Free Magellan!

[Andre.Siegel]

@ Gulliver

Power2People contacted GPSoft on February 17. There appear to be several interested parties.

[Andre.Siegel]

Does it mean that many parties (like GPSoft, power2people, as well as, I don't know, some AROS, OS4, MorphOS representatives, etc/whatever) is interested in making Dopus open source through power2people and thinks that this is a good idea,

or

that some *other* organization/entities  has expressed interest in buying the sources *for their own* purpose? (meaning: not necessarily for open sourcing purposes?)

It means the latter.

That said, Power2People has offered its services and provided some honest and informed feedback regarding the named asking price but did not inquire about the other parties.

Now, it is for GPSoft to make a decision.

In terms of sales of the Windows version, I personally think a free Amiga version could actually be helpful in spreading the word and recreating awareness for GPSoft whereas another 'commercial' release is not likely to generate much revenue by itself nor reach too many existing users who might get tempted to try out DOpus on Windows.

But, GPSoft may very well feel different about this.

[Andre.Siegel]

Based on the information the rights holders provided to us, Power2People has concluded that we are sadly unable to pursue this any further.

[Andre.Siegel]

Why ?

Among other things, the asking price was not a sum that we feel could be raised within a reasonable amount of time (if ever). We provided extensive information about prior Amiga-related bounty projects that had been organized by Power2People and other parties but were obviously unsuccessful to convince the rights holders to lower the asking price to what we would consider an attainable amount.

[Andre.Siegel]

What a shame our world is inhabited with such greedy and selfish people. Thank you for trying, and for letting us know, Andre.

We have no intention to speculate about the motivations of the rights holders.

But, just for the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that these type of decisions do not always have to be about greed, however.

In some cases, developers encounter emotional barriers when they have to attach a seemingly low price to a piece of intellectual property they created over the course of many, many years. This process may mean having to admit to yourself that your past accomplishments have little value (anymore), which is easier said than done in some cases.

For others, it can be difficult to imagine other supposedly less qualified developers take over and potentially ruin the reputation of what used to be a well respected piece of software. Unless there is a sizable amount of money involved, some developers might not be willing to take that risk especially if you are still selling a modern version of the same application for another platform.

Plus, there are some people who develop software for a living and are sceptical about the concept of giving away source code for little to no money since this seems to go against their own interest to sell their services at fair market prices so they can provide for their families.

[Andre.Siegel]

So what was the price?

Very low five figures, which seemed very high when we put it in relation to the total amount of funds that had been collected by the community in the past few years.