Roadshow for 68K -Needs your support!

[olsen]

@olsen
The "amigazation" and access to inner workings of packets and connections is very nice.

It's better than learning how to wrestle with the Unix APIs. The Unix APIs are still there if they are needed, but if you want to do interesting things, easier access to the power of the TCP/IP stack will get you there faster. I always believed in putting a match and a stick of dynamite into the hands of the developer, and leave him to figure out what to do with those two.

I have never had need for PPPoE, but PPP I use quite a bit, "tethering" (?), or lately on MiniMig using nullmodem or bluetooth link, and my experience is that stability is a heck lot more important than speed.

Stability can be a difficult thing with PPP. The problem with PPP was that quite a number of implementations were deployed while the specs were still under development. There's a nice book documenting PPP which came out of Sun, Inc. that details the gory bits, what works, what doesn't always work, and where the dragons are.

If you write your PPP driver from the specs chances are that there will be interoperability issues. If you port the Unix/BSD/Solaris PPP code you may end up having to jump through a number of hoops if your system's target architecture does not match the one the PPP code was written for. This happened, for example, with the Linux PPPoE daemon: it actually converts PPP packets intended for serial communications into PPPoE frames, and the other way round.

The code I came up should work reasonably well. It did outperform Holger Kruse's own ppp.device, and the PPPoE support provided by the special ppp-ethernet.device has extremely low overhead.

Zeroconf is nice (never needed it), but what I miss is media players capable of playing content streamed over multicast, which means support for PIM-SM, SDM, SSM...

Only one way to find out if it works.

Mind you, not all SANA-II Ethernet drivers support multicast operations robustly.

As for IPv6, I think it's probably best to use KAME, since that is what "all the others" in the BSD camp are using already.

NetBSD took its sweet time integrating KAME into the mainline code, from where it spread to the other members of the family. I think this is the smart way to approach it: use the integrated code and try to not repeat the process yourself. By now the BSD line of TCP/IP stack code should be so well-groomed that it would be a bad idea not to adapt it, wholesale, for the Amiga. I only got started with 4.4BSDLite-2 in Roadshow because the documentation was so good. If I were to do this again, I'd use a more recent TCP/IP stack implementation.

And as you probably know, it's not just a matter of "switching to IPv6", there's also the issue of running dual stack and deal with various transition technologies.

Like I wrote, were are probably not going to see much of a demand on the consumer's side for IPv6 unless you don't have an ISP which does all the heavy lifting and protocol conversion for you. Given how long a rollout of proper broadband connectivity has taken in Europe already, I wouldn't want to bet on when exactly a move to IPv6 were to happen. Of cause, this IPv4 to IPv6 protocol conversion business stinks, since it defeats the very idea and purpose behind IPv6. But it wouldn't be the first time that business decisions being made keep overriding engineering decisions. ISO networking and protocols died a quiet death while IP was trampling all over it, in spite of the fact that the ISO ideas more often than not were better than what the designers of IP and TCP had come up with in the 1970'ies.

Current estimate for IPv4 exhaustion is summer next year, we ("amiga land") are already a decade late in terms of what should have been done, and at least half a decade behind just about any other platform.

All our APIs are IPv4 only. All our software is IPv4 only. Unless you can get every bit of software rewritten that's already out there, you won't see IPv6 adoption, at least in consumer/user land.

So, please, the priorities are somewhat skewed with Amiga TCP/IP stack software.

And what guarantees are there that you wont do the same when selling it? I mean, seriously, it's not like it would be the first time in history of Amiga that this happens. I'll admit that your promises count alot more than most others, though.

One thing I learned is that promises in the Amiga business tend to last as long as butterfly kisses. Sure, they can be nice, but they are more something of the moment than something that will last and keep you feeling warm and fuzzy all over.

I am not promising anything but that I'll try in my little way to hold up what I believe in.

