This is probably a naive suggestion but I'll make it anyway.

Would Amiga owners donate to a sinking fund to support development or porting of critical software needed to make the Amiga more attractive to a wider audience?

There are some funds already in place, (e.g. the reward for the first person/group to port Mozillia to the general Amiga platform) but I wonder if a more focussed effort to raise much need money would be more benficial and bring faster results?

I have donated small amounts to several Amiga specific website & projects in the past but I pesonally would support a more coordinated approach to bring quality applications to our beloved Amiga. I could imagine such a fund being held (in trust?) by a forum such as ours. There would be many difficulties in administrating such a fund but is the whole idea 'food for thought' or just 'pie in the sky'?

Apologies if this topic has been raised before. (I did a very quicf forum search before posting).

_________________
No, I don't need no reason, I'm just breezin'

@TrevorDick

Yes I agree that some sort of fund would be a good idea. I think the best approach would be to raise money to donate AmigaOne systems or board to developer of existing Amiga application that have expressed an interest in releasing their software for OS4 but cant afford or cant justify spending the money at this time.

_________________
Sam440ep 667mhz, 512MB, 120GB 2.5" HD, OS4.1FE
WinUae 3.0.0, OS 3.9, BB3, Catweasel MkIV
Amiga 1200, Blizzard 040/40 (BlizzardPPC 060/200 with SCSI removed at present), mediatorSX pci, Voodoo3, PCI network card os 3.9BB2
4MB Minimig with ARM addon boar

@TrevorDick

Sounds like a good idea.

@all

If/when a sollution is in place, we have to choose a developer to first recieve a board or money. I suggest a poll, available only to those who donate. And all those who participate could suggest 1-5 developers/software titles for the poll. I guess we need to know that the developer will do the job, if he/her/they recieve funding. To limit the work, we can poll first and then ask the top candidate. And move down the list as money comes in, and developers say no or complete the task.

Maybe utilitybase.com or similar could host this effort?

If this gets enough attention I´ll be happy to donate. And be a part of the team organizing the effort.

My list:

Pixel32 (http://pixel32.box.sk/)
OpenOffice.org (http://www.amigaopenoffice.org/)
Putty Telnet/SSH (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/)
Aweb/Khtml (http://aweb.sunsite.dk/)
Titan/Papyrus Office (http://www.titan-computer.com/ami/index.html)

We should leave out titles that already have a bounty going. No need to compete.

Does this sound right?
(My english is far from perfect)

_________________

@TrevorDick

Hey, that sounds like a very good idea I consider this being important, and could also help preventing piracy, i hope

@Thread

Donations are great, but i would like to see some progress, thus i think a model where the donations are put towards acomplishments are better, promote those that do good. Perhaps as a yearly technology price ala the nobel price or something...

_________________
AMiGA

@TrevorDick

Another idea would be to create an "Adopt an Amiga Coder" program where we could get Amiga programmers into the door of big name software companies and we could sponsor them (similar to missionary work) and they could port programs from other platforms with the help of the various software companies and release a product for the Amiga. Of course NDAs and other red tape would have to be sorted out before such work could begin.

_________________

@TrevorDick

> Would Amiga owners donate to a sinking fund to support development
> or porting of critical software needed to make the Amiga more
> attractive to a wider audience?

Sounds like a good idea to me, but getting something like this organised may be dificult. A few attempts like this were made in the past, but they stopped before they even got started.

> There are some funds already in place, (e.g. the reward for the first
> person/group to port Mozillia to the general Amiga platform)

I don't think the 'first to finish gets the reward' approach is right.
Most developers won't even bother, because if somebody else finishes first, they'll get nothing for their months of work. And if some of them do make an attempt, we'll probably end up with 16 different ports of the same thing, each with different bugs and problems, and a bunch of people who all claim they were the first to port it.


Kind regards,

Dennis

@TrevorDick

Right now these would be the bits of software I would pay damb good money for.

Open Office port.

A modern compliant WEB Browser / HTML EMail package with a comprehensive plug in set. Eg:- real audio / video etc.

A damb good driving or football game.

Finally Catweasel MK3 support for OS4 via a native multidisk.device or E-UAE.

I know some of this software is GPL and cant be sold.
But there are ways round that like there are with the UK alcohol selling laws.

EG:- £2 buys you a raffle ticket, all raffle tickets ending in odd number win an instant prize... a can of beer. You just have to make sure you only sell odd number tickets.

Apply this anology to a prize of a CD with Open office etc

Last edited by JurassicC on 06-May-2005 at 05:38 PM.

_________________
A1200T 603e 330Mhz - Mediator TX OS4.1 F.E.
CDTV 8MB Fast, OS3.1, SCSI, MicroSD SCSI & CD32 FMV
X5000, X1000, A1XE with OS4.1F.E.

@TrevorDick
I've brought this up before a few times, in the hopes that AW.net would be the sponsor. I'll dig and see if I can find the posts again, as it was somewhat long.

Pretty sure others have too, but it's all good if results come out of it.

