No. I called the policy stupid, not the people. I know English is not your native language, but you should really make the effort.
Ok, so that makes us people with only an inflated ego with stupid ideas, right? Sounds a bit like splitting hairs.
That's a personal opinion, I admit, but yes, I do think most of the personalities involved have inflated egos.
Personal or not, it doesn't mean it is any less offensive. My personal opinion may be that person X is a blatant idiot (note: MAY BE. I didn't call anyone anything), but uttering it would make it offensive nontheless. So stating that you don't want to offend someone and calling him stupid (ok, stating that he makes something stupid, which is good enough) or inflated ego is distrubing to say the least.
Why don't you address the issues instead of snipping them out?
What issues? All I saw from you was a hypocritical post stating you don't want to offend someone and do it anyway?
Why should customers pay a licensing premium so that the hardware manufacturer or the system vendor becomes their first line of software support?
I don't understand where you get the idea that a customer needs to pay a licence fee. The board manufacturer does, and yes, it makes the board more expensive by a few euros, but you are getting something back for it. If it where sold by us directly, it would probably be more expensive.
I would uderstand it if the hardware manufacturer paid the licence fee so that YOU, the software developer takes on the software support responsibilities of supporting their hardware, but not just for the priviledge of increasing your sales while relieving you of the burden of support as well.
I know English is not my native language (as you correctly pointed out yourself), but where did I say that it frees us from the burden of support? It just distributes the support issues. If someone has a problem with Eyetech hardware, he contacts Eyetech first, which I think is quite natural. If things turn out not to be an Eyetech issue, the AmigaOS 4 team takes over. Where does that free us from any support issue? In the end, if it isn't a hardware issue, it *will* end up on my plate. Where is the problem?
It's not like AmigaOS4 is a world famous killer application anyone would die for, is it?
That remark is completely uncalled for. The reasoning for this thread *was* that someone specifically *wanted* to run OS 4 on the Pegasos. I wasn't suggesting anywhere that everyone must have OS 4. As you said yourself, if you don't want it, you don't need to buy it, no one is forcing you.
However, the whole point is that *IF* you want it to run on your hardware, you *must* get a licence for it. The same applies to every software product that you buy - even GPL'ed programs come with a licence that you need to comply with. If you don't like the license, you are entitled to reject it and not use the program in question. Where is the difference? Are you complaining that the GPL forces you to open-source all modifications and derivative work? I don't think so.
In essense, all I saw from you was an offensive post that got a hypocritical twist by stating that you didn't want to offend someone. It's like saying "You are an idiot, but I mean that in a friendly way".