That's totally beside the point, what is the point is that whoever willing then have a much better chance to fix whatever is bugging him/her without needing to contact some author who's no longer around, doesn't care anymore, no longer has the sources, has changed email address etc.

Sounds like you got burned like the rest of us, huh? This Amiga situation has never been pretty. I still recall how Commodore did business back in the 1990'ies, and that wasn't pretty either. When the company went bust the market turned. Some people got out of it altogether, some people flourished while the going was good, and they all were pretty much overshadowed by the con men, the hucksters and the scum that preys on other people's misery. And the really bad thing was that sometimes couldn't really tell which group the guy you were dealing with belonged to.

So, I can see where you're coming from. Seeing the train rumbling along, with no way to stop it, get it back on the tracks, can be a bitch. I've been on that train myself and found that it took me to strange places. But you don't have to stay where it takes you, and you don't have to like it. Either you get bitter about it, or you try to make that strange place you came to a better place.

I'd rather hang on to the stuff I built and try to make it better. There's a limit to how far this can be done. You can burn out (like I did) along the way, and you can find that your own standards are so hard to attain that you lose a lot of steam.

So there's always a chance that you'll let yourself and everybody else down. I'm not excluding myself from that group. It happened, will happen again. I just hope I'll pick myself up, dust myself off and try again.

I fix things in open source software all the time, but only rarely bother to contribute these fixes back upstream, as they're more quick work-arounds for my particual situations than anything else - I'm after all not a programmer.

Everything good and perfectly alright about it. Hey, I could use a hand maintaining my old code, too. It's just that I'm so old-fashioned that I try to dig myself out of my own mess first before I go about shouting for help. I'm just like that. Why make somebody else's life harder? It's bad enough that I made my own life harder.

Sure, but this is not something "most users" bother with.


Uhm, I dont get this part. The reason to stay AmiTCP V3 compatible is that this is what all software today use. Create an IPv6 stack tomorrow, it will still be the case. Nothing prevents an IPv6 capable bsdsocket.device in UAE.

Perfectly understandable. But without anybody using these toys, how will you build the knowledge of how to use and maintain such software? It's not just about getting the bugs out.

Anyways, WinUAE recently got A2065 emulation (iirc) - so anyone who want to play around with that can do so, but i really don't think there are many.

Well, the a2065.device driver is in really poor condition. The uaenet.device does work better. I suppose the A2065 hardware support came about so that you could use software deployed using the A225 kit. There is not a lot of it about, though. I only recall Maxis' "Robosport" title which supported multiplayer gaming over Ethernet through A225.

OK, I'm almost tempted to register in order to give you hell, then :laughing:

That's the spirit...

Btw - on a related note, people have been moaning about wireless stack for about half a decade as well now, feel free to port wpa_supplicant, opensea, open1x or make your own ... hohum... AirShow too. I can keep you busy there with testing and bug reports for years, really. And funny things are often needed to be changed in the IP stack as well when you start playing with wireless, the OSI model is after all just that - a model, in real life the layers typically become much more entangled

Well, I tend to try and make stuff I'd be likely to use myself. Of all the wireless gadgets I have at home, none I would like to use with an Amiga. Do I have to cook up my own crypto code for that, too? I'd rather not to. This sort of thing always ends in tears, if not worse. So there's probably not going to be any sort of WPA or VPN solution from my side for a while.

PS: Thanks for Term, although I admit I most often end up using VLTjr that doesn't suck up all that much RAM. I once started looking at how to strip off all the unneeded fluff in Term, but like so much I start doing on amiga, it never got far.

Gee, somebody's still looking at 'term'. I'm amazed, puzzled and a bit scared to read about it.

[ExiE_]

I dont get it, why so many people think open sourcing will save the world. It works well on platforms with large communities of developers and users but its not our current situation. Olaf is around for ages, take care, Raidshow works great as part of OS4, will work great as 68k tcp/ip stack, there are people who would like to purchase it.

