What is sad about Amiga

[amigadave]

Boot_WB wrote:

amigadave wrote:
I think there are still a lot more Amiga users that would buy good programs than Vic20 users.

Go here and say that. I dares ya! :lol:

Look at their numbers and it speaks for itself.  Total members = less than 800, most visitors ever online at the same time 45.  The numbers here are much higher than that and there are several other Amiga sites with users that prefer their sites to Amiga.org (I can't understand why?), so there are probably a few hundred Amiga users above the number of visitors/members here.

I would guess that there are probably about 1,500 to 3,500 Amiga users world wide that are interested in buying new, or updated Amiga software.

Not a huge market, but if someone were to code a good program that 90% of the remaining Amiga users would be willing to purchase, the programmer(s) could probably make between $20,000 to $60,000 for their trouble.

The sad thing about the Amiga at the moment is that almost all of our programmers have left to work on Windows programming and some have left to pursue Linux.  There are very few programmers working on Amiga specific programs now.

One of the greatest things about the Amiga 20 years ago, was that everyone wanted to write programs for it and there was such a wealth of new programs, commercial, shareware, and freeware available new each month, if not each week.  Not all of them were great programs, but the shear number of programs available was astounding and inspiring.

I hope this trend turns around and we get a few more people that start programming for the Amiga, just because it is fun, not for great profits.

[stopthegop]

I hope this trend turns around and we get a few more people that start programming for the Amiga, just because it is fun, not for great profits.

Its kind of a spiritual thing at this point...  Any effort forthcoming must be based on intrinsic pleasure and, perhaps, earning enough money to pay overhead.    

[skurk]

adz wrote:
Being open source, the code is availiable for someone to have a go at porting it right now. Instead, as the OP kindly pointed out, doing so wouldn't generate any money, hence nobody in the community is interested.

Not quite.  I'm not donating to such a project, because I know it will be a waste of money.  It's literally impossible - FF on AOS just won't work.  I'm not going to cite the arguments, just read the other discussions in other threads.

Therefore, the dream will never come true for classic Amigas, as I said in my post.

[Rebel-CD32]

You know what's sad? That you'd care so much about money that it would stop you from coding something for the Amiga. Just because a chef cooks all day at work doesn't mean he can't make his own dinner at home and enjoy it. What's to stop you from coding something on the Amiga just for fun in your spare time, while earning money on some more popular platform?

[amigadave]

skurk wrote:

adz wrote:
Being open source, the code is availiable for someone to have a go at porting it right now. Instead, as the OP kindly pointed out, doing so wouldn't generate any money, hence nobody in the community is interested.

Not quite.  I'm not donating to such a project, because I know it will be a waste of money.  It's literally impossible - FF on AOS just won't work.  I'm not going to cite the arguments, just read the other discussions in other threads.

Therefore, the dream will never come true for classic Amigas, as I said in my post.

I can't believe that Firefox cannot be ported to the AmigaOS for Amigas that have an 68060 (or 604e PPC), a graphics card and lots of RAM.  It may be slow, or have less features, and it may never be completed because there are not enough talented coders working on such a massive project, but I refuse to believe it cannot be done.  If you said that it cannot be done for an A500 w/1mb RAM and ECS graphics, I will gladly join you in that belief.

[rednova]

Dear Friend:

I have a solution. Make an amiga game...then port it to pc.
(ex. you can make a game in amospro for amiga...then easily port it to darkbasic for pc). This way..you can make an amiga game just for fun..it will be easy to port...and the pc port you can earn some cash.
cheers!!!!

rednova

[pixie]

adz wrote:

Why should you pay for Firefox when nobody else does?

Because (a) despite 'no one' actually paying for it, mozilla itself has lots of revenues which allow them to pay staff. Sadly Amiga coders aren't amongst their staff, as such no free lunch... (b) because it ain't a bad thing to pay those who actually take their time so that you can enjoy yours...

[pixie]

What's to stop you from coding something on the Amiga just for fun in your spare time, while earning money on some more popular platform?

Some of you make it as if only the bad guys deserve to get money... :roll:

[trip6]

I think it is just a perception issue... The Amiga now is essentially a hobbyist platform... Hence, not a huge profit potential just because the user base is smaller and hobbyist oriented. Code for the Amiga because you like the Amiga, if you make some money doing it, more power to you... Look at what Dennis did with Minimig, he doesn't really care if its commercially viable, he is giving the source engineering away for free, if he makes money great, if not great... He did it for the purpose of preserving amiga technology... So that just maybe when all our original hardware fails, we will still have a viable source of amiga technology... Just like people who archive to ADF so the software will still be around... Do it for the love brother, do it for the love... Nuff said...

[Steril707]

Sorry, to dig up this old thread, but as much as i like doing homebrew stuff for obscure platforms, it was the commercial companies that brought these machines to their respective levels of success in their heayday, not the Public Domain scene.

The average Joe bought his Amigas for being able to use Deluxe Paint, to play Turrican, etc.. Most people i knew around the time in the late eighties were not even aware of the existence of the Fish disks.

Given the incredible hypothethical idea of the Amiga having commercial success again, would you scorn Adobe for charging you money for their port of Photoshop to the Amiga? Or Steinberg for Cubase? That would be plain dumb in my view.

It's okay if someone wants to make a buck with coding up something that a lot of people would like to use/play. And they can always choose not to use it anyway, isn't it?

[rossi46]

I'd buy wireless network software for classic Amiga platforms

[murple]

skurk wrote:
I've written several programs for *nix (GPL), and I'd never even dream of charging money for it.

It benefits the community and gives you Good Karma™.

Completely agree. I've been using Linux so long now, the idea of selling a program I write seems completely horrible and wrong to me haha. I will buy Commodore 64 or Amiga programs since they (more or less) pre-date the open source movement, but I would never sell a progam I wrote.

[sdyates]

There are lots of sad things. The one thing that is not sad is the large following the system still has all these years afterwards. I think only the Commodore 64 has a larger following.

I think minimig will help a lot. It may be some sort of clone, but it is the closest we have to new hardware and functions a lot like it.

We also have Clone-A underway. I have a lot of faith here - Jens has done a lot of good work in the past!

[Piru]

@rossi46

I'd buy wireless network software for classic Amiga platforms

http://aminet.net/package/driver/net/prism2

[RWO]

@amigadave

Not a huge market, but if someone were to code a good program that 90% of the remaining Amiga users would be willing to purchase, the programmer(s) could probably make between $20,000 to $60,000 for their trouble.

Wow you must be mad.. 90%.. what every program did you imagine that you come close to 90%?

The only thing I can think of that comes the closest and that whould be a Full OS upgrade, and this a little to much for a bedroom coder IMO.

Well if I should sugest a project that might make some money, then it whould be Drivers as many as possible.

RWO

[Belial6]

You want to make a buck writing software for the Amiga?  Here is where you can make a thousand bucks writing software for the Amiga.  And as I understand it, the money has already been collected.  It's just waiting for someone to write the code and collect it.

http://thenostromo.com/teamaros2/index.php?number=23