Relaunch of the OpenAladdin4d campaign

[System]

 The Open Aladdin4D site has been quiet for a good while due to several things. Initially we ran into a minor glitch with our donation system, which was easily fixed, then...

Katrina hit. We really stopped thinking about Aladdin 4D and we worried about all those people and participated in giving what we could to the people there and the groups that were helping them. Then more storms hit. When we finally did think of Aladdin 4D again, we realized it wasn't a good time to ask for donations on an Open Source project.

Time has passed, we've all done our parts for our fellow people, but now it's time to relaunch.

Even better - we've got news!

First off, Nova Design has stated that Amiga users will now get an early bonus. When we hit the 10% mark on donations ($3757.00 USD) Nova will release the Amiga binaries of Aladdin 4D free to everyone! This will include the entire contents of the Aladdin 4D retail CD.

Nova has also stated that all electronic formats of the manual/documentation, tutorials, projects and more will be released at the 50% mark!

This is a very generous offer by Nova Design. Thanks guys!

We've also gotten a few questions, so here's where we provide some answers:

Q: Will you refund donations if there isn't enough money raised to buy Aladdin 4D from Nova Design?
A: Absolutely. If we can't buy Aladdin 4D to release into Open Source, all monies will be returned.

Q: What will you do if you raise more money than is needed?
A: We intend to start bounty programs then to offer reward money to programmers who create needed modules/updates to Aladdin 4D. Some money will be used to maintain the site and pay for bandwidth, but everything else will be used to promote the development of Aladdin 4D

Q: What if the donations fall a little short of the goal?
A: Nova Design has stated they're a little flexible. They WANT Aladdin 4D to be released into Open Source so Aladdin 4D doesn't die or become Abandonware.

Q: What license will Open Aladdin 4D be under?
A: LGPL is the plan, but we're open to other suggestions right now.

We hope this answers all the big questions and that everyone will visit the site at www.openaladdin4d.com and make a donation right away!

Free Aladdin 4D!

Nate Downes
Dave Crawford
Kermit Woodall

Source : OpenAladdin4d site

[Minuous]

I don't see the connection between a cyclone and the Amiga. Such events occur frequently. This seems to suggest that the Amiga is unimportant. Supporting the Amiga, which is in dire straits, is just as important, if not more so, than sending money to the wealthiest nation on earth, and will in time have greater benefit for mankind. The sooner the Wintel monopoly is shattered the sooner technology can progress. If donations are stopped every time there is some kind of meterological phenomenon then it will be years if not decades before the goals are reached.

[dammy]

Americans are a very generous people who will donate alot of spare cash to help out people who are in need.  Last years, sales were not bad at BTTC, until the Titalwave hit and sales all over the Intenet dried up as people poured cash into relief operations.  Same thing happened in the US with Katrina and Rita.  I lost significant amount of money after two hurricanes made my area ground zero last year and I still donated to the Katrina/Rita relief.  

Now the big question when this OpenAladdin first started, does the Amiga community really care to fork over that much for it?  I really can't see it doing so for $40K.  IMHO.

Dammy

[Jethro_Tull]

If the makers of Aladdin have lost interest in their product and/or think that it is no longer viable to sell and support it, why didn't they already release the sources to the public?  

Asking for a huge lump of money for the source code of an end-of-line old program is plainly ridiculous! More so when the product has been on sale for years and years, surely already earning it's owners a quite a few bucks. This is simply pure, unashamed greed!

Besides, from a technical point of view, why waste so much money for the source code without knowing what you're paying for?  Maybe the sources are an utter mess, and a complete re-write is the only way forward, as was the case with the Netscape browser.

To me this effort to buy out Aladdin sounds naive and I wouldn't waste my hard earned bucks to line the pockets of this greedy software house. After all, why should we, Amiga owners, reward a company for abandoning the Amiga market?

I'm sure the highly talented Amiga developers will port newer, and better Open Source 3D programs to our beloved platfrom as soon as OS4 is released.