So whats kolla's (and few others) problem?

[warpdesign]

Cooperation only exists if there is a common ground. If the work being done leads to commercial work, you absolutely have to have competition. OK, it's one thing to be competetive and another thing to be snide and aggressive about it.

Indeed. And don't you think AROS, MorphOS and OS4 all have a common ground (that is OS 3.x compatibility plus PowerPC/x86 native as a base) ?
Now I think you have to be competitive before even thinking about having competition... I don't think the current (and past decade) "competition" gave any positive results. Current competition and closed source only made AROS take more time to get where it is. It also means OS4 still doesn't have an USB stack to the level of the "competition"'s one (AROS/MorphOS Poseidon). And so on... Just because they had to keep reinventing the wheel. Reinventing the wheel is useful if your wheel is better, or has a different goal. And I don't think (just an example) rewriting the same PowerPC Radeon drivers (MorphOS/CGX and OS4/P96) has any use but wasting time and resources.
I only see waste of time and resource as a consequence of this competition: I don't see anything positive coming from here... Look: you're not even free to do what you want with the stack *you* wrote. And for what ? Now that MorphOS has its own native stack, what's the point ?
Seems like people are behaving like the big Apple: protecting their stuff,... like if there was a market and millions of people buying their stuff... problem is there are only hundreds (at most) people here. The real target is elsewhere... and surely doesn't care if their CPU is x86 or PowerPC...

[olsen]

I dont get it, why so many people think open sourcing will save the world. It works well on platforms with large communities of developers and users but its not our current situation. Olaf is around for ages, take care, Raidshow works great as part of OS4, will work great as 68k tcp/ip stack, there are people who would like to purchase it.

So whats kolla's (and few others) problem?

I suspect that this is just the tone of the community these days. Talk, talk, talk rather than do, do, do. It's so much easier to spin stories, to vent frustration in writing than to get out of the car, kick the tires, bend down into the mud and change the flat. You'll get dirty either way, but only one way will get the car moving again.

My little theory is that the Amiga community has learned to become helpless. Which is no surprise given how it has been treated by the people who were supposed to be in control of the platform and the situation. It's really bad if you are first considered an asset and then treated like a bunch of particularly idiotic idiots. Are we such easy marks?

I've always thought of myself as a realist with a nasty pessimistic streak bumping into the realism when I wasn't paying attention. It's so easy to lose heart and become bitter. But if I can drag myself out of the slump, anybody else can do it.

It might help to stow the bitterness, the snappy repartee and the needling. As I wrote, you don't have to play this game, and you don't have to like it. If the doers are constantly getting sniped at by the talkers, how is anybody else supposed to get anything done for the Amiga? If you want to make other people you don't even know miserable, you don't have to do it on an Amiga forum.

Just saying...

[biggun]

Closed source apps meant competition and a market, as long as the market existed. I'm not sure we have had one in the last 15 years.

Whoever wants to build and maintain an operating system probably isn't exactly in the same camp as an application software developer.

Cooperation only exists if there is a common ground. If the work being done leads to commercial work, you absolutely have to have competition. OK, it's one thing to be competetive and another thing to be snide and aggressive about it. We certainly had our share of drama queens and fanboys in this field, and this isn't going to change. If you cared about the Amiga you were probably really passionate about it, too. It's natural that the end result can involve the bile and the trolling we all came to expect.

Well, you don't have to like it, and you don't have to play that game.

Given how software developers tend to be, often socially somewhat inept, it's kinda inevitable that sparks will fly because of a failure to communicate what's being done, and why. Amiga software developers can play nice, they just didn't always do. Given that Commodore was always such an inept and weak force in the Amiga business, the 3rd party developers came to dominate the business. And this culture has persisted, with the nasty side-effects of the bullying and the name-calling.

If you ask for cooperation you ask for some degree of level-headedness and maturity. Funny thing: whenever somebody asks for exactly these two to be applied he's almost certainly not going to get them.

