not least, an upcoming modern AmigaOS4.0 which comes with integrated classic Amiga emulation.
Critics of computer audience says those PPC boards are way to expensive. Critics of coders says Amiga has failed because of piracy.
My suggestion is: Let us now make one right out of two wrongs!
This way surely the sentence "Amiga - Computing Pride" would make sense...read on!
My idea is as follows:
When mass production of AmigaOne main boards makes cost more efficient, one would expect prices to drop. My idea is: Let us keep prices, but let Amiga Inc. (or whoever) gather licenses from every single classic software licensee for a
fixed price and then sell a BIG package of classic software (and now I mean as much classic software as possible) for free, but included in a license that comes with the buying of the AmigaOne main board.
Get it?
This way every computer user would get tons of software, not only included, but legally included with a licence, together with the main board. This way one can have pretty much the same price for the AmigaOne main board.
Classic Amigas would keep their prices, because they would represent a way to run classic software without expensive hardware with a license.
Even better, one could associate the software package with the Amiga name, that is: one could say "whoever who has got an Amiga computer, has got an Amiga license..."
Some of this sum should be spent on those licensees from classic software, some of it on ppc native productions (a fund?)....either way no problem to spend those money in a reasonable way...
Hmmm....ok....maybe I am darned wrong about this idea....
Ok....maybe this is a bad idea....
But after have spent some time thinking about this I found
it worth posting this in an open letter to the Amiga community.
Hopefully I will get some sort of reaction on my idea...
Amiga - Pride of Computing