I think what most be the most useful here is basically this-
1. A heavy trafficked site does the donation collection (ie, AW.net IMO) IMO, this REALLY is the place for it, as there are more visitors to AW than any other Amiga site, and while I think IntuitionBase and other sites are great, I don't think they'll get the same exposure as on AW from people who may be willing to contribute but don't normally visit IB..

2. Donations could 'buy' a vote, 1 vote per $X, one vote per donation, one vote per person, whichever- this one obviously could be discussed a bit. End result though is the community gets to vote for a few 'top requests' for software, whether it's already existing or new.

3. Designate a few people to organize it, and make contact once the donations and votes of a sizeable fashion are in..see if there's any interest, and what it would take. Some people might be convinced to do an OS4 port for a $500 bounty, others might really need an A1 board, others might do it for free if they see how many people are wanting their software. Yet others might be willing with a pre-commitment/pre-pay of N units, which we could then use some of the bounty booty for...

Another option would be to have AW.net just supply a front page link, like where the AW donations box used to be, or in 'Extras,' that would then go to IntuitionBase or whomever was hosting it...

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

In the 'Pagestream developers has been given an A1 by Hyperion' threat, I suggested a 'collect money to give developers an A1' fund.

So I agree

It's a bit sad though that we have to give money before something will be developed, wich we then can buy later on (probably for quite a high price...)

But as I said, I think this is THE way to go, for now.

Anyway, this is my list (only the applications are mentioned here)

1. Open Office - doesnt matter to me how large or bloated it is, we need it to atract companies to use it, and try to get Amigas into offices.

2. A WindowsPC emulation - To run software we do NOT have, but need.

3. A filesharing thingy like E-donkey - I know there is one being developed.

4. Games, uptodate games ! - To atract wel... gamers !

5. Lightwave 3D - This also could have been nr 1. We need to get back into the movies again !!

Cheers,

Martin

_________________
Theres a time to live and a time to die
When its time to meet the maker
Theres a time to live but isnt it strange
That as soon as you're born you're dying

EDIT: Personal attack

Last edited by L8-X on 06-May-2005 at 10:46 PM.

@JurassicC

A shoutcast client..

NLE software

Street Level autoroute/navigator

_________________
******************************************
I dont suffer from Insanity - I enjoy it

******************************************

@TrevorDick

Good idea and good moment start it.

I wanted to donate my SE to a developper
some time into the future when i have the
money for a new A1 motherboard.

And if, lets say a 1000 members of the 3000
here at amigaworld.net donate 1 euro/dollar
that would make a nice start.

_________________
A1G3-SE + OS4.1 u1 iso (x2)

@x56h34

Uh, that was damn evil... but still

@all

Great idea and i think wegster's right about putting it up on AW.net. There are
more OS4 devs around than anywhere else, they could carry in their ideas or
projects they are working on and the mods could bring up polls for a certain
time to let the user base decide.

Let's get started

@The_Editor

Quote:

A shoutcast client..

There is already an OS4-native Shoutcast-able player by the great Bean.
You can use it easily within your web-browser. TuneNet

It even plays MP3!

@Metalheart
Quote:

Metalheart wrote: 1. Open Office - doesnt matter to me how large or bloated it is, we need it to atract companies to use it, and try to get Amigas into offices. 2. A WindowsPC emulation - To run software we do NOT have, but need. 3. A filesharing thingy like E-donkey - I know there is one being developed. 4. Games, uptodate games ! - To atract wel... gamers ! 5. Lightwave 3D - This also could have been nr 1. We need to get back into the movies again !!

I disagree on point 5. Amiga may have been a top-of-the-line workstation at one time but I don't think we can beat a dual-G5 Macintosh for processing large mathematically intense calculations such as the trigonometry in ray-tracing.

I also disagree on point 2. Windows may be a fixture but we need better software not more. We need a system that will compete not with the office fixtures but with the X-Box.

Businesses need all of the special networking fanciness that Linux and Windows have. Even a Macintosh has more networking capabilities than Amiga. We need more native software to run on a Linux-based network.

Point 3 will make up some of the difference for point 2. Let the Unix/Linux/BSD spin-offs fight over the networking and keep Amiga desktop-centered and palmtop-centered where we can actually do some good. Amiga is better because it takes less memory and processor speed. Running software intended for other system specifications will make us slow and bloated like Windows.

@Raziel

Sorry, I meant Broadcaster.

_________________
******************************************
I dont suffer from Insanity - I enjoy it

******************************************

@The_Editor

One that enables you to send radio streams out to the net?

Good thread, it's an important issue!

IMHO we need to decide what application should be in focus and concentrate on that. I suggest we do something to speed up a port of either Mozilla or KHTML but I don't know exactly how.

I don't believe the AmiZilla approach is the most effective, I believe in either smaller bounties or perhaps (if enough donated!) paying someone to do the port.

I think our main problem is a lack of developers and that the few developers we have left are either working on their own projects or not having enough time left after work/family etc.

_________________