I have to say Olsen is making all very good points!


I fully agree with you that doing commercial closed source software is not wrong.

And open source software does not at all lead to better products.


But I can see two advantages of open source.

A) Especially for documented and not to big projects - open sourcing them allows more people to learn from it. This is nice.

B) Open sourcing "abandoned" projects is also a nice behaviour.
That AWEB sources where open sourced when the author decided to stop developing them was a good deed. While AWEB did not became a Firefoy killer the open source team working on AWEB did a huge number of bug fixes on AWEB since then.
Quake is another good example. After makind their revenue with the game the sources were released and people could learn from it or port it to other niche platforms as the AMIGA.



I think what a real problem with software is that you can no guarantees.
Someone can buy a piece of software as your "Roadshow"-stack today - and tomorrow the author can decide not to support it anymore. This situation kind of sucks.

I think its right to pay a price for a good price of software.
But I think its bad to have no guarentee of support and if the company or developer decides go not support it anymore - not being able to get even the smallest bugfixe or minor enhancements anymore.


I think a good solution would be some sort of "community" contract.
That before a project becomes abandoned the programmer will release the sources like is was done was AWEB.

This is at least my opinion. What do you think?

[olsen]

Indeed. And don't you think AROS, MorphOS and OS4 all have a common ground (that is OS 3.x compatibility plus PowerPC/x86 native as a base) ?

There's enough common ground for sure, but just as much need to be different and in control of doing what you are doing. The latter can work out to become friendly competition, or it can turn the other way. And it's always so much easier to turn that other way, isn't it?

Now I think you have to be competitive before even thinking about having competition... I don't think the current (and past decade) "competition" gave any positive results. Current competition and closed source only made AROS take more time to get where it is. It also means OS4 still doesn't have an USB stack to the level of the "competition"'s one (AROS/MorphOS Poseidon). And so on... Just because they had to keep reinventing the wheel. Reinventing the wheel is useful if your wheel is better, or has a different goal. And I don't think (just an example) rewriting the same PowerPC Radeon drivers (MorphOS/CGX and OS4/P96) has any use but wasting time and resources.

But I don't see this working out. There is not enough common ground to make shared development possible. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I see this more as a control issue. As long as you can hang onto the stuff you are making, you can be sure that nobody will mess it up but yourself. Since the development "teams" are so small, it's also so much easier to do this stuff all on your own than to make an effort to coordinate with others. Chances are that if you are doing Amiga development work, you never worked in a software development team either. You could learn to do that, and you are bound to make mistakes doing so. Given the Amiga community's capacity for taking offense, this will discourage cooperation even further.

You see where this is leading. This community needs to have its head examined, collectively.

I only see waste of time and resource as a consequence of this competition: I don't see anything positive coming from here... Look: you're not even free to do what you want with the stack *you* wrote. And for what ? Now that MorphOS has its own native stack, what's the point ?

The point is that they are all as much in control of their own destiny as possible, without having to deal with the extra double helping of frustration that comes with coordinating their work with other people. Now if the pressure was sufficiently high, you'd get cooperation out of a situation like this. But in this community I suspect the pressure never was that high, and if it was, the people just threw in the towel, walked away, sometimes into these popular forums where, if anything, you can take out your frustration on other people. Who then, in turn, have some frustration to take out on other people again. It's a suffer-suffer solution. You don't have to be a Buddhist to notice that this isn't how it is supposed to be done, if you know what's good for you.

And, for the record, I had to mull it over what MorphOS would do with its TCP/IP stack before I signed my contract. At the time MorphOS already had a TCP/IP stack up and running. OS4 had none. The decision I made at that point I hoped at least would have some good coming out of it, considering how I boxed myself in.

[olsen]

I have to say Olsen is making all very good points!

Yes, but I'm all talk here, myself. Unless that motivates anybody to examine his motives and become a doer, it's just words on the screen.

