Right. Have you traveled much?
That is part of my job, Kolla.
I have spent quite some time in Russia, Ukraine, all over eastern Europe, Turkey, and lately Latin America. If there is one thing that is to be said about copyrights in these vast areas of the world, it must be that they are not at all respected. Not by people in general, and certainly not by governments. So how illegal is it then.
Still illegal. That doesn't make any difference. Why should it?
Yeah, pretty lame wasting all that money on lawyers and dragging this nonsense through the courts, which are pretty much paid for by tax money, huh. One would think all that money could have been spent better elsewhere.
Tax money? Oh come on.
You are really stuck on this "for free" thing. Just because something is open source does not mean it comes for free.
To make money with open source, you need to be able to offer some service around your product. Now what would this service possibly be, and would you pay for it? I give you a hint: Open source service contracts are made between industrial parties that use open source software in large scale, and for whom it pays to offload the work to somebody else. Our computing center runs its servers on Linux, and we pay money for that. The private user does not.
Now, where exactly is the market for an OpenSource AmigaOs? And who would pay for it? Come on, be a little creative!
Over the years I have invested a lot of money in open source projects, to help pay for infrastructure, server space, storage and yes - man power.
No, not *YOU* Kolla. Your university. That's a difference. How much have *you* *personally* paid from *your* *private* pocket? I personally paid for Crossover Office because I need it for my work, but except that, the linux distributions I use come for free and offer what I need. If I paid, I paid by contributing to Linux.
I would be happy pay a subscription for AmigaOS if it meant the sources were around for anyone to contribute, and with a handfull of skillful people like yourself to do code review. I am not at all willing to waste more money on the "status quo" of things in Amiga land.
Ok, can we setup a poll here in this forum how much people would realistically pay for it? In the end, it is not me who has to be convinced. I personally do not care about open or closed source. I care about "it works or it does not". Given the current development, and all the theft of software, I have clear doubts of this would work in any way. It would end up in a mess...
The problem is that I have my doubts in the amount of people that would pay, and in the discipline users would show in supporting such a project. Threads like this show exactly that.
There already are new so called official kickstarts for the Amiga, Cloanto have released quite a few already. Doesn't help much if they don't work with your hardware though.
Lack of testing, lack of code review, lack of professionalism, probably due to lack of resources.
Given the available amount of development power, the consequence should be not to release kickstarts as hardware anyhow, but I'm saying this for years. A ROM needs to be a very stable, robust, well-reviewed and well-tested software. You do not get this with the couple of folks left.
As for whether it is "just ok" or not that the sources are out there, is really irrelevant - the point is that the sources _are_ out there, and there is nothing you, Hyperion or Cloanto can do that will ever change that. So instead of behaving like Lemmings about to blow up, how about changing strategies and attitudes, and make the best out of the situation.
The situation is that some money needs to be invested to make this happen, and it does not exactly rain from the sky. I have my doubts that OpenSource works as a pay-able product for a user community that consist exclusively of private users. It does work if you have industrial or large scale applications where service contracts are needed. The business case is quite a different one. You cannot just compare Linux and AmigaOs.
Only thing killed here is your visions and ideas about what could have been. Well, boohoo, maybe time to make small adjustments to your visions and ideas, and imagine what can be done to make the situation less hostile for everybody.
The situation is that there is some need for investment, and this investment needs to come from somewhere. Visions? Do I have one? "If you have a vision, see a doctor". I can only tell you that this project needs honest users (which is not exactly given) that are willing to pay (which I have my doubts on).
And once again, I'm probably stupid enough not to ask for money for it. But it still requires some money to organize the whole show and keep things together, to compile distributions and so on.
Open source just means exactly that - that the sources are out in the open, how they got there is not really relevant as such, hence my use of "de facto open source". And yes, open source software can also be so called pirated software, does not mean it is less open source.
No, kolla. Sorry. This is outright nonsense. Open source software means that it is released and licensed under some kind of open source software to the user. Depending on your flavour of free, FREE, Phre, Frei,or whatever license you pick or which freedom you prefer. Pirated software is exactly not licensed to the user, and you cannot obtain ownership on a stolen thing.
