I don't expect A-EON to release an OS4 version of OctaMED any time soon. First of all, the demand for a music tracker is quite low and several programs already fit the bill: DigiBooster 3, MilkyTracker, Protrekkr, and for chip music, HivelyTracker. Of these, the only commercial one is DigiBooster 3, and the absolute lack of development in the past five years indicates that its sales didn't meet the expectations to justify further investment.

OctaMED is an old program, written partly in assembler, with a non-scalable GUI, a seriously limited mixing engine, and MIDI implemented before camd.library became a standard. A-EON would have to pour tons of money to get it rewritten and on par with today's standards, and even then they'd face competition. Such an investment doesn't make any sense, considering the low demand and the availability of other solutions.

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@Trixie

If they have no commercial interest, and are not willing work on it, they should open source it, so people who might be interested in working on it has chance to do so.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 01-Sep-2019 at 11:05 AM.

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@Trixie

I'm holding out for Octamed, but if they aren't going to release it I'll move to Digibooster. Be nice to know either way.

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @Trixie If they have no commercial interest, and are not willing work on it, they should open source it, so people who might be interested in working on it has chance to do so.

The player code for DigiBooster 3 is open source already and I seem to recall there being player code on the Aminet for OctaMED.

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

If they have no commercial interest

Commercial interest and market reality are two different things. I think when the source code purchase took place (which was years ago), the situation was different and the future looked brighter: there was no devastating court case, the OS was regularly updated, new hardware had arrived (the Sam460 and the X1000), so a moderate influx of new and returning users (= potential customers) was expected... At that time, buying old source code out of commercial interest appeared to make sense.

Quote:

they should open source it,

Easier said than done. Acquiring the source code must have cost them dearly, what would be their compensation if they released it as open source?

Plus, in accordance with what Samurai_Crow has posted above, I strongly believe that writing a new tracker from scratch using the publicly-available DigiBooster mixing engine (libdigibooster3) and camd.library would yield faster and better results than rewriting OctaMED.

@ROMwack

Quote:

I'm holding out for Octamed, but if they aren't going to release it I'll move to Digibooster.

Move to DigiBooster 3. I know what I'm saying

Last edited by Trixie on 01-Sep-2019 at 08:45 PM.

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@Trixie

Quote:

Easier said than done. Acquiring the source code must have cost them dearly, what would be their compensation if they released it as open source?

Get more software on the platfrom, makeing it more interesting to more peaple, and maybe they just might sell more hardware.

Quote:

Acquiring the source code must have cost them dearly,

yes but at least they wont need to pay for someone to work on it.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 01-Sep-2019 at 09:50 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 01-Sep-2019 at 09:49 PM.

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Quote:

what would be their compensation if they released it as open source?

What would be their compensation if they simply kept the source they bought and did nothing with it?

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It's quite likely that the author(s) granted A-Eon a licence to modify and/or publish their software, but not to pass it on to anyone else, which forbids making it public.

In other words, no money is likely to change hands unless some copies are sold via the online store.

Last edited by tonyw on 01-Sep-2019 at 11:03 PM.

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It's a shame that Cinnamon Writer was seemingly* overlooked in favour of Libre Office. CW is a fast and lightweight Amiga native word processor that runs on Amiga OS4, MorphOS and AROS. It could probably have easily been ported to OS3.x too.

It had some compatibility with Word and was aiming too improve on it but it seems to have been abandoned for some time and the website has disappeared in the last year or so. I wondered what it would be like now if the resources poured into the first abortive port of Libre Office had been directed towards CW instead.

* I say seemingly because I don't no if there was any dialogue between A-EON and Claus Desler.

@Leo

Quote:

What would be their compensation if they simply kept the source they bought and did nothing with it?

Companies sometimes have to write off their investments, that's the reality of business. Plus, as Tony says, there may be legal constraints we are not aware of.

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