I fully agree with you that doing commercial closed source software is not wrong.

And open source software does not at all lead to better products.


But I can see two advantages of open source.

A) Especially for documented and not to big projects - open sourcing them allows more people to learn from it. This is nice.

B) Open sourcing "abandoned" projects is also a nice behaviour.
That AWEB sources where open sourced when the author decided to stop developing them was a good deed. While AWEB did not became a Firefoy killer the open source team working on AWEB did a huge number of bug fixes on AWEB since then.
Quake is another good example. After makind their revenue with the game the sources were released and people could learn from it or port it to other niche platforms as the AMIGA.

I can agree to that.

My point of view, however, is and was that what matters is that somebody has to care about the software first and foremost. If there is nobody who cares enough, then you don't have a product, even if it has been open sourced.

Back in 1999, when the Amiga was on the skids again, I voiced my opinion that it would not be helpful to open source the operating system just now, as had been suggested repeatedly and very strongly at the time. My feeling was that it would stand a better chance if somebody would really want to care for it in the first place, rather than assume that this new process of "open source" would certainly take care of everything, no questions asked.

I never got so much bitter e-mail in response to this my deluded opinion. Even Eric S. Raymond, the man himself, deigned to inform me via e-mail of the error of my ways.

Yes, the process that made the Bazaar can be more productive than the one that made the Cathedral. But in the decade since this idea was brought to the fore it has been thoroughly tested and looked into, and it turned out not to be a silver bullet either. It isn't just the process that matters, it's the people who use it, and the number of people who use it.

Given our shallow puddle of Amiga developer talent, open sourcing a project is not the most effective way to proceed. Put another way, a single lemonade stand is not a Bazaar, and it's certainly not a catheral either.

I think what a real problem with software is that you can no guarantees.
Someone can buy a piece of software as your "Roadshow"-stack today - and tomorrow the author can decide not to support it anymore. This situation kind of sucks.

I think its right to pay a price for a good price of software.
But I think its bad to have no guarentee of support and if the company or developer decides go not support it anymore - not being able to get even the smallest bugfixe or minor enhancements anymore.


I think a good solution would be some sort of "community" contract.
That before a project becomes abandoned the programmer will release the sources like is was done was AWEB.

This is at least my opinion. What do you think?

You sound very positive. Which is a good thing in this Amiga situation, in which people seem to have gotten used to the fact that they will face misery more often than the more desirable alternative.

A community contract I'm not so sure of. We have had organized goodwill operations in the Amiga community by the dozen, and where are we now?

Personally, I'd not start with something that lends itself to shaping into an organization that produces yet more words on the screen. It would help to know what the Amiga community would find helpful, if it were to materialize through the hard work of developers.

If you don't know where to steer this ship, you'll just follow the current, and that current leads to just more bitterness for the Amiga community.

[Joloo]

I really don't get it...

Is it already really too much from Olaf to ask for a little donation for the time he spent implementing an TCP/IP stack?

At present, Amiga only serves IMHO as a pseudonym for a hobby like others - and many contributions in this forum speak about a maximum amount between 10 and 15 EUR.

The relations seem to be very shifted nowadays!

Just two days ago I paid 39 EUR for a CD-ROM, provided by a professional photographer, who photographed me and my machine on the racetrack. Whereupon are just about 37 photos. These 37 photos were made within 2 days and serve me only as memory to a beautiful time. Where does the relationship to a programme remain, which devoured a multiple with its production at time, compared to a one-shot event like this? IMHO, 10 to 15 EUR are just inacceptable for a product that is in daily use. At least, if I were in Olaf's shoes, I wouldn't accept this.

Next, if you are a smoker, how many EURs do you blow in the blue per day?
Or, if you visit a pub at the weekend, how much do you pay for the guinness you drink?

Don't get me wrong. I know that a lot of people cannot afford more than 10 to 15 EUR because they simply don't have more money to spend for one of their hobbies. But others like me can comfortably leave out other things in order to support Olaf. It's just a matter of will.
Because Olaf's isn't dead keen on money, he perhaps can make a special offer to those who really cannot afford the full price. But that's another story and a bit tricky because a lot of people aren't honest.

But what really strikes me badly on the belly is that some are crying to make Roadshow open source.
Who of you has got the knowledge that Olaf has in order to improve or apply bug-fixes to Roadshow?
If it goes open source I would speculate that it sooner than later has got so many bugs that it is not useable anymore!
If writing a TCP/IP stack is really that easy, why do you care about Roadshow at all? Write your own!
I admit that I don't have Olaf's know-how (for me it seems as if he is coming from an other star) and because of this I cannot write my own TCP/IP stack nor would I find the time to read about the essentials in first place.

To find an end, I would happily pay for Roadshow in case I can use an other payment as PayPal, because I don't have a PayPal account at all. Should be no problem at all because I can personally contact Olaf by email (which hasn't changed since years) and fulfill it via direct debit.

biggun

I think a good solution would be some sort of "community" contract.
That before a project becomes abandoned the programmer will release the sources like is was done was AWEB.

I would sign this with other programmers but not with Olaf. He is holding the fort when all others have already deserted.
He has an exceptionally high sense of responsibility regarding his programmes.

[buzz]

Saying that it's a shame to reinvent the wheel when the last guy who made a wheel isn't going to make any more wheels inevitably leads to the cart breaking down. It may be possible to borrow or steal another wheel, but this will only get you so far. At some point somebody will have to make more wheels. And the best reason for reinventing the wheel has always been: to make more wheels.

Not sure this analogy works for me, but I think the point is there may well be people who would contribute to an existing piece of software, who wouldn't have the time to make something from scratch anyway. That's at least how I see it.

[buzz]

I dont get it, why so many people think open sourcing will save the world. It works well on platforms with large communities of developers and users but its not our current situation. Olaf is around for ages, take care, Raidshow works great as part of OS4, will work great as 68k tcp/ip stack, there are people who would like to purchase it.

So whats kolla's (and few others) problem?

Scuse anyone else for sharing opinions then on a "forum". I don't see how discussing the open source stuff affects you really. Even if it went that way you would get your roadshow.

I'm currently working on a large project with only 2 main developers. sure we could do with more, but we manage. the code has been written over the last 8 years by many more people, so these days we are looking after it mostly, and working on improvements for a next point release. other people chip in with documentation, skins, and other things. This can and does work - especially with software like this that people still want to use.

[buzz]

I suspect that this is just the tone of the community these days. Talk, talk, talk rather than do, do, do. It's so much easier to spin stories, to vent frustration in writing than to get out of the car, kick the tires, bend down into the mud and change the flat. You'll get dirty either way, but only one way will get the car moving again.

Maybe I've read this differently, but I've not seen the discussion as any bitterness. Plenty of devs have left the Amiga of course, but there are some left. As a hobby machine, with people with jobs and families, I guess you can't expect people to be hacking away in their bedrooms for endless hours on the next amiga release that a handful of people will run. It still happens but in smaller numbers.

I'm pretty sure myself and others in the discussion as well as talking, have also done plenty.

[olsen]

Not sure this analogy works for me, but I think the point is there may well be people who would contribute to an existing piece of software, who wouldn't have the time to make something from scratch anyway. That's at least how I see it.

It definitely is easier to modify something that already exists than to start from scratch. Not all development work has to begin with ideas and no code written to play with.

My belief is that you can learn a lot by starting from scratch in a field which piques your curiousity and in which you had, so far, little experience. It helps you grow as a developer to carry everything in your head that makes up the project you started. To a lesser degree, carrying only part of such a project in your head can be a very rewarding learning experience, too.

It's just that if you can become a master of a field, no matter how small, it will be immensely satisfying and keep driving you to expand your horizon. Given how few Amiga developers are left who even dare to scratch the complex stuff, we need more people willing to master the field, or are at least willing to give it a shot.

A TCP/IP stack is a complex beast, but there are enough breadcrumbs to lead you to building one and learn a lot on the way. This is the kind of project your friendly professor hands you as a thesis project, as it happened for AmiTCP.

[buzz]

But what really strikes me badly on the belly is that some are crying to make Roadshow open source.
Who of you has got the knowledge that Olaf has in order to improve or apply bug-fixes to Roadshow?
If it goes open source I would speculate that it sooner than later has got so many bugs that it is not useable anymore!
If writing a TCP/IP stack is really that easy, why do you care about Roadshow at all? Write your own!
I admit that I don't have Olaf's know-how (for me it seems as if he is coming from an other star) and because of this I cannot write my own TCP/IP stack nor would I find the time to read about the essentials in first place.

It has been suggested as a possible model, no-one is crying I assure you. Due to the software license this doesn't seem possible anyway, but I don't see a problem in discussing various options.

 Your speculation doesn't make sense to me. You can still fix up code without understanding every single aspect about it (and learn as you go). No-one but olaf has suggested writing a tcp/ip stack is easy ;-) I wouldn't put it on my easy list.

[kolla]

I dont get it, why so many people think open sourcing will save the world. It works well on platforms with large communities of developers and users but its not our current situation. Olaf is around for ages, take care, Raidshow works great as part of OS4, will work great as 68k tcp/ip stack, there are people who would like to purchase it.

So whats kolla's (and few others) problem?

I dont care for whether open sourcing saves the world or not, I only care for the bit where it makes my life easier. To use the size of the community as some sort of argument for why open source is not the way to go is just blatantly silly, a lot of devlopers have left Amiga exactly because one cannot do jack with amiga software without stepping on people's toes.

Look at who's fixing updates and patches for AmigaOS 3.x today - every single one of them have stated that they want OS3.x to be open sourced, to simplify their work, distribution and all.

[kolla]

I suspect that this is just the tone of the community these days. Talk, talk, talk rather than do, do, do.

I understand that what you're saying is that Amiga as a platform is only meant for developers, an not users. People who for various reasons do not write software themselves should have no saying around here, right?

It's quite like how I see the MorphOS situation; MorphOS is mostly about some developers doing an OS and software for themselves, and the rest of us are just a bunch of annoying whiners who at least should pay to compensate for all the unneeded noise we make.

[olsen]

I understand that what you're saying is that Amiga as a platform is only meant for developers, an not users.

I would not presume to be so pessimistic. My personal impression is that the number of people who make stuff in this community has dwindled so far that that the relation to the number of people who use the stuff has become unsound.

I'm a developer first and user second, so that may cloud my judgment in this matter, though.

People who for various reasons do not write software themselves should have no saying around here, right?

Now that sounds very pessimistic. Without the user, there is no real place for the developer either.

For one thing, a developer can't create magic in his backroom just for his own enjoyment forever. It has to get into the hands of people who put it to use. More importantly, without the user the developer is in a certain danger to produce something that isn't particularly useful or good.

It's quite like how I see the MorphOS situation; MorphOS is mostly about some developers doing an OS and software for themselves, and the rest of us are just a bunch of annoying whiners who at least should pay to compensate for all the unneeded noise we make.

Developers and users are by nature groups with little overlap. How each group member deals with the other group's members is something that comes down to social aptitude, or the lack of such graces. From my experience, the developer is more likely to offend the user than the other way round.

Who believes he does the dirty work of shaping the software? The developer thinks so, and may even suspect that the user isn't capable of it. Finding and fixing bugs certainly puts a lot of stress on the developer. But it's just as much the user who shapes the software by how he uses it, or fails to be able to use it properly, due to limitations of the design.

It's probably silly to say so, but developer and user are in complementary positions. It's poisonously easy to mislead oneself about this relationship.